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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: Monsieur de Grandville, to whom a plot or machination of some kind was
quite evident, rose; but he seemed discouraged,--less, however, by the
new evidence than by the manifest opinion of the jury. He surpassed,
if anything, his speech of the previous evening; his argument was more
compact and logical; but he felt his fervor repelled by the coldness
of the jury; he spoke ineffectually, and he knew it,--a chilling
situation for an advocate. He called attention to the fact that the
release of the senator, as if by magic and clearly without the aid of
any of the accused or of Marthe, corroborated his previous argument.
Yesterday the prisoners could most surely rely on acquittal, and if
they had, as the prosecution claimed, the power to hold or to release
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