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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: the only daughter of the banker, a charming young creature whose
education was then being finished at the Gymnase, the plays of which
she adored. At this moment the guests were in that happy state of
laziness and silence which follows a delicious dinner, especially if
we have presumed too far on our digestive powers. Leaning back in
their chairs, their wrists lightly resting on the edge of the table,
they were indolently playing with the gilded blades of their dessert-
knives. When a dinner comes to this declining moment some guests will
be seen to play with a pear seed; others roll crumbs of bread between
their fingers and thumbs; lovers trace indistinct letters with
fragments of fruit; misers count the stones on their plate and arrange
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