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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: an eyelash to them, peered out from under the sheltering peak of a
shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He had the thin lips that
you see in Rembrandt's or Metsu's portraits of alchemists and shrunken
old men, and a nose so sharp at the tip that it put you in mind of a
gimlet. His voice was so low; he always spoke suavely; he never flew
into a passion. His age was a problem; it was hard to say whether he
had grown old before his time, or whether by economy of youth he had
saved enough to last him his life.
"His room, and everything in it, from the green baize of the bureau to
the strip of carpet by the bed, was as clean and threadbare as the
chilly sanctuary of some elderly spinster who spends her days in
Gobseck |
