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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: he reached the Rue Froid-Manteau, a dirty, poky, disreputable street--
a sort of sewer tolerated by the police close to the purified purlieus
of the Palais-Royal, as an Italian major-domo allows a careless
servant to leave the sweepings of the rooms in a corner of the
staircase.
The young man hesitated. He might have been a bedizened citizen's wife
craning her neck over a gutter swollen by the rain. But the hour was
not unpropitious for the indulgence of some discreditable whim.
Earlier, he might have been detected; later, he might find himself cut
out. Tempted by a glance which is encouraging without being inviting,
to have followed a young and pretty woman for an hour, or perhaps for
Gambara |
