The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: In the middle of the night his sleep was troubled by an extraordinary
noise; he sat up, and the deep silence around allowed him to
distinguish the alternative accents of a respiration whose savage
energy could not belong to a human creature.
A profound terror, increased still further by the darkness, the
silence, and his waking images, froze his heart within him. He almost
felt his hair stand on end, when by straining his eyes to their utmost
he perceived through the shadow two faint yellow lights. At first he
attributed these lights to the reflections of his own pupils, but soon
the vivid brilliance of the night aided him gradually to distinguish
the objects around him in the cave, and he beheld a huge animal lying
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