“Three months!” cried Birotteau, who needed immediate resources.

“Though we may get the case at once on the docket, we cannot make your adversary keep pace with us.  He will employ all the law’s delays, and the barristers are seldom ready.  Perhaps your opponents will let the case go by default.  We can’t always get on as we wish,” said Derville, smiling.

“In the commercial courts—­” began Birotteau.

“Oh!” said the lawyer, “the judges of the commercial courts and the judges of the civil courts are different sorts of judges.  You dash through things.  At the Palais de Justice we have stricter forms.  Forms are the bulwarks of law.  How would you like slap-dash judgments, which can’t be appealed, and which would make you lose forty thousand francs?  Well, your adversary, who sees that sum involved, will defend himself.  Delays may be called judicial fortifications.”

“You are right,” said Birotteau, bidding Derville good-by, and going hurriedly away, with death in his heart.

“They are all right.  Money! money!  I must have money!” he cried as he went along the streets, talking to himself like other busy men in the turbulent and seething city, which a modern poet has called a vat.  When he entered his shop, the clerk who had carried round the bills informed him that the customers had returned the receipts and kept the accounts, as it was so near the first of January.

“Then there is no money to be had anywhere,” said the perfumer, aloud.

He bit his lips, for the clerks all raised their heads and looked at him.

Five days went by; five days during which Braschon, Lourdois, Thorein, Grindot, Chaffaroux, and all the other creditors with unpaid bills passed through the chameleon phases that are customary to uneasy creditors before they take the sanguinary colors of the commercial Bellona, and reach a state of peaceful confidence.  In Paris the astringent stage of suspicion and mistrust is as quick to declare itself as the expansive flow of confidence is slow in gathering way.  The creditor who has once turned into the narrow path of commercial fears and precautions speedily takes a course of malignant meanness which puts him below the level of his debtor.  He passes from specious civility to impatient rage, to the surly clamor of importunity, to bursts of disappointment, to the livid coldness of a mind made up to vengeance, and the scowling insolence of a summons before the courts.  Braschon, the rich upholsterer of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who was not invited to the ball, and was therefore stabbed in his self-love, sounded the charge; he insisted on being paid within twenty-four hours.  He demanded security; not an attachment on the furniture, but a second mortgage on the property in the Faubourg du Temple.