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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: 1830. I was weary of life. If you had asked me the reason of my
despair, I should have found it almost impossible to give it, so
languid had grown the soul that was melted within me. The west wind
had slackened the springs of my intelligence. A cold gray light poured
down from the heavens, and the murky clouds that passed overhead gave
a boding look to the land; all these things, together with the
immensity of the sea, said to me, "Die to-day or die to-morrow, still
must we not die?" And then--I wandered on, musing on the doubtful
future, on my blighted hopes. Gnawed by these gloomy thoughts, I
turned mechanically into the convent church, with the gray towers that
loomed like ghosts though the sea mists. I looked round with no
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