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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: Paradise--if there be a Paradise? He received the last sacrament
like the saint that he was, and his death was worthy of his life.
"I alone followed him to the grave. When I had laid my only
benefactor to rest, I looked about to see how I could pay my debt
to him; I found he had neither family nor friends, neither wife
nor child. But he believed. He had a religious conviction; had I
any right to dispute it? He had spoken to me timidly of masses
said for the repose of the dead; he would not impress it on me as
a duty, thinking that it would be a form of repayment for his
services. As soon as I had money enough I paid to Saint-Sulpice
the requisite sum for four masses every year. As the only thing I
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