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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: phenomena for science. This terrible agony, produced, possibly, by the
too sudden reunion of our two natures separated during sleep, is
usually transient; but in the poor young surgeon's case it lasted, and
even increased, causing him suddenly the most awful horror as he
beheld a pool of blood between Wahlenfer's bed and his own mattress.
The head of the unfortunate German lay on the ground; his body was
still on the bed; all its blood had flowed out by the neck.
Seeing the eyes still open but fixed, seeing the blood which had
stained his sheets and even his hands, recognizing his own surgical
instrument beside him, Prosper Magnan fainted and fell into the pool
of Wahlenfer's blood. "It was," he said to me, "the punishment of my
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