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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: somnambulism, the crime he had dreamed of awake.
"But your companion?" I said to him.
"Oh!" he cried eagerly. "Wilhelm is incapable of--"
He did not even finish his sentence. At that warm defence, so full of
youth and manly virtue, I pressed his hand.
"When he woke," continued Prosper, "he must have been terrified and
lost his head; no doubt he fled."
"Without awaking you?" I said. "Then surely your defence is easy;
Wahlenfer's valise cannot have been stolen."
Suddenly he burst into tears.
"Oh, yes!" he cried, "I am innocent! I have not killed a man! I
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