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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: landlord occupied the first floor; the four upper stories were rented
by very decent working girls, who were treated by the portress and the
proprietor with some consideration and an obligingness called forth by
the difficulty of letting a house so oddly constructed and situated.
The occupants of the quarter are accounted for by the existence there
of many houses of the same character, for which trade has no use, and
which can only be rented by the poorer kinds of industry, of a
precarious or ignominious nature.
At three in the afternoon the portress, who had seen Mademoiselle
Esther brought home half dead by a young man at two in the morning,
had just held council with the young woman of the floor above, who,
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