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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: of the law. In great cities there are poor or degraded wretches
enough; poverty and vice know no scruples, and consent to play the
spy, but in a little country town, people know each other too well to
earn wages of the bailiff; the meanest creature who should lend
himself to dirty work of this kind would be forced to leave the place.
In the absence of recognized machinery, therefore, the arrest of a
debtor is a problem presenting no small difficulty; it becomes a kind
of strife of ingenuity between the bailiff and the debtor, and matter
for many pleasant stories in the newspapers.
Cointet the elder did not choose to appear in the affair; but the fat
Cointet openly said that he was acting for Metivier, and went to
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