The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: short, to put the facts into a word, Horace was the Pylades of
more than one Orestes--creditors being regarded as the nearest
modern equivalent to the Furies of the ancients.
He carried his poverty with the cheerfulness which is perhaps one
of the chief elements of courage, and, like all people who have
nothing, he made very few debts. As sober as a camel and active
as a stag, he was steadfast in his ideas and his conduct.
The happy phase of Bianchon's life began on the day when the
famous surgeon had proof of the qualities and the defects which,
these no less than those, make Doctor Horace Bianchon doubly dear
to his friends. When a leading clinical practitioner takes a
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