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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: softer still. Oh, yes! she loves me! But she adores her father; she
tells me of his kindness, his gentleness, his excellent qualities.
Those praises are so many dagger-thrusts with which she stabs me to
the heart.
One day I came near making myself the accomplice, as it were, of the
crime which led to the opulence of the Taillefer family. I was on the
point of asking the father for Victorine's hand. But I fled; I
travelled; I went to Germany, to Andernach; and then--I returned! I
found Victorine pale, and thinner; if I had seen her well in health
and gay, I should certainly have been saved. Instead of which my love
burst out again with untold violence. Fearing that my scruples might
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