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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: it came to be believed that all the victims whom the king's
silversmith had sent to the scaffold were innocent. Some persons
declared that the cruel miser imitated the king, and sought to put
terror and gibbets between himself and his fellow-men; others said
that he had never been robbed at all,--that these melancholy
executions were the result of cool calculations, and that their real
object was to relieve him of all fear for his treasure.
The first effect of these rumors was to isolate Maitre Cornelius. The
Touraineans treated him like a leper, called him the "tortionnaire,"
and named his house Malemaison. If the Fleming had found strangers to
the town bold enough to enter it, the inhabitants would have warned
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