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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: trembled lest she should have a daughter, and she swore, as such women
swear, on the honor and with the will of the galleys--the firmest
will, the most scrupulous honor that there is on earth--she swore,
before an altar, and believing in that altar, to make her daughter a
virtuous creature, a saint, and thus to gain, after that long line of
lost women, criminals in love, an angel in heaven for them all.
The vow once made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan
returned to her reckless life, a thought the more within her heart. At
last she loved, with the violent love of such women, as Henrietta
Wilson loved Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke,
as the Marchesa Pescara loved her husband--but no, she did not love,
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