The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: they were really inoffensive. He called attention to the fact that in
the dusk a man who was not in the habit of hunting might easily fancy
a gun was pointed at him, whereas, in point of fact, it was held in
his hand at half-cock. To explain the condition of his clothes when
arrested, he said he had slipped and fallen in the breach on his way
home. "I could scarcely see my way," he said, "and the loose stones
slipped from under me as I climbed the bank." As for the plaster which
Gothard was bringing him, he replied as he had done in all previous
examinations, that he wanted it to secure one of the stone posts of
the covered way.
The public prosecutor and the president asked him to explain how he
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