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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: are not a landlord, monsieur, and you may think yourself happy. If you
knew to what lengths of ingratitude tenants can go, and to what
precautions we are driven! Why, monsieur, I once had a tenant--"
And for a quarter an hour he recounted how a Monsieur Gendrin,
designer, had deceived the vigilance of his porter, Rue Saint-Honore.
Monsieur Gendrin had committed infamies worthy of Marat,--obscene
drawings at which the police winked. This Gendrin, a profoundly
immoral artist, had brought in women of bad lives, and made the
staircase intolerable,--conduct worthy of a man who made caricatures
of the government. And why such conduct? Because his rent had been
asked for on the 15th! Gendrin and Molineux were about to have a
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
