there was the lover, who would have asked nothing better than to gratify
this latest whim; but a country house cannot be concealed like a bracelet
or a shawl. The husband must be induced to accept it. That was not an
easy matter; however, they might venture to try it with Risler.

To pave the way, she talked to him incessantly about a little nook in the
country, not too expensive, very near Paris. Risler listened with a
smile. He thought of the high grass, of the orchard filled with fine
fruit-trees, being already tormented by the longing to possess which
comes with wealth; but, as he was prudent, he said:

"We will see, we will see. Let us wait till the end of the year."

The end of the year, that is to say, the striking of the balance-sheet.

The balance-sheet! That is the magic word. All through the year we go on
and on in the eddying whirl of business. Money comes and goes,
circulates, attracts other money, vanishes; and the fortune of the firm,
like a slippery, gleaming snake, always in motion, expands, contracts,
diminishes, or increases, and it is impossible to know our condition
until there comes a moment of rest. Not until the inventory shall we know
the truth, and whether the year, which seems to have been prosperous, has
really been so.

The account of stock is usually taken late in December, between Christmas
and New Year's Day. As it requires much extra labor to prepare it,
everybody works far into the night. The whole establishment is alert. The
lamps remain lighted in the offices long after the doors are closed, and
seem to share in the festal atmosphere peculiar to that last week of the
year, when so many windows are illuminated for family gatherings. Every
one, even to the least important 'employe' of the firm, is interested in
the results of the inventory. The increases of salary, the New Year's
presents, depend upon those blessed figures. And so, while the vast
interests of a wealthy house are trembling in the balance, the wives and
children and aged parents of the clerks, in their fifth-floor tenements
or poor apartments in the suburbs, talk of nothing but the inventory, the
results of which will make themselves felt either by a greatly increased
need of economy or by some purchase, long postponed, which the New Year's
gift will make possible at last.

On the premises of Fromont Jeune and Risler Aine, Sigismond Planus is the
god of the establishment at that season, and his little office a
sanc