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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: with and finger. As a young man I always wore jewelry, and I carried
two or three hundred ducats about me wherever I went."
He drew a couple of gold coins from his pocket and showed them to me
as he spoke.
"I can tell by instinct when gold is near. Blind as I am, I stop
before a jeweler's shop windows. That passion was the ruin of me; I
took to gambling to play with gold. I was not a cheat, I was cheated,
I ruined myself. I lost all my fortune. Then the longing to see Bianca
once more possessed me like a frenzy. I stole back to Venice and found
her again. For six months I was happy; she hid me in her house and fed
me. I thought thus deliciously to finish my days. But the Provveditore
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