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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: have a very heavy account to render to the King of Heaven--Ah! yes,"
he added, with an eloquent shake of the head, "heavy indeed!--for by
doing nothing they became accomplices in the awful wickedness----"
"But do you think that an indirect participation will be punished?"
the stranger asked with a bewildered look. "There is the private
soldier commanded to fall into line--is he actually responsible?"
The priest hesitated. The stranger was glad; he had put the Royalist
precisian in a dilemma, between the dogma of passive obedience on the
one hand (for the upholders of the Monarchy maintained that obedience
was the first principle of military law), and the equally important
dogma which turns respect for the person of a King into a matter of
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