The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: homes for the French peasantry. Treated thus, the features of the
children coarsened; their voices grew harsh; they mortified their
mother's vanity, and that made her strive to correct their bad habits
by a sternness which the severity of their father converted through
comparison to kindness. As a general thing, they were left to run
loose about the stables and courtyards of the inn, or the streets of
the town; sometimes they were whipped; sometimes they were sent, to
get rid of them, to their grandfather Auffray, who did not like them.
The injustice the Rogrons declared the old man did to their children,
justified them to their own minds in taking the greater part of "the
old scoundrel's" property. However, Rogron did send his son to school,
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