s hand over his forehead, on which the perspiration
stood in drops.

In a good humour as the result of this pleasant fancy and at the sight
of the fire crackling in the suite of parquet-floored offices, with
their screens of iron trellis-work and their air of secrecy in the cold
light of the ground floor, where one could count the pieces of gold
without dazzling his eyes, M. Joyeuse gave a gay greeting to the
other clerks and slipped on his working coat and his black velvet cap.
Suddenly, some one whistled from upstairs, and the cashier, applying his
ear to the tube, heard the oily and gelatinous voice of Hemerlingue,
the sole and veritable Hemerlingue--the other, the son, was always
absent--asking for M. Joyeuse.

What! Could the dream be continuing?

He was conscious of a great agitation; took the little inside staircase
which he had seen himself ascending just before so bravely, and found
himself in the banker's private room, a narrow apartment, with a very
high ceiling, furnished only with green curtains and enormous leather
easy chairs of a size proportioned to the terrific bulk of the head of
the house. He was there, seated at his desk which his belly prevented
him from approaching very closely, obese, ill-shaped, and so yellow that
his round face with its hooked nose, the head of a fat and sick owl,
suggested as it were a light at the end of the solemn and gloomy room. A
rich Moorish merchant grown mouldy in the damp of his little court-yard.
Beneath his heavy eyelids, raised with an effort, his glance glittered
for a second when the accountant entered; he signed to him to approach,
and slowly, coldly, pausing to take breath between his sentences,
instead of "M. Joyeuse, how many daughters have you?" he said this:

"Joyeuse, you have allowed yourself to criticise in the office our last
operations in the Tunis market. Useless to defend yourself. Your remarks
have been reported to me word for word. And as I am unable to admit them
from the mouth of one in my service, I give you notice that dating from
the end of this month you cease to be a member of my establishment."

A wave of blood mounted to the accountant's face, fell back, returned
again, bringing each time a confused whizzing into his ears, into his
brain a tumult of thoughts and images.

His daughters!

What was to become of them?

Employment is so hard to find at that period of the year.

Poverty appeared before his eyes and also the vision of a