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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: social belief of the utmost importance for the peace of families,
which should be held by all the celibate, proving as it does that
paternity is a sentiment nourished artificially by woman, custom, and
the law.
Poor Henri de Marsay knew no other father than that one of the two who
was not compelled to be one. The paternity of M. de Marsay was
naturally most incomplete. In the natural order, it is but for a few
fleeting instants that children have a father, and M. de Marsay
imitated nature. The worthy man would not have sold his name had he
been free from vices. Thus he squandered without remorse in gambling
hells, and drank elsewhere, the few dividends which the National
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
