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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: "Well, if you will have the goodness to return to-morrow," said the
abbe, "I shall then have taken advice in the matter."
The quill-driver withdrew. The poor vicar, frightened at the
persistence with which Mademoiselle Gamard pursued him, returned to
the dining-room with his face so convulsed that everybody cried out
when they saw him: "What IS the matter, Monsieur Birotteau?"
The abbe, in despair, sat down without a word, so crushed was he by
the vague presence of approaching disaster. But after breakfast, when
his friends gathered round him before a comfortable fire, Birotteau
naively related the history of his troubles. His hearers, who were
beginning to weary of the monotony of a country-house, were keenly
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