isasters that befell the
house, Cocles was the only one unmoved. But this did not arise from a
want of affection; on the contrary, from a firm conviction. Like the
rats that one by one forsake the doomed ship even before the vessel
weighs anchor, so all the numerous clerks had by degrees deserted the
office and the warehouse. Cocles had seen them go without thinking of
inquiring the cause of their departure. Everything was as we have said,
a question of arithmetic to Cocles, and during twenty years he had
always seen all payments made with such exactitude, that it seemed as
impossible to him that the house should stop payment, as it would to a
miller that the river that had so long turned his mill should cease to
flow.

Nothing had as yet occurred to shake Cocles' belief; the last month's
payment had been made with the most scrupulous exactitude; Cocles had
detected an overbalance of fourteen sous in his cash, and the same
evening he had brought them to M. Morrel, who, with a melancholy smile,
threw them into an almost empty drawer, saying:--

"Thanks, Cocles; you are the pearl of cashiers."

Cocles went away perfectly happy, for this eulogium of M. Morrel,
himself the pearl of the honest men of Marseilles, flattered him more
than a present of fifty crowns. But since the end of the month M. Morrel
had passed many an anxious hour. In order to meet the payments then due;
he had collected all his resources, and, fearing lest the report of his
distress should get bruited abroad at Marseilles when he was known to be
reduced to such an extremity, he went to the Beaucaire fair to sell his
wife's and daughter's jewels and a portion of his plate. By this means
the end of the month was passed, but his resources were now exhausted.
Credit, owing to the reports afloat, was no longer to be had; and to
meet the one hundred thousand francs due on the 10th of the present
month, and the one hundred thousand francs due on the 15th of the next
month to M. de Boville, M. Morrel had, in reality, no hope but the
return of the Pharaon, of whose departure he had learnt from a vessel
which had weighed anchor at the same time, and which had already arrived
in harbor. But this vessel which, like the Pharaon, came from Calcutta,
had been in for a fortnight, while no intelligence had been received of
the Pharaon.

Such was the state of affairs when, the day after his interview with M.
de Boville, the confidential clerk of the house of Thomson &