|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: commercial honesty never lay under the slightest suspicion. If some of
his brethren in business made a contract with the Government, and had
not the required quantity of cloth, he was always ready to deliver it,
however large the number of pieces tendered for. The wily dealer knew
a thousand ways of extracting the largest profits without being
obliged, like them, to court patrons, cringing to them, or making them
costly presents. When his fellow-tradesmen could only pay in good
bills of long date, he would mention his notary as an accommodating
man, and managed to get a second profit out of the bargain, thanks to
this arrangement, which had made it a proverb among the traders of the
Rue Saint-Denis: "Heaven preserve you from Monsieur Guillaume's
|
