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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: danger cannot be foreseen. Metal that has gone soft, and metal that
has preserved its tenacity, both look exactly alike.
Priests and examining judges often find great criminals in this state.
The awful experiences of the Assize Court and the "last toilet"
commonly produce this dissolution of the nervous system, even in the
strongest natures. Then confessions are blurted by the most firmly set
lips; then the toughest hearts break; and, strange to say, always at
the moment when these confessions are useless, when this weakness as
of death snatches from the man the mask of innocence which made
Justice uneasy--for it always is uneasy when the criminal dies without
confessing his crime.
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