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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: had paid holders of his paper uncommonly well; HE try to swindle them?
Impossible. He is supposed to be as honest a man as you will find.
When he suspends payment a third time, his paper will circulate in
Asia, Mexico, and Australia, among the aborigines. No one but Ouvrard
saw through this Alsacien banker, the son of some Jew or other
converted by ambition; Ouvrard said, 'When Nucingen lets gold go, you
may be sure that it is to catch diamonds.' "
"His crony, du Tillet, is just such another," said Finot. "And, mind
you, that of birth du Tillet has just precisely as much as is
necessary to exist; the chap had not a farthing in 1814, and you see
what he is now; and he has done something that none of us has managed
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