Terrible
creditors are these with whom we are forced to sympathize, and when
their claims are satisfied we owe them a further debt of assistance.
"The night before the bills fell due, I lay down with the false calm
of those who sleep before their approaching execution, or with a duel
in prospect, rocked as they are by delusive hopes. But when I woke,
when I was cool and collected, when I found myself imprisoned in a
banker's portfolio, and floundering in statements covered with red ink
--then my debts sprang up everywhere, like grasshoppers, before my
eyes. There were my debts, my clock, my armchairs; my debts were
inlaid in the very furniture which I liked best to use. These gentle
inanimate slaves were to fall prey to the harpies of the Chatelet,
were to be carried off by the broker's men, and brutally thrown on the
market. Ah, my property was a part of myself!
"The sound of the door-bell rang through my heart; while it seemed to
strike at me, where kings should be struck at--in the head. Mine was a
martyrdom, without heaven for its reward. For a magnanimous nature,
debt is a hell, and a hell, moreover, with sheriff's officers and
brokers in it. An undischarged debt is something mean and sordid; it
is a beginning of knavery; it is something worse, it is a lie; it
prepares the way for crime, and brings together the planks for the
scaffold.
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