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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: sublime ecstatics. All human sentiments bear analogy to these
conditions whenever the mind abandons Effect for Cause. Thaddeus had
reached this height, at which all things change their relative aspect.
Filled with the joys unutterable of a creator he had attained in his
love to all that genius has revealed to us of grandeur.
"No," he was thinking to himself as he watched the curling smoke of
his pipe, "she was not entirely deceived. She might break up my
friendship with Adam if she took a dislike to me; but if she coquetted
with me to amuse herself, what would become of me?"
The conceit of this last supposition was so foreign to the modest
nature and Teutonic timidity of the captain that he scolded himself
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