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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: toward the end of the month of July, 1815. The second return of the
Bourbons had shaken many friendships which had held firm under the
first Restoration. At this moment families, almost all divided in
opinion, were renewing many of the deplorable scenes which stain the
history of all countries in times of civil or religious wars.
Children, young girls, old men shared the monarchial fever to which
the country was then a victim. Discord glided beneath all roofs;
distrust dyed with its gloomy colors the words and the actions of the
most intimate friends.
Ginevra Piombo loved Napoleon to idolatry; how, then, could she hate
him? The emperor was her compatriot and the benefactor of her father.
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