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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: Court.
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Madame d'Hauteserre fell ill, and was three months in her bed at the
hotel de Chargeboeuf. Monsieur d'Hauteserre returned patiently to
Cinq-Cygne, inwardly gnawed by one of those sorrows of old age which
have none of youth's distractions; often he was so absent-minded that
the abbe, who watched him, knew the poor father was living over again
the scene of the fatal verdict. Marthe passed away from all blame; she
died three weeks after the condemnation of her husband, confiding her
son to Laurence, in whose arms she died.
The trial once over, political events of the utmost importance effaced
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