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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: man was beating a carpet in the garden. The day before, no one would
have noticed that fact; but the carpet now became a corner-stone on
which the whole town built up its theories. Each individual had his or
her surmise.
The second day, on learning that Madame de Dey declared herself ill,
the principal personages of Carentan, assembled in the evening at the
house of the mayor's brother, an old married merchant, a man of strict
integrity, greatly respected, and for whom Madame de Dey had shown
much esteem. There all the aspirants for the hand of the rich widow
had a tale to tell that was more or less probable; and each expected
to turn to his own profit the secret event which he thus recounted.
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