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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: testified the slightest repugnance; I howled with the wolves outside,
I prayed to God within. My last companion in chains was a soldier,
twenty-two years of age, who had committed a theft and deserted in
consequence of it. We were chained together for four years, and we
were friends; wherever I may be I am certain to meet him when his time
is up. This poor devil, whose name is Guepin, is not a scoundrel, he
is merely heedless; his punishment may reform him. If my comrades had
discovered that religion led me to submit to my trials,--that I meant,
when my time was up, to live humbly in a corner, letting no one know
where I was, intending to forget their horrible community and never to
cross the path of any of them,--they would probably have driven me
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