The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: had not, like his Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and
malice; he felt that he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not
yet come, while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and being
damned beyond redemption, delights to stir up the world, like a dung
heap, with his triple fork and to thwart therein the designs of God.
But Castanier, for his misfortune, had one hope left.
If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird
springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,
he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond
it. That vision of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see
humanity and its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools
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