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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: lands, empires may crumble away, the cholera may ravage cities, but a
maiden's love wings its way as nature pursues hers, or that alarming
acid which chemistry has lately discovered, and which will presently
eat through the globe, if nothing stops it.
Modeste, under the inspiration of her present situation, was putting
to music certain stanzas which we are compelled to quote here--albeit
they are printed in the second volume of the edition Dauriat had
mentioned--because, in order to adapt them to her music, which had the
inexpressible charm of sentiment so admired in great singers, Modeste
had taken liberties with the lines in a manner that may astonish the
admirers of a poet so famous for the correctness, sometimes too
Modeste Mignon |
