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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: stolidly at his guests without uttering a word; and then his wife
would say, "The good-man does not hear anything to-day."
On two or three occasions in the course of five years, and usually
about the time of the equinox, this remark had driven him to frenzy;
he flourished his knives and shouted, "That joke dishonors me!"
As for his daily life, he ate, drank, and walked about like other men
in sound health; and so it happened that he was treated with about the
same respect and attention that we give to a heavy piece of furniture.
Among his many absurdities was one of which no man had as yet
discovered the object, although by long practice the wiseheads of the
community had learned to unravel the meaning of most of his vagaries.
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