Lost Illusions
Page 61
Now, let any reader who for any reason whatsoever has neglected to ‘honour his obligations’ look closely at the perfectly legal proceedings thanks to which, in ten minutes, ‘on the Bank’, twenty-eight francs can be made to accrue from a capital sum of one thousand francs.
In the above ‘Return Account’, the first item alone is beyond dispute.
The second item covers what was due to the Inland Revenue and the bailiff. The six francs levied by the Treasury for registering the debtor’s discomfiture and providing stamped paper will keep that abuse going for a long time still! You should know, moreover, that this item gave a gain of one franc fifty centimes to the banker thanks to the rebate made by Doublon.
The commission of one-half per cent, with which the third item is concerned, is levied on the ingenious pretext that not to receive payment is equivalent, ‘on the Bank’, to discounting a bill. Nothing could be further from the truth: no two things are more alike than disbursing a thousand francs and not getting them back. But anyone who has offered money orders for discount knows that, over and above the six per cent legally due, the discounter exacts, under the unpretentious name of commission, so much per cent; and that represents the interest which, in addition to the legal rate, comes to him through his ingenuity in exploiting his capital. The more money he hopes to make, the more he demands. It is therefore wiser to get fools to discount one’s bills. But are there any fools ‘on the Bank’?
The law obliges the banks to have the rate of exchange certified by a stockbroker. In ‘places’ unfortunate enough not to have a stock exchange a couple of business men act in lieu of the stockbroker. The commission known as brokerage due to the stockbroker is fixed at one quarter per cent of the sum stated in the protested bill. It has become usual to count this commission as paid to the business men who replace the stockbroker; but the banker simply slips it into his cash-box. Hence the third item in this fascinating account.
The fourth item covers the cost of the sheet of stamped paper on which the ‘Return Account’ is drawn up; also the stamp for what is so ingeniously called the re-draft, that is to say the new bill drawn by the banker on his colleague in order to recoup himself.
The fifth item comprises the cost of postage and the legal interest on the sum for so long as it is missing from the banker’s coffers.
Finally the exchange transference, the very purpose for which banking exists, represents what it costs to draw one’s money in a different ‘place’ or ‘domicile’.
Let us now make a closer analysis of this account, judging by which, according to Punchinello’s way of computing in the Neapolitan chanson so dramatically sung by Lablache, fifteen plus five makes twenty-two! Clearly the signature of Messrs Postel and Gannerac was a matter of mutual accommodation: when need arose, the Cointets wrote a certificate for Gannerac and Gannerac did the same for the Cointets: as the well-known proverb goes: ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’ The brothers Cointet, having a running account with Métivier, had no need to draw bills on him. No draft passed between them ever added a single line to the credit or debit side.
In reality then this fantastic account could well be whittled down to the thousand francs owed, the protest, amounting to thirteen francs and interest for one month at one half per cent: in all perhaps one thousand and eighteen francs.
If a banking house has an average of one ‘Return Account’ per diem on a value of one thousand francs, it draws in twenty-eight francs every day by the grace of God and the rules of banking. A formidable kind of royal levy invented by the Jews in the twelfth century and operative today over both monarchs and their subjects! In other terms then, a thousand francs bring in twenty-eight francs a day to the banking house or ten thousand two hundred and twenty francs a year. Multiply by three the average number of these ‘Return Accounts’ and you reach an income of thirty thousand francs drawn from fictitious capital. That is why nothing is more tenderly cared for than these accounts. Had David Séchard come along to pay off his draft on the third of May or even the day after the protest, Cointet brothers would have told him: ‘We have returned your draft to Monsieur Métivier!’ – even though the protest might still have been lying on their desk. The ‘Return Account’ becomes operative on the very evening of the protest.
And this, in provincial bankers’ language, is called ‘making the money sweat’. Postage for letters alone produces about twenty thousand francs per annum for the Keller bank which has a correspondence stretching over the whole wide world. Return Accounts pay for Madame la Baronne de Nucingen’s box at the Italiens, her carriage, clothes and cosmetics. Letter postage is so much more a scandalous abuse because bankers deal with ten similar matters in one ten-line letter. Strangely enough, the Inland Revenue takes its share of this premium extorted from misfortune: the Treasury waxes! As for the Bank, from the vantage-point of its counters it flings an eminently reasonable question at a debtor: ‘Why can’t you meet your obligations?’ Alas! There is no answer to this. It follows then that the tale of items in a Return Account is a tale full of hair-raising fictions which debtors who ponder over these informative pages will henceforth hold in salutary awe.
On May the fourth Métivier received the Return Account from Messrs Cointet with instructions to take relentless proceedings against Monsieur Chardon styled de Rubempré.
