The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: one seemed to them excused by his great passion; the other they
considered all the more guilty for his harmless pretensions.
Gigonnet, after leaving the Bourse, went round by the Rue Perrin-
Gasselin on his way home, in search of Madame Madou, the vendor of
dried fruits.
"Well, old woman," he said, with his coarse good-humor, "how goes the
business?"
"So-so," said Madame Madou, respectfully, offering her only armchair
to the usurer, with a show of attention she had never bestowed on her
"dear defunct."
Mother Madou, who would have floored a recalcitrant or too-familiar
 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |