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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: Unlike all others in all things, formerly thou wouldst bid thy lovers
fast, and they obeyed. Why should thy fancies have led thee to require
things impossible? Why, like a courtesan spoiled by her lovers, hast
thou doted on follies, and left those undeceived who sought to explain
and justify all thy errors? Then came the days of thy later passions,
terrible like the love of a woman of forty years, with a fierce cry
thou hast sought to clasp the whole universe in one last embrace--and
thy universe recoiled from thee!
"Then old men succeeded to thy young lovers; decrepitude came to thy
feet and made thee hideous. Yet, even then, men with the eagle power
of vision said to thee in a glance, 'Thou shalt perish ingloriously,
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