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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: The Duke and I had spent the night by the dying woman's pillow;
pulmonary consumption, in the last stage, left no hope; she had taken
the sacrament the day before. The Duke had fallen asleep. The Duchess,
waking at about four in the morning, signed to me in the most touching
way, with a friendly smile, to bid me leave him to rest, and she
meanwhile was about to die. She had become incredibly thin, but her
face had preserved its really sublime outline and features. Her pallor
made her skin look like porcelain with a light within. Her bright eyes
and color contrasted with this languidly elegant complexion, and her
countenance was full of expressive calm. She seemed to pity the Duke,
and the feeling had its origin in a lofty tenderness which, as death
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