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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: which all men have felt at the moment when a first love transports
their vital principle into another being. He offered to teach
Gabrielle to sing. The poor lad was so glad to show himself to this
young girl invested with some slight superiority that he trembled with
pleasure when she accepted his offer. At that moment the moonlight
fell full upon her, and enabled Etienne to note the points of her
resemblance to his mother, the late duchess. Like Jeanne de Saint-
Savin, Beauvouloir's daughter was slender and delicate; in her, as in
the duchess, sadness and suffering conveyed a mysterious charm. She
had that nobility of manner peculiar to souls on whom the ways of the
world have had no influence, and in whom all is noble because all is
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