he must have guarantees; by
the end of the month he wants his debtor's head, and becomes at heart an
executioner. The creditor is a good deal like the sparrow on whose tail
confiding children are invited to put salt,--with this difference, that
he applies the image to his claim, the proceeds of which he is never
able to lay hold of. Grandet had studied the atmospheric variations
of creditors, and the creditors of his brother justified all his
calculations. Some were angry, and flatly refused to give in their
vouchers.

"Very good; so much the better," said Grandet, rubbing his hands over
the letter in which des Grassins announced the fact.

Others agreed to the demand, but only on condition that their rights
should be fully guaranteed; they renounced none, and even reserved
the power of ultimately compelling a failure. On this began a long
correspondence, which ended in Grandet of Saumur agreeing to all
conditions. By means of this concession the placable creditors were
able to bring the dissatisfied creditors to reason. The deposit was then
made, but not without sundry complaints.

"Your goodman," they said to des Grassins, "is tricking us."

Twenty-three months after the death of Guillaume Grandet many of the
creditors, carried away by more pressing business in the markets of
Paris, had forgotten their Grandet claims, or only thought of them to
say:

"I begin to believe that forty-seven per cent is all I shall ever get
out of that affair."

The old cooper had calculated on the power of time, which, as he used to
say, is a pretty good devil after all. By the end of the third year des
Grassins wrote to Grandet that he had brought the creditors to agree to
give up their claims for ten per cent on the two million four hundred
thousand francs still due by the house of Grandet. Grandet answered that
the notary and the broker whose shameful failures had caused the death
of his brother were still living, that they might now have recovered
their credit, and that they ought to be sued, so as to get something out
of them towards lessening the total of the deficit.

By the end of the fourth year the liabilities were definitely estimated
at a sum of twelve hundred thousand francs. Many negotiations, lasting
over six months, took place between the creditors and the liquidators,
and between the liquidators and Grandet. To make a long story short,
Grandet of Saumur, anxious by this time to get out of the affair, told
the liq