|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: went to their several billets. Every step, every sound, was a hope,--
and a lost hope. After that the stillness continued. Towards morning
the countess was obliged to return to her room. Brigitte, who watched
her movements, was uneasy when she did not reappear, and entering the
room she found her dead.
"She must have heard that recruit walking about Monsieur Auguste's
room, and singing their damned Marseillaise, as if he were in a
stable," cried Brigitte. "That was enough to kill her!"
The death of the countess had a far more solemn cause; it resulted, no
doubt, from an awful vision. At the exact hour when Madame de Dey died
at Carentan, her son was shot in the Morbihan. That tragic fact may be
|
