ones, all poor old men like myself, persist in putting in an appearance
regularly every morning at the same hour, from habit, from want of
occupation, not knowing what else to do. Every one, however, busies
himself about things quite foreign to the work of the office. A man must
live, you know. And then, too, one cannot pass the day dragging one's
self from easy chair to easy chair, from window to window, to look out
of doors (eight windows fronting on the Boulevard). So one tries to do
some work as best one can. I myself, as I have said, keep the accounts
of Mme. Seraphine, and of another cook in the building. Also, I write
my memoirs, which, again, takes a good deal of my time. Our receipt
clerk--one who has not very hard work with us--makes line for a firm
that deals in fishing requisites. Of our two copying-clerks, one,
who writes a good hand, copies plays for a dramatic agency; the other
invents little halfpenny toys which the hawkers sell at street corners
about the time of the New Year, and manages by this means to keep
himself from dying of hunger during all the rest of the year. Our
cashier is the only one who does no outside work. He would believe
his honour lost if he did. He is a very proud man, who never utters a
complaint, and whose one dread is to have the appearance of being in
want of linen. Locked in his office, he is occupied from morning till
evening in the manufacture of shirt-fronts, collars, and cuffs of paper.
In this, he has attained very great skill, and his ever-dazzling linen
would deceive, if it were not that at the least movement, when he
walks, when he sits down, the stuff crackles upon him as though he had a
cardboard box under his waistcoat. Unfortunately all this paper does not
feed him; and he is so thin, has such a mien, that you ask yourself
on what he lives. Between ourselves, I suspect him of paying a visit
sometimes to my store-cupboard. He can do so with ease; for, as cashier,
he has the "word" which opens the safe with the secret lock, and I fancy
that when my back is turned he forages a little among my provisions.