and who keeps
us on for nothing for fear of losing it all, down to us poor clerks, to
myself, who am in for seven thousand francs of savings and my four
years' back pay, we are all running after our money. That is why I
persist in remaining here.

Doubtless, notwithstanding my advanced age, I might have succeeded, by
favor of my education, my general appearance and the care I have always
taken of my clothes, in getting a place in some other office. There is
a very honorable person of my acquaintance, M. Joyeuse, bookkeeper for
Hemerlingue and Son, the great bankers on Rue Saint-Honore, who never
fails to say to me whenever he meets me:

"Passajon, my boy, don't stay in that den of thieves. You make a
mistake in staying on there; you'll never get a sou out of it. Come to
Hemerlingue's. I'll undertake to find some little corner for you. You
will earn less, but you'll receive very much more."

I feel that he is right, the honest fellow. But it's stronger than I
am, I cannot make up my mind to go. And yet this is not a cheerful life
that I lead here in these great cold rooms where no one ever comes,
where every one slinks into a corner without speaking. What would you
have? We know one another too well, that's the whole of it. Up to last
year we had meetings of the council of supervision, meetings of
stockholders, stormy, uproarious meetings, genuine battles of savages,
whose yells could be heard at the Madeleine. And subscribers used to
come too, several times a week, indignant because they had never heard
anything from their money. Those were the times when our Governor came
out strong. I have seen people go into his office, monsieur, as fierce
as wolves thirsty for blood, and come out, after a quarter of an hour,
milder than sheep, satisfied, reassured, and their pockets comforted
with a few bank-notes. For there was the cunning of the thing: to ruin
with money the poor wretches who came to demand it. To-day the
shareholders of the _Caisse Territoriale_ never stir. I think that they
are all dead or resigned to their fate. The council never meets. We
have sessions only on paper; it is my duty to make up a so-called
balance-sheet--always the same--of which I make a fresh copy every
three months. We never see a living soul, except that at rare intervals
some subscriber to the Paoli statue drops down on us from the wilds of
Corsica, anxious to know if the monument is progressing; or perhaps
some devout reader of the _Ver