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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: for an explanation of so paradoxical a speech.
"During the hours I lie awake at night I have not been able to keep my
mind from dwelling on this mysterious affair," she said slowly, "and I
think I have fathomed Tascheron's motive. I believe the person he
loves is a young girl, because a married woman has interests, if not
feelings, which partly fill her heart and prevent her from yielding so
completely to a great passion as to leave her home. There is such a
thing as a love proceeding from passion which is half maternal, and to
me it is evident that this man was loved by a woman who wished to be
his prop, his Providence. She must have put into her passion something
of the genius that inspires the work of artists and poets, the
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