|
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: aspect of Andernach and the shimmering of the waters of the Rhine,--
these impressions came to the soul of the young man vaguely,
confusedly, torpidly, like all the sensations he had felt since his
waking. There were moments, he said, when he thought he was no longer
living.
I was then in prison. Enthusiastic, as we all are at twenty years of
age, I wished to defend my country, and I commanded a company of free
lances, which I had organized in the vicinity of Andernach. A few days
before these events I had fallen plump, during the night, into a
French detachment of eight hundred men. We were two hundred at the
most. My scouts had sold me. I was thrown into the prison of
|
