third party into whose
hands the bill passes, is at liberty to proceed for the whole amount
against any one of the various endorsers who appears to him to be most
likely to make prompt payment. M. Metivier, using this discretion,
served a summons upon Lucien. Behold the successive stages of the
proceedings, all of them perfectly futile. Metivier, with the Cointets
behind him, knew that Lucien was not in a position to pay, but
insolvency in fact is not insolvency in law until it has been formally
proved.

Formal proof of Lucien's inability to pay was obtained in the following
manner:

On the 5th of May, Metivier's process-server gave Lucien notice of
the protest and an account of the expense thereof, and summoned him to
appear before the Tribunal of Commerce, or County Court, of Paris, to
hear a vast number of things: this, among others, that he was liable to
imprisonment as a merchant. By the time that Lucien, hard pressed
and hunted down on all sides, read this jargon, he received notice of
judgment against him by default. Coralie, his mistress, ignorant of the
whole matter, imagined that Lucien had obliged his brother-in-law, and
handed him all the documents together--too late. An actress sees so
much of bailiffs, duns, and writs, upon the stage, that she looks on all
stamped paper as a farce.

Tears filled Lucien's eyes; he was unhappy on Sechard's account, he
was ashamed of the forgery, he wished to pay, he desired to gain time.
Naturally he took counsel of his friends. But by the time Lousteau,
Blondet, Bixiou, and Nathan had told the poet to snap his fingers at a
court only established for tradesmen, Lucien was already in the clutches
of the law. He beheld upon his door the little yellow placard which
leaves its reflection on the porter's countenance, and exercises a most
astringent influence upon credit; striking terror into the heart of
the smallest tradesman, and freezing the blood in the veins of a poet
susceptible enough to care about the bits of wood, silken rags, dyed
woolen stuffs, and multifarious gimcracks entitled furniture.

When the broker's men came for Coralie's furniture, the author of the
_Marguerites_ fled to a friend of Bixiou's, one Desroches, a barrister,
who burst out laughing at the sight of Lucien in such a state about
nothing at all.

"That is nothing, my dear fellow. Do you want to gain time?"

"Yes, as much possible."

"Very well, apply for stay of execution. Go and look up Mass