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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: debased as to lend his wife to dishonor? When you paint a picture for
the court you do not put your whole soul into it; you sell to
courtiers your tricked-out lay-figures. My painting is not a picture;
it is a sentiment, a passion! Born in my atelier, she must remain a
virgin there. She shall not leave it unclothed. Poesy and women give
themselves bare, like truth, to lovers only. Have we the model of
Raphael, the Angelica of Ariosto, the Beatrice of Dante? No, we see
but their semblance. Well, the work which I keep hidden behind bolts
and bars is an exception to all other art. It is not a canvas; it is a
woman,--a woman with whom I weep and laugh and think and talk. Would
you have me resign the joy of ten years, as I might throw away a worn-
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