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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: of incessant toil, learning the full extent of my functions, which to
any one not sternly upright offered opportunities for deception and
dishonest gains, but which I had exercised with such rigid honor that
the king, I told her, called me Mademoiselle de Vandenesse, she seized
my hand and kissed it, and dropped a tear, a tear of joy, upon it.
This sudden transposition of our roles, this homage, coupled with the
thought--swiftly expressed but as swiftly comprehended--"Here is the
master I have sought, here is my dream embodied!" all that there was
of avowal in the action, grand in its humility, where love betrayed
itself in a region forbidden to the senses,--this whirlwind of
celestial things fell on my heart and crushed it. I felt myself too
The Lily of the Valley |
