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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: them. I was often whipped for my star. Unable to confide in my kind, I
told it all my troubles in that delicious inward prattle with which we
stammer our first ideas, just as once we stammered our first words. At
twelve years of age, long after I was at school, I still watched that
star with indescribable delight,--so deep and lasting are the
impressions we receive in the dawn of life.
My brother Charles, five years older than I and as handsome a boy as
he now is a man, was the favorite of my father, the idol of my mother,
and consequently the sovereign of the house. He was robust and well-
made, and had a tutor. I, puny and even sickly, was sent at five years
of age as day pupil to a school in the town; taken in the morning and
The Lily of the Valley |
