[sls]

A quote attributed to Honoré de Balzac, but when I went to use it a few years ago I wanted a citation and found that his actual words were neither so pithy nor so broadly implicative:

"Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait."

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a forgotten crime, because it was properly/cleanly done," is my fairly literal translation, but I am not really fluent enough to capture subtleties.