age and the legal interest due upon the
amount for the time that it may happen to be absent from the banker's
strong box.

The final item, the exchange, is the object for which the bank exists,
which is to say, for the transmission of sums of money from one place to
another.

Now, sift this account thoroughly, and what do you find? The method of
calculation closely resembles Polichinelle's arithmetic in Lablache's
Neapolitan song, "fifteen and five make twenty-two." The signatures of
Messieurs Postel and Gannerac were obviously given to oblige in the way
of business; the Cointets would act at need for Gannerac as Gannerac
acted for the Cointets. It was a practical application of the well-known
proverb, "Reach me the rhubarb and I will pass you the senna." Cointet
Brothers, moreover, kept a standing account with Metivier; there was no
need of a re-draft, and no re-draft was made. A returned bill between
the two firms simply meant a debit or credit entry and another line in a
ledger.

This highly-colored account, therefore, is reduced to the one thousand
francs, with an additional thirteen francs for expenses of protest, and
half per cent for a month's delay, one thousand and eighteen francs it
may be in all.

Suppose that in a large banking-house a bill for a thousand francs is
daily protested on an average, then the banker receives twenty-eight
francs a day by the grace of God and the constitution of the banking
system, that all powerful invention due to the Jewish intellect of
the Middle Ages, which after six centuries still controls monarchs and
peoples. In other words, a thousand francs would bring such a house
twenty-eight francs per day, or ten thousand two hundred and twenty
francs per annum. Triple the average of protests, and consequently of
expenses, and you shall derive an income of thirty thousand francs
per annum, interest upon purely fictitious capital. For which reason,
nothing is more lovingly cultivated than these little "accounts of
expenses."

If David Sechard had come to pay his bill on the 3rd of May, that is,
the day after it was protested, MM. Cointet Brothers would have met him
at once with, "We have returned your bill to M. Metivier," although, as
a matter of fact, the document would have been lying upon the desk. A
banker has a right to make out the account of expenses on the evening of
the day when the bill is protested, and he uses the right to "sweat the
silver crowns," in the country