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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: Cayeux, did not necessarily lead to an acquittal or a
commutation; and while the matter was pending, our poet had
ample opportunity to reflect on his position. Hanging is a
sharp argument, and to swing with many others on the gibbet
adds a horrible corollary for the imagination. With the
aspect of Montfaucon he was well acquainted; indeed, as the
neighbourhood appears to have been sacred to junketing and
nocturnal picnics of wild young men and women, he had
probably studied it under all varieties of hour and weather.
And now, as he lay in prison waiting the mortal push, these
different aspects crowded back on his imagination with a new
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