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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: Inspection of the ballot-box showed the presence of nine white balls!
The result did not surprise me; but it came into my heard to count the
young men of my own age whom I had brought to sit in judgment. These
casuists were precisely nine in number; they all had the same thought.
"Oh, oh!" I said to myself, "here is secret unanimity to forbid the
marriage, and secret unanimity to sanction it! How shall I solve that
problem?"
"Where does the father-in-law live?" asked one my school-friends,
heedlessly, being less sophisticated than the others.
"There's no longer a father-in-law," I replied. "Hitherto, my
conscience has spoken plainly enough to make your verdict superfluous.
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