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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: Madame Descoings's assignment would replace the money she had sold out
of the Funds, she persisted in trusting neither the notary nor her
aunt, nor even the government; she believed in nothing but herself and
the privations she was practising. By laying aside three thousand
francs every year from her pension, she would have thirty thousand
francs at the end of ten years; which would give fifteen hundred a
year to her children. At thirty-six, she might expect to live twenty
years longer; and if she kept to the same system of economy she might
leave to each child enough for the bare necessaries of life.
Thus the two widows passed from hollow opulence to voluntary poverty,
--one under the pressure of a vice, the other through the promptings
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