banker's phrase.

The Kellers, with correspondents all over the world, make twenty
thousand francs per annum by charges for postage alone; accounts of
expenses of protest pay for Mme. la Baronne de Nucingen's dresses, opera
box, and carriage. The charge for postage is a more shocking swindle,
because a house will settle ten matters of business in as many lines of
a single letter. And of the tithe wrung from misfortune, the Government,
strange to say! takes its share, and the national revenue is swelled by
a tax on commercial failure. And the Bank? from the august height of a
counting-house she flings an observation, full of commonsense, at the
debtor, "How is it?" asks she, "that you cannot meet your bill?" and,
unluckily, there is no reply to the question. Wherefore, the "account of
expenses" is an account bristling with dreadful fictions, fit to cause
any debtor, who henceforth shall reflect upon this instructive page, a
salutary shudder.

On the 4th of May, Metivier received the account from Cointet Brothers,
with instructions to proceed against M. Lucien Chardon, otherwise de
Rubempre, with the utmost rigor of the law.

Eve also wrote to M. Metivier, and a few days later received an answer
which reassured her completely:--

_To M. Sechard, Junior, Printer, Angouleme._

"I have duly received your esteemed favor of the 5th instant. From
your explanation of the bill due on April 30th, I understand that
you have obliged your brother-in-law, M. de Rubempre, who is
spending so much that it will be doing you a service to summons
him. His present position is such that he is likely to delay
payment for long. If your brother-in-law should refuse payment, I
shall rely upon the credit of your old-established house.--I sign
myself now, as ever, your obedient servant,
"Metivier."

"Well," said Eve, commenting upon the letter to David, "Lucien will know
when they summons him that we could not pay."

What a change wrought in Eve those few words meant! The love that grew
deeper as she came to know her husband's character better and better,
was taking the place of love for her brother in her heart. But to how
many illusions had she not bade farewell?

And now let us trace out the whole history of the bill and the account
of expenses in the business world of Paris. The law enacts that the
third holder, the technical expression for the