Tunis. No use to deny it. What you said has
been repeated to me word for word. And as I can't allow such things
from one of my clerks, I notify you that with the end of this month you
will cease to be in my employ."

The blood rushed to the clerk's face, receded, returned, causing each
time a confused buzzing in his ears, a tumult of thoughts and images in
his brain.

His daughters!

What would become of them?

Places are so scarce at that time of year!

Want stared him in the face, and also the vision of a poor devil
falling at Hemerlingue's feet, imploring him, threatening him, leaping
at his throat in an outburst of desperate frenzy. All this agitation
passed across his face like a gust of wind which wrinkles the surface
of a lake, hollowing out shifting caverns of all shapes therein; but he
stood mute on the same spot, and at a hint from his employer that he
might withdraw, went unsteadily down to resume his task in the
counting-room.

That evening, on returning to Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse said
nothing to his daughters. He dared not. The thought of casting a shadow
upon that radiant gayety, which was the whole life of the house, of
dimming with great tears those sparkling eyes, seemed to him
unendurable. Moreover he was timid and weak, one of those who always
say: "Let us wait till to-morrow." So he waited before speaking, in the
first place until the month of November should be at an end, comforting
himself with the vague hope that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as
if he did not know that unyielding will, like the flabby, tenacious
grasp of a mollusk clinging to its gold ingot. Secondly, when his
accounts were settled and another clerk had taken his place at the tall
desk at which he had stood so long, he hoped speedily to find something
else and to repair the disaster before he was obliged to avow it.

Every morning he pretended to start for the office, allowed himself to
be equipped and escorted to the door as usual, his great leather bag
all ready for the numerous parcels he was to bring home at night.
Although he purposely forgot some of them because of the approach of
the perplexing close of the month, he no longer lacked time in which to
do his daughters' errands. He had his day to himself, an interminable
day, which he passed in running about Paris in search of a place. They
gave him addresses and excellent recommendations. But in that month of
December, when the air is so cold and the d