is invoked in days of stress, which is mingled with
every wish, with every hope, even with the games of the children,
penetrated as they are with its importance, a name which sustains in
the dwelling the part of a sub-Providence, or rather of a household
divinity, familiar and supernatural. In the Joyeuse family, it was
Hemerlingue, always Hemerlingue, returning ten times, twenty times a
day in the conversation of the girls, who associated it with all their
plans, with the most intimate details of their feminine ambitions.
"If Hemerlingue would only----" "All that depends on Hemerlingue." And
nothing could be more charming than the familiarity with which these
young people spoke of that enormously wealthy man whom they had never
seen.

They would ask for news of him. Had their father spoken to him? Was he
in a good temper? And to think that we all of us, whatever our position,
however humble we be, however weighed down by fate, we have always
beneath us unfortunate beings more humble, yet more weighed down, for
whom we are great, for whom we are as gods, and in our quality of gods,
indifferent, disdainful, or cruel.

One imagines the torture of M. Joyeuse, obliged to invent stories and
anecdotes about the wretch who had so ruthlessly discharged him after
ten years of good service. He played his little comedy, however, so well
as completely to deceive everybody. Only one thing had been remarked,
and that was that father when he came home in the evening always sat
down to table with a great appetite. I believe it! Since he lost his
place the poor man had gone without his luncheon.

The days passed. M. Joyeuse found nothing. Yes, one place as accountant
in the Territorial Bank, which he refused, however, knowing too much
about banking operations, about all the corners and innermost recesses
of the financial Bohemia in general, and of the Territorial bank in
particular, to set foot in that den.

"But," said Passajon to him--for it was Passajon who, meeting the honest
fellow and hearing that he was out of employment, had suggested to
him that he should come to Paganetti's--"but since I repeat that it is
serious. We have lots of money. They pay one. I have been paid. See how
prosperous I look."

In effect, the old office porter had a new livery, and beneath his tunic
with its buttons of silver-gilt his paunch protruded, majestic. All
the same M. Joyeuse had not allowed himself to be tempted, even after
Passajon, openin