an additional thirteen francs for expenses of protest,
and half per cent for a month's delay, one thousand and eighteen
francs it may be in all.

Suppose that in a large banking-house a bill for a thousand francs is
daily protested on an average, then the banker receives twenty-eight
francs a day by the grace of God and the constitution of the banking
system, that all powerful invention due to the Jewish intellect of the
Middle Ages, which after six centuries still controls monarchs and
peoples. In other words, a thousand francs would bring such a house
twenty-eight francs per day, or ten thousand two hundred and twenty
francs per annum. Triple the average of protests, and consequently of
expenses, and you shall derive an income of thirty thousand francs per
annum, interest upon purely fictitious capital. For which reason,
nothing is more lovingly cultivated than these little "accounts of
expenses."

If David Sechard had come to pay his bill on the 3rd of May, that is,
the day after it was protested, MM. Cointet Brothers would have met
him at once with, "We have returned your bill to M. Metivier,"
although, as a matter of fact, the document would have been lying upon
the desk. A banker has a right to make out the account of expenses on
the evening of the day when the bill is protested, and he uses the
right to "sweat the silver crowns," in the country 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,