The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: at the back of my head. I heard the sound of a key being cautiously
fitted to the lock of a little side door by the speechless lover who
had sat opposite to me. In a moment the waiting-woman, whose shape was
slender, and who walked with an elegant jauntiness'--/meneho/, as they
call it," Monsieur Gravier explained in a superior tone, "a word which
describes the swing which women contrive to give a certain part of
their dress that shall be nameless.--'The waiting-woman'--it is the
surgeon-major who is speaking," the narrator went on--" 'led me along
the gravel walks of a large garden, till at a certain spot she
stopped. From the louder sound of our footsteps, I concluded that we
were close to the house. "Now silence!" said she in a whisper, "and
The Muse of the Department |