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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: rustic parents, who had never heard an unfit word, whose pure
unsullied mind had never known the slightest evil thought,--to the
angelic pupil of Soeur Marthe and the vicar of Saint-Etienne the
revelation of love, the life of womanhood, came from the hand of
genius through one sweet book. To any other mind the book would have
offered no danger; to her it was worse in its effects than an obscene
tale. Corruption is relative. There are chaste and virgin natures
which a single thought corrupts, doing all the more harm because no
thought of the duty of resistance has occurred.
The next day Veronique showed the book to the good priest, who
approved the purchase; for what could be more childlike and innocent
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