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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: nightmare fancies at the disposal of a fervid imagination, can realize
the horrors that seized upon Gaston de Nueil when he had reason to
suppose that his ultimatum was in Mme. de Beauseant's hands. He saw
the Vicomtesse, wholly untouched, laughing at his letter and his love,
as those can laugh who have ceased to believe in love. He could have
wished to have his letter back again. It was an absurd letter. There
were a thousand and one things, now that he came to think of it, that
he might have said, things infinitely better and more moving than
those stilted phrases of his, those accursed, sophisticated,
pretentious, fine-spun phrases, though, luckily, the punctuation had
been pretty bad and the lines shockingly crooked. He tried not to
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