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: