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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: the hours from the clock-tower of Sache. During those hours of
darkness bathed in light, when this sidereal flower illumined my
existence, I betrothed to her my soul with the faith of the poor
Castilian knight whom we laugh at in the pages of Cervantes,--a faith,
nevertheless, with which all love begins.
At the first gleam of day, the first note of the waking birds, I fled
back among the trees of Frapesle and reached the house; no one had
seen me, no one suspected by absence, and I slept soundly until the
bell rang for breakfast. When the meal was over I went down, in spite
of the heat, to the meadow-lands for another sight of the Indre and
its isles, the valley and its slopes, of which I seemed so passionate
 The Lily of the Valley |