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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: house, and his wife was unwilling to live there alone. Sometimes he
went to walk and did not return till the following day, leaving Madame
Claes a prey to mortal anxiety during the night. After causing a
fruitless search for him through the town, whose gates, like those of
other fortified places, were closed at night, it was impossible to
send into the country, and the unhappy woman could only wait and
suffer till morning. Balthazar, who had forgotten the hour at which
the gates closed, would come tranquilly home next day, quite unmindful
of the tortures his absence had inflicted on his family; and the
happiness of getting him back proved as dangerous an excitement of
feeling to his wife as her fears of the preceding night. She kept
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