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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: the family in the Upper Alps.
Horrorstruck at the news, Charles waited for better times in a valley
of Mont Genevra; and there he remained till 1799, subsisting on a few
louis which his father had put into his hand at starting. Finally,
when twenty-three years of age, and without other fortune than his
fine presence and that southern beauty which, when it reaches
perfection, may be called sublime (of which Antinous, the favorite of
Adrian, is the type), Charles resolved to wager his Provencal audacity
--taking it, like many another youth, for a vocation--on the red cloth
of war. On his way to the base of the army at Nice he met the Breton.
The pair became intimate, partly from the contrasts in their
Modeste Mignon |
