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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: doubled; for the vintage, it is doubled again. What can La Grenadiere
be worth, you wonder; La Grenadiere, with its stone staircase, its
beaten path and triple terrace, its two acres of vineyard, its
flowering roses about the balustrades, its worn steps, well-head,
rampant clematis, and cosmopolitan trees? It is idle to make a bid! La
Grenadiere will never be in the market; it was brought once and sold,
but that was in 1690; and the owner parted with it for forty thousand
francs, reluctant as any Arab of the desert to relinquish a favorite
horse. Since then it has remained in the same family, its pride, its
patrimonial jewel, its Regent diamond. "While you behold, you have and
hold," says the bard. And from La Grenadiere you behold three valleys
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