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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: who listens, recollecting all the while his own interests, and leaves
the cause to the assignees and the attorneys,--except, possibly, in a
few strange and unusual cases where dishonesty is accompanied by
peculiar circumstances, when the judge usually observes that the
debtor, or the creditors, as it may happen, are clever people. This
personage, set up in the drama like the royal bust in a public
audience-chamber, may be found early in the morning at his wood-yard,
if he sells wood; in his shop, if, like Birotteau, he is a perfumer;
or, in the evenings, at his dessert after dinner,--always, it should
be added, in a terrible hurry; as a general thing he is silent. Let
us, however, do justice to the law: the legislation that governs his
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
