"My debts had other incarnations. There is the kind that goes about on
two feet, in a green cloth coat, and blue spectacles, carrying
umbrellas of various hues; you come face to face with him at the
corner of some street, in the midst of your mirth. These have the
detestable prerogative of saying, 'M. de Valentin owes me something,
and does not pay. I have a hold on him. He had better not show me any
offensive airs!' You must bow to your creditors, and moreover bow
politely. 'When are you going to pay me?' say they. And you must lie,
and beg money of another man, and cringe to a fool seated on his
strong-box, and receive sour looks in return from these horse-leeches;
a blow would be less hateful; you must put up with their crass
ignorance and calculating morality. A debt is a feat of the
imaginative that they cannot appreciate. A borrower is often carried
away and over-mastered by generous impulses; nothing great, nothing
magnanimous can move or dominate those who live for money, and
recognize nothing but money. I myself held money in abhorrence.
"Or a bill may undergo a final transformation into some meritorious
old man with a family dependent upon him. My creditor might be a
living picture for Greuze, a paralytic with his children round him, a
soldier's widow, holding out beseeching hands to me.
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