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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: old Venetian noble, thinking thoughts that set a young man's mind
afire at the age of twenty. I saw Venice and the Adriatic; I saw her
ruin in the ruin of the face before me. I walked to and fro in that
city, so beloved of her citizens; I went from the Rialto Bridge, along
the Grand Canal, and from the Riva degli Schiavoni to the Lido,
returning to St. Mark's, that cathedral so unlike all others in its
sublimity. I looked up at the windows of the Casa Doro, each with its
different sculptured ornaments; I saw old palaces rich in marbles, saw
all the wonders which a student beholds with the more sympathetic eyes
because visible things take their color of his fancy, and the sight of
realities cannot rob him of the glory of his dreams. Then I traced
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