|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: civil law as the annals of a people (contained, it may be, in one word
only,--Napoleon, Robespierre) are engraved on a tombstone. Ginevra
trembled. Like the dove on the face of the waters, having no place to
rest its feet but the ark, so Ginevra could take refuge only in the
eyes of Luigi from the cold and dreary waste around her.
The mayor assumed a stern, disapproving air, and his clerk looked up
at the couple with malicious curiosity. No marriage was ever so little
festal. Like other human beings when deprived of their accessories, it
became a simple act in itself, great only in thought.
After a few questions, to which the bride and bridegroom responded,
and a few words mumbled by the mayor, and after signing the registers,
|