lways sends the little Shepherdess of the Alps and her daughters
invitations to his balls. No creature whatsoever can be made to
understand that the Baron yonder three times did his best to plunder the
public without breaking the letter of the law, and enriched people
in spite of himself. No one has a word to say against him. If anybody
should suggest that a big capitalist often is another word for a
cut-throat, it would be a most egregious calumny. If stocks rise and
fall, if property improves and depreciates, the fluctuations of the
market are caused by a common movement, a something in the air, a tide
in the affairs of men subject like other tides to lunar influences.
The great Arago is much to blame for giving us no scientific theory to
account for this important phenomenon. The only outcome of all this is
an axiom which I have never seen anywhere in print----"

"And that is?"

"The debtor is more than a match for the creditor."

"Oh!" said Blondet. "For my own part, all that we have been saying seems
to me to be a paraphrase of the epigram in which Montesquieu summed up
_l'Esprit des Lois_."

"What?" said Finot.

"Laws are like spiders' webs; the big flies get through, while the
little ones are caught."

"Then, what are you for?" asked Finot.

"For absolute government, the only kind of government under which
enterprises against the spirit of the law can be put down. Yes.
Arbitrary rule is the salvation of a country when it comes to the
support of justice, for the right of mercy is strictly one-sided. The
king can pardon a fraudulent bankrupt; he cannot do anything for the
victims. The letter of the law is fatal to modern society."

"Just get that into the electors' heads!" said Bixiou.

"Some one has undertaken to do it."

"Who?"

"Time. As the Bishop of Leon said, 'Liberty is ancient, but kingship is
eternal; any nation in its right mind returns to monarchical government
in one form or another.'"

"I say, there was somebody next door," said Finot, hearing us rise to
go.

"There always is somebody next door," retorted Bixiou. "But he must have
been drunk."

PARIS, November 1837.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d'
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
A Woman of Thirty

Beaudenord, Godefroid de
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Ball at Sceaux

Bidault