|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: furrows between the eyebrows, which were somewhat too thick and too
near together, like those of a jealous nature. Though La Briere was
then slight, he belonged to the class of temperaments which begin,
after they are thirty, to take on an unexpected amount of flesh.
The young man would have seemed to a student of French history a very
fair representative of the royal and almost inconceivable figure of
Louis XIII.,--that historical figure of melancholy modesty without
known cause; pallid beneath the crown; loving the dangers of war and
the fatigues of hunting, but hating work; timid with his mistress to
the extent of keeping away from her; so indifferent as to allow the
head of his friend to be cut off,--a figure that nothing can explain
Modeste Mignon |