11. Lucien under distraint
A FEW days later Eve received, in reply to a letter she had written to Monsieur Métivier, the following note which put her mind completely at rest:
TO MONSIEUR SÉCHARD JUNIOR, PRINTER IN ANGOULÊME
I am in receipt of your esteemed letter of the fifth instant. I understood from your explanation relative to the unpaid draft of the 30th ultimate that you drew it to oblige your brother-in-law Monsieur de Rubempré, who lives on a sufficiently lavish scale for it to be doing you a service to force him to pay: his situation is such that he need not let the proceedings against him continue for long. If your honoured brother-in-law does not settle the debt I shall rely upon the loyalty of your firm, and I sign myself, as always,
Your devoted servant,
MÉTIVIER.
‘Well,’ said Eve to David, ‘at any rate my brother will learn from these proceedings that we have not been able to pay.’
What a change in Eve this remark betokened! The growing love inspired in her by David’s character, which she was coming to know better and better, was taking the place of brotherly affection in her heart. But… to how many illusions was she not saying good-bye?
Let us now see how the Return Account fared on the Paris exchange. A third endorser – this is the commercial term for one who holds a bill through transmission – is legally entitled to proceed solely against that person amongst the various debtors for the bill who he thinks will most promptly repay him. By virtue of this option Lucien was sued by Monsieur Métivier’s bailiff. The stages of this action, quite a useless one as it turned out, were as follows: Métivier, the Cointets’ catspaw, was well aware that Lucien was insolvent, but de facto insolvency can only exist de jure once it has been established as a fact. So then the impossibility of getting payment from Lucien was established in the following manner.
On 5 May Métivier’s bailiff gave notice to Lucien of the Return Account and the protest made at Angoulême, citing him to the Commercial Court of Paris to be informed of a number of facts, one of them being that as a merchant he would be liable to imprisonment for debt. When Lucien, living as he was the life of a hunted stag, came to read this gibberish, he also received notification of a judgment made against him in absentia at the Commercial Court. His mistress Coralie, knowing nothing about all this, had supposed that Lucien had been lending money to his brother-in-law, and she handed all the writs over to him too tardily, at one and the same time. An actress sees too many actors taking the parts of bailiffs in light comedies to take legal documents seriously. Tears came to Lucien’s eyes: he was moved with pity for Séchard, ashamed of his forgery and desirous to pay up. N
aturally he consulted his friends about means of gaining time. But when Lousteau, Blondet, Bixiou and Nathan told him what little attention a poet should pay to the Tribunal de Commerce – a jurisdiction set up by shopkeepers – this particular poet was already under the threat of distraint. On his door was pinned the little yellow placard whose jaundiced colour washes off on to concierges, has an astringent effect on the facilities of credit, strikes fear into the heart of all caterers and above all chills the blood of poets sensitive enough to become attached to the sticks of wood, rags of silk, piles of dyed wool, in short the baubles which go by the name of furnishings. When the bailiffs came to fetch Coralie’s furniture, the author of Les Marguerites went to see a friend of Bixiou, a solicitor names Desroches, who laughed when he saw Lucien alarmed at such a trifle.
‘It’s nothing to worry about, my friend. I suppose you want to gain time?’
‘As much time as possible.’
‘Well then, apply for a stay of execution. Go and see a friend of mine, Masson, an attorney at the Commercial Court. He will renew the stay of execution, represent you at that court and challenge its competence to judge your case. There won’t be the slightest difficulty about that, for it’s well known you are a journalist. If you’re summoned before the Civil Court, come and see me and I’ll take your case on. I undertake to dispose of the people who want to vex our beautiful Coralie.’
On 28 May Lucien, cited before the Civil Court, lost his case more promptly than Desroches had expected, for the proceedings against him were being vigorously pursued. When a new distraint was set in motion, when the yellow placard was once more gilding the pilasters of Coralie’s door and there was a new threat to take away the furniture, Desroches, feeling a little foolish at having ‘his fingers nipped’, as he put it, by a colleague, demanded another stay of execution, claiming, rightly enough, that the furniture belonged to Coralie. He called for a hearing in chambers, and as a result of this summary procedure, the chairman of the Court reopened the case. Judgment was delivered in favour of Coralie as being the owner of the furniture. Métivier appealed, and on the thirtieth of July his appeal was dismissed.
On 7 August, Maître Cachan received by stage-coach an enormous file of documents with the heading: MÉTIVIER versus SÉCHARD AND LUCIEN CHARDON.
The first of these documents was the following dainty little memorandum, the accuracy of which is guaranteed, since it is copied from the original:
Bill to date 30 April ultimate, drawn by Séchard junior to order
of Lucien de Rubempré (May 2). Return account:
1037.45 frs.
May 5. Notice of return account and protest with
summons to appear before the Commercial Court
of Paris on May 7 .........................................
8.75
May 7. Judgment by default and order for
attachment ....................................................
