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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: would not have experienced, as Genestas did, an instinctive feeling of
repulsion for a being that had neither the physical beauty of an
animal nor the mental endowments of man, who was possessed of neither
instinct nor reason, and who had never heard nor spoken any kind of
articulate speech? It seemed difficult to expend any regrets over the
poor wretch now visibly drawing towards the very end of an existence
which had not been life in any sense of the word; yet the old woman
watched him with touching anxiety, and was rubbing his legs where the
hot water did not reach them with as much tenderness as if he had been
her husband. Benassis himself, after a close scrutiny of the dull eyes
and corpse-like face, gently took the cretin's hand and felt his
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