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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: strongly of the marvelous, the mysterious, and the vague; elements
which Flemish narrators have infused into a story retailed so often to
gatherings of workers on winter evenings, that the details vary widely
in poetic merit and incongruity of detail. It has been told by every
generation, handed down by grandames at the fireside, narrated night
and day, and the chronicle has changed its complexion somewhat in
every age. Like some great building that has suffered many
modifications of successive generations of architects, some sombre
weather-beaten pile, the delight of a poet, the story would drive the
commentator and the industrious winnower of words, facts, and dates to
despair. The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious minds in
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