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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: Seeing the eyes still open but fixed, seeing the blood which had
stained his sheets and even his hands, recognizing his own surgical
instrument beside him, Prosper Magnan fainted and fell into the pool
of Wahlenfer's blood. "It was," he said to me, "the punishment of my
thoughts." When he recovered consciousness he was in the public room,
seated on a chair, surrounded by French soldiers, and in presence of a
curious and observing crowd. He gazed stupidly at a Republican officer
engaged in taking the testimony of several witnesses, and in writing
down, no doubt, the "proces-verbal." He recognized the landlord, his
wife, the two boatmen, and the servant of the Red Inn. The surgical
instrument which the murderer had used--
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