After admitting his insolvency and filing his schedule, a merchant should find some retired spot in France, or in foreign countries, where he may live without taking part in life, like the child that he is; for the law declares him a minor, and not competent for any legal action as a citizen. This, however, is never done. Before reappearing he obtains a safe-conduct, which neither judge nor creditor ever refuses to give; for if the debtor were found without this /exeat/ he would be put in prison, while with it he passes safely, as with a flag of truce, through the enemy's camp,--not by way of curiosity, but for the purpose of defeating the severe intention of the laws relating to bankruptcy. The effect of all laws which touch private interests is to develop, enormously, the knavery of men's minds. The object of a bankrupt, like that of other persons whose interests are thwarted by any law, is to make void the law in his particular case.
The status of civil death in which the bankrupt remains a chrysalis lasts for about three months,--a period required by formalities which precede a conference at which the creditors and their debtor sign a treaty of peace, by which the bankrupt is allowed the ability to make payments, and receives a bankrupt's certificate. This transaction is called the /concordat/,--a word implying, perhaps, that peace reigns after the storm and stress of interests violently in opposition.
As soon as the insolvent's schedule is filed, the Court of commerce appoints a judge-commissioner, whose duty it is to look after the interests of the still unknown body of creditors, and also to protect the insolvent against the vexatious measures of angry creditors,--a double office, which might be nobly magnified if the judges had time to attend to it. The commissioner, however, delegates an agent to take possession of the property, the securities, and the merchandise, and to verify the schedule; when this is done, the court appoints a day for a meeting of the creditors, notice of which is trumpeted forth in the newspapers. The creditors, real or pretended, are expected to be present and choose the provisional assignees, who are to supersede the agent, step into the insolvent's shoes, became by a fiction of law the insolvent himself, and are authorized to liquidate the business, negotiate all transactions, sell the property,--in short, recast everything in the interest of the creditors, provided the bankrupt makes no opposition. The majority of Parisian failures stop short at this point, and the reason is as follows:
The appointment of one or more permanent assignees is an act which gives opportunity for the bitterest action on the part of creditors who are thirsting for vengeance, who have been tricked, baffled, cozened, trapped, duped, robbed, and cheated. Although, as a general thing, all creditors are cheated, robbed, duped, trapped, cozened, tricked, and baffled, yet there is not in all Paris a commercial passion able to keep itself alive for ninety days. The paper of commerce alone maintains its vitality, and rises, athirst for payment, in three months. Before ninety days are over, the creditors, worn out by coming and going, by the marches and countermarches which a failure entails, are asleep at the side of their excellent little wives. This may help a stranger to understand why it is that the provisional in France is so often the definitive: out of every thousand provisional assignees, not more than five ever become permanent. The subsidence of passions stirred up by failures is thus accounted for.
But here it becomes necessary to explain to persons who have not had the happiness to be in business the whole drama of bankruptcy, so as to make them understand how it constitutes in Paris a monstrous legal farce; and also how the bankruptcy of Cesar Birotteau was a signal exception to the general rule.
This fine commercial drama is in three distinct acts,--the agent's act, the assignee's act, the /concordat/, or certificate-of-bankruptcy act. Like all theatrical performances, it is played with a double-
intent: it is put upon the stage for the public eye, but it also has a hidden purpose; there is one performance for the pit, and another for the side-scenes. Posted in the side-scenes are the bankrupt and his solicitor, the attorney of the creditors, the assignees, the agent, and the judge-commissioner himself. No one out of Paris knows, and no one in Paris does not know, that a judge of the commercial courts is the most extraordinary magistrate that society ever allowed itself to create. This judge may live in dread of his own justice at any moment.
Paris has seen the president of her courts of commerce file his own schedule. Instead of being an experienced retired merchant, to whom the magistracy might properly be made the reward of a pure life, this judge is a trader, bending under the weight of enormous enterprises, and at the head of some large commercial house. The /sine qua non/
condition in the election of this functionary, whose business it is to pass judgment on the avalanche of commercial suits incessantly rolling through the courts, is that he shall have the greatest difficulty in managing his own affairs. This commercial tribunal, far from being made a useful means of transition whereby a merchant might rise, without ridicule, into the ranks of the nobility, is in point of fact made up of traders who are trading, and who are liable to suffer for their judgments when they next meet with dissatisfied parties,--very much as Birotteau was now punished by du Tillet.
The commissioner is of necessity a personage before whom much is said;
