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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: be sick, as the body is. But the soul cannot submit stupidly to
suffering like the body; the body does not uphold the soul as the
soul upholds the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the
reflection which leads to the needlewoman's resource--the bushel
of charcoal. You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday,
when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would marry
me. It would have been a great misfortune for us both; I should
have been still more dead, so to speak--for there are more and
less bitter deaths. The world would never have recognized us.
"For two months past I have been thinking of many things, I can
tell you. A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I went into
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