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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: momentary frenzy. The teachings of his education, its religious
precepts, but above all, so he told me, the remembrance of his simple
life beneath the parental roof drove out his wicked thoughts. When he
returned to the inn after a long meditation to which he abandoned
himself on the bank of the Rhine, resting his elbow on a rock, he
could, he said to me, not have slept, but have watched untempted
beside millions of gold. At the moment when his virtue rose proudly
and vigorously from the struggle, he knelt down, with a feeling of
ecstasy and happiness, and thanked God. He felt happy, light-hearted,
content, as on the day of his first communion, when he thought himself
worthy of the angels because he had passed one day without sinning in
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