The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: "Pooh! it is more solid than a throne!"
She then secured the curtain and came down, pushed the chair and table
as far as possible from the partition, returned to her easel, and
seemed to be arranging it to suit the volume of light she had now
thrown upon it. Her picture, however, was not in her mind, which was
wholly bent on getting as near as possible to the closet, against the
door of which she finally settled herself. Then she began to prepare
her palette in the deepest silence. Sitting there, she could hear,
distinctly, a sound which had strongly excited her curiosity the
evening before, and had whirled her young imagination across vast
fields of conjecture. She recognized the firm and regular breathing of
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