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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: everybody, free as air, they gaily chased the joys of childhood. In
summer they ran to watch the fishing, they caught the many-colored
insects, they gathered flowers, they gardened; in winter they made
slides, they built snow-men or huts, or pelted each other with
snowballs. Welcomed by all, they met with smiles wherever they went.
When the time came to begin their education, disasters came, too.
Jacques, left without means at the death of his father, was
apprenticed by his relatives to a cabinet-maker, and fed by charity,
as Pierrette was soon to be at Saint-Jacques. Until the little girl
was taken with her grandparents to that asylum, she had known nothing
but fond caresses and protection from every one. Accustomed to confide
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