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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: revealed to him that if he were to attempt to use this love
affair as a means of mending his fortunes, he must swallow down
all sense of decency, and renounce all the generous ideas which
redeem the sins of youth. He had chosen this life of apparent
splendor, but secretly gnawed by the canker worm of remorse, a
life of fleeting pleasure dearly paid for by persistent pain;
like Le Distrait of La Bruyere, he had descended so far as to
make his bed in a ditch; but (also like Le Distrait) he himself
was uncontaminated as yet by the mire that stained his garments.
"So we have killed our mandarin, have we?" said Bianchon one day
as they left the dinner table.
Father Goriot |
