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: measure the gulf which separates or ought to separate them. They
observe each other unconsciously; their minds are preoccupied by
themselves; through their looks, their gestures, an indefinable
emanation of their thought transpires; there's a magnet between them.
I don't know which has the strongest power of attraction, vengeance or
crime, hatred or insult. Like a priest who cannot consecrate the host
in presence of an evil spirit, each is ill at ease and distrustful;
one is polite, the other surly, but I know not which; one colors or
turns pale, the other trembles. Often the avenger is as cowardly as
the victim. Few men have the courage to invoke an evil, even when just
or necessary, and men are silent or forgive a wrong from hatred of
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