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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: visit of a lover, he was capable of roasting her alive in an iron
cage, or of killing her by degrees in the dungeons of a fortified
castle. Looking down at the shabby clothing in which he had disguised
himself, the young nobleman felt ashamed. His black leather belt, his
stout shoes, his ribbed socks, his linsey-woolsey breeches, and his
gray woollen doublet made him look like the clerk of some poverty-
stricken justice. To a noble of the fifteenth century it was like
death itself to play the part of a beggarly burgher, and renounce the
privileges of his rank. But--to climb the roof of the house where his
mistress wept; to descend the chimney, or creep along from gutter to
gutter to the window of her room; to risk his life to kneel beside her
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