|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: opened to the slightest distance through which a man could pass. At
the risk of tearing off his clothing, Philippe squeezed himself rather
than walked into La Malemaison. A toothless old woman with a hatchet
face, the eyebrows projecting like the handles of a cauldron, the nose
and chin so near together that a nut could scarcely pass between them,
--a pallid, haggard creature, her hollow temples composed apparently
of only bones and nerves,--guided the "soi-disant" foreigner silently
into a lower room, while Cornelius followed prudently behind him.
"Sit there," she said to Philippe, showing him a three-legged stool
placed at the corner of a carved stone fireplace, where there was no
fire.
|
