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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: a roll in their pockets so that they may get and keep a front place.
The Cour Batave, where the little old man lived, is the product of one
of those fantastic speculations of which no man can explain the
meaning after they are once completed. This cloistral structure, with
arcades and interior galleries built of free-stone, with a fountain at
one end,--a parched fountain, which opens its lion's mouth less to
give water than to ask it from the passers-by,--was doubtless invented
to endow the Saint-Denis quarter with a species of Palais-Royal. The
place, unhealthy and buried on all four sides by the high walls of its
houses, has no life or movement except in the daytime; it is a central
spot where dark passages meet, and connect the quarter of the markets
 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |