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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: "I shall live!" she said; "but cure yourself as well."
That look had effaced the memory of Arabella's sarcasms. Thus I was
the plaything of the two irreconcilable passions I have now described
to you; I was influenced by each alternately. I loved an angel and a
demon; two women equally beautiful,--one adorned with all the virtues
which we decry through hatred of our own imperfections, the other with
all the vices which we deify through selfishness. Returning along that
avenue, looking back again and again at Madame de Mortsauf, as she
leaned against a tree surrounded by her children who waved their
handkerchiefs, I detected in my soul an emotion of pride in finding
myself the arbiter of two such destinies; the glory, in ways so
The Lily of the Valley |
