"A Man of Business" by Honore de Balzac (1845, A Short Story, A Component of The Human Comedy)

"Colette would later observe that she had never liked fairy tales or children’s books, and had begun reading The Human Comedy at the age of seven. “I was born in Balzac,” she told an interviewer as an old lady. “He was my cradle, my forest, my travels.” 

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"A Man of Business" is set at a gathering of old friends, in Paris.  The topic of discussion is the eternal war of creditors versus debtors with a digression into the romantic foibles of a fifty year old widower.   The narrative is carried entirely by dialogue.  

In one very interesting segment, one of the men present says he always paid his larger business debts in a timely fashion but he has made his milliner call twenty seven times to try to collect a trifling amount.  He says it would be shameful of him to have on his person the mere twenty francs the milliner is owed.  He says it is ok for his cook or  coachmen to have twenty francs upon him but not for a gentleman.  He says he will make the mi,liner happy by giving him a bigger commission which he can pay without seeing a triffler.   Of course he may not actually have twenty Francs at the moment but this is never mentioned.  

We learn various ways to delay payments, to use the laws of France to your advantage.  The conversations are lively and ring true.

One of the men, a widower of fifty, tells how he set up an attractive young girl of eighteen in a reading room.  He says she will be his first "commoner", always before involved with ladies of the aristocracy.  Of course it does not quite work out, a wealthy man took her over from him.  

This is a decent story.  

Ambrosia Boussweau