and must be.
Don't you see?'

'I do not,' said Clennam.

'You don't regard it from the right point of view. It is the point of
view that is the essential thing. Regard our place from the point of
view that we only ask you to leave us alone, and we are as capital a
Department as you'll find anywhere.'

'Is your place there to be left alone?' asked Clennam.

'You exactly hit it,' returned Ferdinand. 'It is there with the express
intention that everything shall be left alone. That is what it means.
That is what it's for. No doubt there's a certain form to be kept up
that it's for something else, but it's only a form. Why, good Heaven,
we are nothing but forms! Think what a lot of our forms you have gone
through. And you have never got any nearer to an end?'

'Never,' said Clennam.

'Look at it from the right point of view, and there you have
us--official and effectual. It's like a limited game of cricket. A field
of outsiders are always going in to bowl at the Public Service, and we
block the balls.'

Clennam asked what became of the bowlers? The airy young Barnacle
replied that they grew tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their backs
broken, died off, gave it up, went in for other games.

'And this occasions me to congratulate myself again,' he pursued,
'on the circumstance that our place has had nothing to do with your
temporary retirement. It very easily might have had a hand in it;
because it is undeniable that we are sometimes a most unlucky place, in
our effects upon people who will not leave us alone. Mr Clennam, I am
quite unreserved with you. As between yourself and myself, I know I may
be. I was so, when I first saw you making the mistake of not leaving us
alone; because I perceived that you were inexperienced and sanguine, and
had--I hope you'll not object to my saying--some simplicity.'

'Not at all.'

'Some simplicity. Therefore I felt what a pity it was, and I went out
of my way to hint to you (which really was not official, but I never am
official when I can help it) something to the effect that if I were you,
I wouldn't bother myself. However, you did bother yourself, and you have
since bothered yourself. Now, don't do it any more.'

'I am not likely to have the opportunity,' said Clennam.

'Oh yes, you are! You'll leave here. Everybody leaves here. There are no
ends of ways of leaving here. Now, don't come back to us. That entreaty
is the second object of my call. Pray, don't come back to