Why do they do it?

Much taken by a speech of the lawyer towards the beginning of the movie, I skimmed through the text of Le colonel Chabert (available in pdf format here)

Combien de choses n'ai-je pas apprises en exerçant ma charge! J'ai vu mourir un père dans un grenier, sans sou ni maille, abandonné par deux filles auxquelles il avait donné quarante mille livres de rente! J'ai vu brûler des testaments; j'ai vu des mères dépouillant leurs enfants, des maris volant leurs femmes, des femmes tuant leurs maris en se servant de l'amour qu'elles leur inspiraient pour les rendre fous ou imbéciles, afin de vivre en paix avec un amant. J'ai vu des femmes donnant à l'enfant d'un premier lit des goûts qui devaient amener sa mort, afin d'enrichir l'enfant de l'amour. Je ne puis vous dire tout ce que j'ai vu, car j'ai vu des crimes contre lesquels la justice est impuissante. Enfin, toutes les horreurs que les romanciers croient inventer sont toujours au-dessous de la vérité. Vous allez connaître ces jolies choses-là, vous; moi, je vais vivre à la campagne avec ma femme, Paris me fait horreur.

Here's a mediocre English version:

How many things have I learned in the exercise of my profession! I have seen a father die in a garret, deserted by two daughters, to whom he had given forty thousand francs a year! I have known wills burned; I have seen mothers robbing their children, wives killing their husbands, and working on the love they could inspire to make the men idiotic or mad, that they might live in peace with a lover. I have seen women teaching the child of their marriage such tastes as must bring it to the grave in order to benefit the child of an illicit affection. I could not tell you all I have seen, for I have seen crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth. You will know something of these pretty things; as for me, I am going to live in the country with my wife. I have a horror of Paris.

The thing is, in the movie, this is near the beginning, but in the story, it's pretty much a conclusion. And why did the movie have Chabert living near stinky bears (!!!) instead of stinky cows, as in the original. Maybe they thought people don't know cows stink, but they have smelled bears at the zoo?

Last night we saw Les Dimanches de Ville d'Avray (Sundays and Cybele; 1962). I can't say it did much for me.