Glückel of Hameln on Creditors' Rights

Glückel of Hameln recounts the story of the failure of her (second) husband, Cerf Levy of Metz, in 1702:

My husband was forced to take himself into hiding. When his creditors discovered he was gone, they despatched three bailiffs to our house. They made an inventory of everything, to the nails on the walls, and wrote it down and sealed everything up, so I had not food enough by me for a meal.

I lived together with my housekeeper in one room. The three bailiffs made themselves master of this as well, and no one could enter or leave. Once when I sought to leave, they put me to search, lest I hid something on me. ... Not a pewter spoon escaped writing down, so that nothing could be concealed. Three weeks we lived in this miserable state.

Yet Cerf seems to have retained some repute with his creditors, even in time of trouble. Glückel says that "finally, my husband reached an accord with his creditors." And: "Though his creditors received but half of what was due them, they treated him with great clemency." In the end, the creditors organized an auction, but they paid hCerf the ultimate compliment: they left him in charge, a kind of proto-debtor-in-possession.

Glückel appears never to have lost her regard for Cerf, whom she seems to perceive as a victim of circumstance. "My husband was exceedingly able, and a great business man, and highly esteemed by Jew and Gentile," she declares. And then, every debtor's lament--all he needed was more time:

{I]f my husband could have held out for two years longer, he would have well cleared himself of his difficulties. For two years after he surrendered all he had to his creditors business flourished so mightily in France that all Metz became rich.

--The Memoirs of Glückel of Hamelin, 255-6

(Marvin Lowenthal Trans., 1977 [the translation was first published in 1932])