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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: trying to utter his words that Grandet fell a victim to his humanity
and was compelled to prompt the wily Jew with the words and ideas he
seemed to seek, to complete himself the arguments of the said Jew, to
say what that cursed Jew ought to have said for himself; in short, to
be the Jew instead of being Grandet. When the cooper came out of this
curious encounter he had concluded the only bargain of which in the
course of a long commercial life he ever had occasion to complain. But
if he lost at the time pecuniarily, he gained morally a valuable
lesson; later, he gathered its fruits. Indeed, the goodman ended by
blessing that Jew for having taught him the art of irritating his
commercial antagonist and leading him to forget his own thoughts in
 Eugenie Grandet |