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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: midst of her husband's abstractions love showed itself on this
occasion an abstraction even greater than the rest. Her woman's pride,
hurt for the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown
abyss which separated her from the Claes of earlier days. From that
time Balthazar's condition grew rapidly worse. The man formerly so
wrapped up in his domestic happiness, who played for hours with his
children on the parlor carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed
able to exist only in the light of his Pepita's dark eyes, did not
even perceive her pregnancy, seldom shared the family life, and even
forgot his own.
The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
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