with us. He will employ all the law's delays, and
the barristers are seldom ready. Perhaps your opponents will let the
case go by default. We can't always get on as we wish," said Derville,
smiling.

"In the commercial courts--" began Birotteau.

"Oh!" said the lawyer, "the judges of the commercial courts and the
judges of the civil courts are different sorts of judges. You dash
through things. At the Palais de Justice we have stricter forms. Forms
are the bulwarks of law. How would you like slap-dash judgments, which
can't be appealed, and which would make you lose forty thousand francs?
Well, your adversary, who sees that sum involved, will defend himself.
Delays may be called judicial fortifications."

"You are right," said Birotteau, bidding Derville good-by, and going
hurriedly away, with death in his heart.

"They are all right. Money! money! I must have money!" he cried as he
went along the streets, talking to himself like other busy men in the
turbulent and seething city, which a modern poet has called a vat. When
he entered his shop, the clerk who had carried round the bills informed
him that the customers had returned the receipts and kept the accounts,
as it was so near the first of January.

"Then there is no money to be had anywhere," said the perfumer, aloud.

He bit his lips, for the clerks all raised their heads and looked at
him.

Five days went by; five days during which Braschon, Lourdois, Thorein,
Grindot, Chaffaroux, and all the other creditors with unpaid bills
passed through the chameleon phases that are customary to uneasy
creditors before they take the sanguinary colors of the commercial
Bellona, and reach a state of peaceful confidence. In Paris the
astringent stage of suspicion and mistrust is as quick to declare
itself as the expansive flow of confidence is slow in gathering way. The
creditor who has once turned into the narrow path of commercial fears
and precautions speedily takes a course of malignant meanness which puts
him below the level of his debtor. He passes from specious civility
to impatient rage, to the surly clamor of importunity, to bursts of
disappointment, to the livid coldness of a mind made up to vengeance,
and the scowling insolence of a summons before the courts. Braschon, the
rich upholsterer of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who was not invited
to the ball, and was therefore stabbed in his self-love, sounded the
charge; he insisted on being paid within twenty-four