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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: send him to remote parts of France to save a trifle of cost. The
shrewdness which all women more or less possess, not being employed in
the service of her heart, had drifted into that of speculation. A
business to pay for,--that thought was the mainspring which kept the
machine going and gave it an infernal activity.
Rogron was really only head-clerk; he understood nothing of his
business as a whole; self-interest, that great motor of the mind, had
failed in his case to instruct him. He was often aghast when his
sister ordered some article to be sold below cost, foreseeing the end
of its fashion; later he admired her idiotically for her cleverness.
He reasoned neither ill nor well; he was simply incapable of reasoning
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