When the prudent sub-director first talked of resigning, his sister,
who was far more the companion of his life than his wife, trembled for
his future.

"What will become of Thuillier?" was a question which Madame and
Mademoiselle Thuillier put to each other with mutual terror in their
little lodging on a third floor of the rue d'Argenteuil.

"Securing his pension will occupy him for a time," Mademoiselle
Thuillier said one day; "but I am thinking of investing my savings in
a way that will cut out work for him. Yes; it will be something like
administrating the finances to manage a piece of property."

"Oh, sister! you will save his life," cried Madame Thuillier.

"I have always looked for a crisis of this kind in Jerome's life,"
replied the old maid, with a protecting air.

Mademoiselle Thuillier had too often heard her brother remark: "Such a
one is dead; he only survived his retirement two years"; she had too
often heard Colleville, her brother's intimate friend, a government
employee like himself, say, jesting on this climacteric of
bureaucrats, "We shall all come to it, ourselves," not to appreciate
the danger her brother was running. The change from activity to
leisure is, in truth, the critical period for government employees of
all kinds.

Those of them who know not how to substitute, or perhaps cannot
substitute other occupations for the work to which they have been