ling perpetually. A
waiting-room, also filled with pasteboard boxes, and in which the chief
clerk was constantly stationed, and another room, which, for greater
secrecy, was kept unoccupied, between the notary's private room and the
waiting-room, completed the total of this laboratory of deeds of every
description.

An old cuckoo-clock, placed between the two windows of the office, had
just struck two o'clock, and a certain bustle prevailed amongst the
clerks; a part of their conversation will inform the reader as to the
cause of this excitement.

"Well, if any one had told me that Francois Germain was a thief," said
one of the young men, "I should have said, 'That's a lie!'"

"So should I."

"And I."

"And I. It really quite affected me to see him arrested and led away by
the police. I could not eat any breakfast; but I have been rewarded by
not having to eat the daily mess doled out by Mother Seraphin, for, as
the song goes:

'To eat the allowance of old Seraphin,
One must have a twist indeed.'"

"Capital! why, Chalamel, you are beginning your poetry already."

"I demand Chalamel's head!"

"Folly apart, it is very terrible for poor Germain."

"Seventeen thousand francs (680_l._) is a lump of money!"

"I believe you!"

"And yet, for the fifteen months that Germain has been cashier, he was
never a farthing deficient in making up his books."

"I think the governor was wrong to arrest Germain, for the poor fellow
swore that he had only taken thirteen hundred francs (52_l._) in gold,
and that, moreover, he brought back the thirteen hundred francs this
morning, to return them to the money-chest, at the very moment when our
master sent for the police."

"Ah, that's the bore of people of such ferocious honesty as our
governor, they have no pity!"

"But they ought to think twice before they ruin a poor young fellow,
who, up to this time, has behaved with strict honesty."

"M. Ferrand said he did it for an example."

"Example? What? It is none to the honest, and the dishonest know well
enough what they expose themselves to if they are found out in any
delinquencies."

"Our house seems to produce lots of jobs for the police officers."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, this morning there was poor little Louise, and now poor Germain."

"I confess that Germain's affair was not quite clear to me."

"But he confessed?"

"He confessed that he had taken thirteen hundred francs, certainly; but
he