|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: deeply humiliated if I accepted them. A day would come when
everything, even Nature, would bid you leave me, and I have
already told you that death is preferable to desertion. Misfortune
has taught me to calculate; as you see, I am arguing perfectly
dispassionately. You force me to tell you that I have no love for
you; I ought not to love, I cannot, and I will not. It is too late
to yield, as women yield, to a blind unreasoning impulse of the
heart, too late to be the mistress whom you seek. My consolations
spring from God, not from earth. Ah, and besides, with the
melancholy insight of disappointed love, I read hearts too clearly
to accept your proffered friendship. It is only instinct. I
|
