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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: crucifix, the sprigs of box, and the holy-water stoup--after the
custom of the countryside, bolting the shutters and drawing the
curtains. Later the curate came to pass the night in prayer with
Louis, who refused to leave his mother. On Tuesday morning an old
woman and two children and a vinedresser's wife followed the dead to
her grave. These were the only mourners. Yet this was a woman whose
wit and beauty and charm had won a European reputation, a woman whose
funeral, if it had taken place in London, would have been recorded in
pompous newspaper paragraphs, as a sort of aristocratic rite, if she
had not committed the sweetest of crimes, a crime always expiated in
this world, so that the pardoned spirit may enter heaven. Marie cried
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