Messieurs,—­There is owing to the whole of us, in bulk, about a million.  We have dismantled our man like a condemned frigate.  The nails, iron, wood, and copper will bring about three hundred thousand francs.  We shall thus get about thirty per cent of our money.  Happy in obtaining this amount, when our debtor might have left us only one hundred thousand, we hereby declare him an Aristides; we vote him a premium and crown of encouragement, and propose to leave him to manage his assets, giving him ten or twelve years in which to pay us the fifty per cent which he has been so good as to offer us.  Here is the certificate of bankruptcy; have the goodness to walk up to the desk and sign it.

At this speech, all the fortune creditors congratulate each other and shake hands.  After the ratification of the certificate, the bankrupt becomes once more a merchant, precisely such as he was before; he receives back his securities, he continues his business, he is not deprived of the power to fail again, on the promised dividend,—­an additional little failure which often occurs, like the birth of a child nine months after the mother has married her daughter.

If the certificate of bankruptcy is not granted, the creditors then select the permanent assignees, take extreme measures, and form an association to get possession of the whole property and the business of their debtor, seizing everything that he has or ever will have, —­his inheritance from his father, his mother, his aunt, et caetera.  This stern measure can only be carried through by an association of creditors.

* * * * *

There are therefore two sorts of failures,—­the failure of the merchant who means to repossess himself of his business, and the failure of the merchant who has fallen into the water and is willing to sink to the bottom.  Pillerault knew the difference.  It was, to his thinking and to that of Ragon, as hard to come out pure from the first as to come out safe from the second.  After advising Cesar to abandon everything to his creditors, he went to the most honorable solicitor in such matters, that immediate steps might be taken to liquidate the failure and put everything at once at the disposition of the creditors.  The law requires that while the drama is being acted, the creditors shall provide for the support of the bankrupt and his family.  Pillerault notified the commissioner that he would himself supply the wants of his niece and nephew.

Du Tillet had worked all things together to make the failure a prolonged agony for his old master; and this is how he did it.  Time is so precious in Paris that it is customary, when two assignees are appointed, for only one to attend to the affair:  the duty of the other is merely formal,—­he approves and signs, like the second notary in notarial deeds.  By this means, the largest failures in Paris are so vigorously handled that, in spite of the law’s delays, they are adjusted, settled, and secured with such rapidity that within a hundred days the judge can echo the atrocious saying of the Minister, —­“Order reigns in Warsaw.”