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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: in current conversation turns of speech contemporary, I should
say, with the good Henri Quatre; and when talking of money
matters, reckoned not in francs, like the common, godless herd of
post-Revolutionary Frenchmen, but in obsolete and forgotten
ecus--ecus of all money units in the world!--as though Louis
Quatorze were still promenading in royal splendour the gardens of
Versailles, and Monsieur de Colbert busy with the direction of
maritime affairs. You must admit that in a banker of the
nineteenth century it was a quaint idiosyncrasy. Luckily, in the
counting-house (it occupied part of the ground floor of the
Delestang town residence, in a silent, shady street) the accounts
A Personal Record |
