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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: of envy and admiration.
To figure in drawing-rooms with the reflected lustre of her husband's
fame, and to find other women envious of her, was to Augustine a new
harvest of pleasures; but it was the last gleam of conjugal happiness.
She first wounded her husband's vanity when, in spite of vain efforts,
she betrayed her ignorance, the inelegance of her language, and the
narrowness of her ideas. Sommervieux's nature, subjugated for nearly
two years and a half by the first transports of love, now, in the calm
of less new possession, recovered its bent and habits, for a while
diverted from their channel. Poetry, painting, and the subtle joys of
imagination have inalienable rights over a lofty spirit. These
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