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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: ingenious swindlers succeeded in catching the public."
"We are acquainted with the more ingenious," said Bixiou; "let us say
no ill of the poor fellow; he was nabbed; Couture allowed them to
squeeze his cash-box; who would ever have thought it of him?"
"At all events, Cerizet was a low sort of fellow, a good deal damaged
by low debauchery. Now for the duel I spoke about. Never did two
tradesmen of the worst type, with the worst manners, the lowest pair
of villains imaginable, go into partnership in a dirtier business.
Their stock-in-trade consisted of the peculiar idiom of the man about
town, the audacity of poverty, the cunning that comes of experience,
and a special knowledge of Parisian capitalists, their origin,
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