35.00
10 May. Notification of judgment .................
8.50
12 May. Order to pay ....................................
5.50
14 May. Inventory of distraint ......................
16.00
18 May. Appending of placard ......................
15.25
19 May. Insertion in journal ..........................
4.00
24 May. Report of verification prior to seizure
of chattels, including application for stay of
execution by Monsieur Lucien de Rubempré ...............
12.00
27 May. Order of Court in session, referring
parties to Civil Court upon application for renewal
of stay of execution ......................................
35.00
28 May. Summary citation of case before the Civil
Court by Métivier represented by counsel ...
6.50
2 June. Judgment after hearing, ordering Lucien
Chardon to pay costs of Return Account and
assigning to plaintiff costs for proceedings before
the Commercial Court ................................
150.00
6 June. Notification of the aforesaid ..........
10.00
15 June. Warrant of execution ...................
5.50
19 June. Inventory with view to distraint and
appeal therefrom by Mademoiselle Coralie claiming
proprietory right in the furniture and requesting
urgent hearing in chambers for stay of execution ...........
20.00
Order from presiding judge, referring parties to
special hearing in chambers ........................
40.00
19 June. Order adjudging property of furniture to
the said Mademoiselle Coralie ....................
250.00
20 June. Appeal by Métivier ........................
17.00
30 June. Dismissal of above appeal .............
250.00
Total
889.00
Bill to date 31 May with Return Account .....
1037.45
Notification to Monsieur Lucien Chardon ...
8.75
Total
1046.20
Bill to date 30 June with Return Account ......
1037.45
Notification to Monsieur Lucien Chardon ....
8.75
Total
1046.20
With these documents went a letter in which Métivier instructed Maître Cachan, solicitor, Angoulême, to take full legal proceedings against David Séchard. Maître Victor-Ange-Herménégilde Doublon accordingly summoned David Séchard to appear before the Commercial Court of Angoulême on July third and pay the total sum of four thousand eighteen francs and eighty-five centimes, the amount due for the three bills and the costs so far incurred. The morning of the day when Doublon was to present Eve with the injunction to pay what was for her an enormous sum she received a staggering letter from Métivier:
TO MONSIEUR DAVID SÉCHARD, PRINTER, ANGOULÊME,
Your brother-in-law, Monsieur Chardon, is a man of notorious bad faith and has registered his furniture under the name of the actress with whom he is living. You ought, Monsieur, to have loyally informed me of these circumstances to spare me from taking futile legal proceedings, for you did not answer my letter of May tenth. Do not therefore take it in evil part if I ask you immediately to reimburse me for the three bills of exchange and all my expenses.
Yours truly,
MÉTIVIER.
Having had no further news of her brother, Eve, who knew little about commercial law, had been supposing that he had atoned for his crime by paying off the forged bills.
‘My dear,’ she said to her husband, ‘hurry off to Petit-Claud. Explain our position and ask him what we should do.’
12. ‘Your house is on fire’
‘MY friend,’ said the unfortunate printer as he rushed headlong into the office of his former schoolfellow, ‘I little knew, when you came to tell me of your appointment and offer me your services, that I should so soon find myself in need of them.’
Petit-Claud studied David’s fine face – that of a thinker – as he sat opposite him in an arm-chair, without listening to his account of matters with which he was more familiar than the man who was explaining them. Noticing Séchard’s anxious air as he entered, he had said to himself: ‘We’ve done the trick!’ Such a scene is often enacted in a lawyer’s office. Petit-Claud was wondering: ‘Why are the Cointets persecuting him?’ It is part of the mentality of solicitors to pierce through to the innermost thoughts of their clients as well as those of their adversaries: they have to see both back and front of the judicial weft.
‘You want to gain time,’ Petit-Claud at last answered when David had finished. ‘How much time? Something like three or four month
s?’
‘Get me four months and I shall be saved!’ cried David, who looked on Petit-Claud as a ministering angel.
‘Very well. They shall not lay hands on any of your furniture, and they shall not arrest you for three or four months… But it will cost a lot of money,’ Petit-Claud added.
‘Oh! What does that matter?’ cried Séchard.
‘You’re expecting payments to come in? Are you sure of them?’ the solicitor asked, almost surprised at his client’s readiness to fall into the trap set for him.
‘In three months’ time I shall be a rich man,’ the inventor replied, with all the self-assurance of an inventor.
‘Your father’s not yet in the churchyard,’ said Petit-Claud. ‘He prefers to remain in his vineyard.’
‘Do you think I’m counting on my father’s death?’ David replied. ‘I’m on the track of an industrial process which, without one thread of cotton, will enable me to manufacture a kind of paper as substantial as Holland paper at fifty per cent of the present cost of cotton pulp….’
‘That means a fortune,’ exclaimed Petit-Claud, at last tumbling to tall Cointet’s plot.
‘A great fortune, my friend, for in the next ten years ten times the amount of paper consumed today will be needed. In our century journalism is going to become a mania.’