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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: Why don't you laugh? Every one else in the house is laughing. Laugh,
dear!" she said to Castanier.
Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The
Englishman's laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was
as if a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.
"Laughing! are they laughing!" stammered Castanier.
He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the
house with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself
hurrying from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard,
bargaining with the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the
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