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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: effort of a life that was one long anguish,--I felt a blow within me
that struck on all my faculties. The count and I remained beside the
bier all night with the two abbes and the curate, watching, in the
glimmer of the tapers, the body of the departed, now so calm, laid
upon the mattress of her bed, where once she had suffered cruelly. It
was my first communion with death. I remained the whole of that night
with my eyes fixed on Henriette, spell-bound by the pure expression
that came from the stilling of all tempests, by the whiteness of that
face where still I saw the traces of her innumerable affections,
although it made no answer to my love. What majesty in that silence,
in that coldness! How many thoughts they expressed! What beauty in
The Lily of the Valley |
