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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: a month after my marriage. That left us only sixty-seven thousand
francs a year; but we spent fully three times as much every year. Add
all that up, together with rates of interest to usurers, and you will
soon find a million."
"Br-r-r!" exclaimed the old notary. "Go on. What next?"
"Well, I wanted, in the first place, to complete for my wife that set
of jewels of which she had the pearl necklace clasped by the family
diamond, the 'Discreto,' and her mother's ear-rings. I paid a hundred
thousand francs for a coronet of diamond wheat-ears. There's eleven
hundred thousand. And now I find I owe the fortune of my wife, which
amounts to three hundred and sixty-six thousand francs of her 'dot.'"
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