of all the departments were kept there.

Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened on to a
staircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on the
first floor of their hotel. This done, he had sat down at his desk
again, and for a moment he gazed at a little collection of letters of
credit drawn on the firm of Watschildine of London. Then he had taken
up the pen and imitated the banker's signature on each. _Nucingen_ he
wrote, and eyed the forged signatures critically to see which seemed the
most perfect copy.

Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. "You are not
alone!" a boding voice seemed to cry in his heart; and indeed the forger
saw a man standing at the little grated window of the counting-house, a
man whose breathing was so noiseless that he did not seem to breathe at
all. Castanier looked, and saw that the door at the end of the passage
was wide open; the stranger must have entered by that way.

For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of dread
that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man before him;
and for that matter, the appearance of the apparition was sufficiently
alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysterious circumstances of so
sudden an entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh coloring of the long
oval face, indicated quite as plainly as the cut of his clothes that the
man was an Englishman, reeking of his native isles. You had only to look
at the collar of his overcoat, at the voluminous cravat which smothered
the crushed frills of a shirt front so white that it brought out the
changeless leaden hue of an impassive face, and the thin red line of the
lips that seemed made to suck the blood of corpses; and you can guess
at once at the black gaiters buttoned up to the knee, and the
half-puritanical costume of a wealthy Englishman dressed for a walking
excursion. The intolerable glitter of the stranger's eyes produced a
vivid and unpleasant impression, which was only deepened by the rigid
outlines of his features. The dried-up, emaciated creature seemed to
carry within him some gnawing thought that consumed him and could not be
appeased.

He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless
eat continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or
features. A tun of Tokay _vin de succession_ would not have caused any
faltering in that piercing glance that read men's inmost thoughts, nor
dethroned the m