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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: nursed her with the devotion of girlhood, and the curiosity of an
untainted imagination. In the silence of long nights the sisters
exchanged many a confidence. With what dramatic interest was poor
Bettina invested in the eyes of the innocent Modeste? Bettina knew
love through sorrow only, and she was dying of it. Among young girls
every man, scoundrel though he be, is still a lover. Passion is the
one thing absolutely real in the things of life, and it insists on its
supremacy. Charles d'Estourny, gambler, criminal, and debauchee,
remained in the memory of the sisters, the elegant Parisian of the
fetes of Havre, the admired of the womenkind. Bettina believed she had
carried him off from the coquettish Madame Vilquin, and to Modeste he
Modeste Mignon |
