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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: "Didine is high-minded; when once she knows of my proposed marriage,
she will sacrifice herself for my future prospects, and I know how I
can manage to let her know." Delighted at having hit on a trick of
which the success seemed certain, he danced round to a familiar tune:
"/Larifla, fla, fla!/--And Didine once out of the way," he went on,
talking to himself, "I will treat Maman Cardot to a call and a
novelette: I have seduced her Felicie at Saint-Eustache--Felicie,
guilty through passion, bears in her bosom the pledge of our affection
--and /larifla, fla, fla!/ the father /Ergo/, the notary, his wife,
and his daughter are caught, nabbed----"
And, to her great amazement, Dinah discovered Etienne performing a
 The Muse of the Department |