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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: Schmucke awoke and went to see his friend, and found him lying
unconscious in the salon. With endless pains Schmucke raised the half-
dead body and laid it on the bed; but when he came to question the
death-stricken man, and saw the look in the dull eyes and heard the
vague, inarticulate words, the good German, so far from losing his
head, rose to the very heroism of friendship. Man and child as he was,
with the pressure of despair came the inspiration of a mother's
tenderness, a woman's love. He warmed towels (he found towels!), he
wrapped them about Pons' hands, he laid them over the pit of the
stomach; he took the cold, moist forehead in his hands, he summoned
back life with a might of will worthy of Apollonius of Tyana, laying
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