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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: "You know what Nucingen is," said Bixiou. "In the early days, Delphine
and Rastignac thought him 'good-natured'; he seemed to regard a wife
as a plaything, an ornament in his house. And that very fact showed me
that the man was square at the base as well as in height," added
Bixiou. "Nucingen makes no bones about admitting that his wife is his
fortune; she is an indispensable chattel, but a wife takes a second
place in the high-pressure life of a political leader and great
capitalist. He once said in my hearing that Bonaparte had blundered
like a bourgeois in his early relations with Josephine; and that after
he had had the spirit to use her as a stepping-stone, he had made
himself ridiculous by trying to make a companion of her."
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