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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: But even then I had given myself up to ambitious dreams; I thought of
drinking deeply of all the delights that wealth could give, of
becoming a person of consequence, of making a brilliant marriage. So I
read the letters, and contented myself with saying, 'She is very fond
of me,' with the indifference of a coxcomb. Even then I was perplexed
as to how to extricate myself from this entanglement; I was ashamed of
it, and this fact as well as my perplexity led me to be cruel. We
begin by wounding the victim, and then we kill it, that the sight of
our cruelty may no longer put us to the blush. Late reflections upon
those days of error have unveiled for me many a dark depth in the
human heart. Yes, believe me, those who best have fathomed the good
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