| The Cabinet of Antiquities | Victurnien attempts to pay off his debt by forging a signature and narrowly escapes criminal prosecution. |
| Lost Illusions | Lucien incurs a debt of gratitude to the members of the Cencacle literary circle when they support him and help him with his writing.He betrays them. Lucien incurs a debt of gratitude with the journalists who first employ him, but he switches to the royalist side and betrays them. Lucien goes heavily into debt and forges his brother-in-law's signature on some notes, an act that will eventually drive his brother-in-law into bankruptcy. Finally, Lucien indebts himself to Vautrin, but when his plans do not materialize commits suicide. |
| Gobseck | To purchase a legal practice Derville goes into debt to Gobseck. It's interesting how Gobseck makes the creditor/debtor relation mutually beneficial to both sides. |
| Gobseck | Des Trailles uses his lover the wife of the Comte de Restaud to get an extension of credit and placate his creditors. This credit is purchased with his lover's diamonds. A fact which drives the Comte de Restaud, the husband of his lover, to his death. |
| The Magic Skin | The magic skin is a line of credit that consists of the very life force itself. The debtor draws on this line of credit at his own peril. |
| Melmoth Reconciled | Strikes a faustian bargain with the devil, but the debt becomes too heavy to bear so he trades it for an ordinary man's existence on the floors of the stock exchange. |
| Z. Marcus | Young man as creditor for services rendered as an apprentice. Z. Marcus expends all his youthful energy in exchange for a promise from his benefactor to help him politically in the future. He is betrayed, not once, but twice. |
| Honorine | Young man as creditor for services rendered as an apprentice. The Consul in his youth served as an aid to a high-placed government minister. He helped him get his wife back and was repaid with a political appointment. |
| Albert Savarus | Young man as creditor for services rendered. Savarus makes himself valuable to local businessmen and local church officials by winning lawsuits for them. He stores up good-will and a debt of gratitude which he hopes to use to get elected to political office. |
| The Lesser Bourgeousie |
The young lawyer Peyrade goes into debt to the con-man Cerizet for providing
him with the opportunity to arrange a good marriage for himself.
Extricating himself from this mess provides most of the engaging details
of the narrative.
Also Young man as creditor for services rendered as an apprentice. To get in the good graces of the god father of the woman he wishes to marry he helps the man get elected to public office, write a book, buy a building at a bargain price, and obtain the ribbon of the legion of honor. |
| The Atheist's Mass | Debt of Gratitude. The doctor Desroches when he was still a student was helped along financially by a poor water carrier whom he repays each year with a mass performed in the man's name. A mass he himself attends and participates in despite being an atheist himself. |
| Madame Firmiani | Debt of honor. The young man who Madame Firmiani has taken as a lover, to win her pride and respect returns his inheritance to the family that his father stole it from in the first place. |
| Cousin Bette | The Baron and the artist go into debt to support their mistresses. |
| Ferragus | The influence of an unseen debt. The career of Madame Jules' husband, is secretly financed by Ferragus, the leader of the powerful Society of the Thirteen. |
| Father Goriot | Rastignac finances his first forays into high society. |
| Cousin Pons | The nasty little spider web of mutually intertwined debts of gratitude ("I'll do something for you if you do something for me") that glues society together is fully exposed in the mad rush for Pons's inheritance that develops towards the end. |