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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: spoke of you to me. Let us examine into your affairs," he added,
glancing at Cesar with the look of a courtesan eager to pay her rent.
Birotteau became Molineux,--a being at whom he had once laughed so
loftily. Enticed along by the banker,--who enjoyed disentangling the
bobbins of the poor man's thought, and who knew as well how to cross-
question a merchant as Popinot the judge knew how to make a criminal
betray himself,--Cesar recounted all his enterprises; he put forward
his Double Paste of Sultans and Carminative Balm, the Roguin affair,
and his lawsuit about the mortgage on which he had received no money.
As he watched the smiling, attentive face of Keller and the motions of
his head, Birotteau said to himself, "He is listening; I interest him;
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
