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 third party into whose
hands the bill passes, is at liberty to proceed for the whole amount
against any one of the various endorsers who appears to him to be most
likely to make prompt payment. M. Metivier, using this discretion,
served a summons upon Lucien. Behold the successive stages of the
proceedings, all of them perfectly futile. Metivier, with the Cointets
behind him, knew that Lucien was not in a position to pay, but
insolvency in fact is not insolvency in law until it has been formally
proved.

Formal proof of Lucien's inability to pay was obtained in the
following manner:

On the 5th of May, Metivier's process-server gave Lucien notice of the
protest and an account of the expense thereof, and summoned him to
appear before the Tribunal of Commerce, or County Court, of Paris, to
hear a vast number of things: this, among others, that he was liable
to imprisonment as a merchant. By the time that Lucien, hard pressed
and hunted down on all sides, read this jargon, he received notice of
judgment against him by default. Coralie, his mistress, ignorant of
the whol