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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: to print these notes; and I have taken advantage
of the opportunity of putting my name at the
head of another person's productions. Heaven
grant that my readers may not punish me for
such an innocent deception!
I must now give some explanation of the
reasons which have induced me to betray to the
public the inmost secrets of a man whom I never
knew. If I had even been his friend, well and
good: the artful indiscretion of the true friend
is intelligible to everybody; but I only saw
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