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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: irreproachable collar, and our best clothes? We deify the garments
associated with that all-supreme moment. We weave within us poetic
fancies quite equal to those of the woman; and the day when either
party guesses them they take wings to themselves and fly away. Are not
such things like the flower of wild fruits, bitter-sweet, grown in the
heart of a forest, the joy of the scant sun-rays, the joy, as Canalis
says in the "Maiden's Song," of the plant itself whose eyes unclosing
see its own image within its breast?
Such emotions, now taking place in La Briere, tend to show that, like
other poor fellows for whom life begins in toil and care, he had never
yet been loved. Arriving at Havre overnight, he had gone to bed at
Modeste Mignon |
