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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: The public prosecutor imagined a whole drama to result in the return
by night of Madame de Dey's son, the emigre. The mayor was convinced
that a priest who refused the oath had arrived from La Vendee and
asked for asylum; but the day being Friday, the purchase of a hare
embarrassed the good mayor not a little. The judge of the district
court held firmly to the theory of a Chouan leader or a body of
Vendeans hotly pursued. Others were convinced that the person thus
harbored was a noble escaped from the Paris prisons. In short, they
all suspected the countess of being guilty of one of those
generosities, which the laws of the day called crimes, and punished on
the scaffold. The public prosecutor remarked in a low voice that it
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