depended upon it. For two months this story held all of us breathless.
We felt some disquiet, we kept a watch on Moessard's face, considered
that the lady was inclined to insist upon a great deal of ceremony;
and our old cashier, with his dignified and serious air, when he was
questioned on the matter, would answer gravely, behind his wire screen:
"Nothing fresh," or "The thing is in a good way." Whereupon everybody
was contented. One would say to another, "It is making progress," as
though merely an ordinary enterprise was in question. No, in good truth,
there is only one Paris, where one can see such things. Positively it
makes your head turn sometimes. In a word, Moessard, one fine morning,
ceased coming to the office. He had succeeded, it appears, but the
Territorial Bank had not seemed to him a sufficiently advantageous
investment for the money of his mistress. Now, I ask you, was that
honest?

For that matter, the notion of honesty is lost so easily as hardly to
be believed. When I reflect that I, Passajon, with my white hair, my
venerable appearance, my so blameless past--thirty years of academical
services--am grown accustomed to living like a fish in the water, in the
midst of these infamies, this swindling! One might well ask what I am
doing here, why I remain, how I am come to this.

How I am come to it? Oh, _mon Dieu!_ very simply. Four years ago, my
wife being dead, my children married, I had just retired from my post
as hall-porter at the college, when an advertisement in the newspaper
chanced to meet my eye: "Wanted, an office-porter, middle-aged, at the
Territorial Bank, 56, Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references." Let me
confess it at the outset. The modern Babylon had always attracted me.
Then, too, I felt myself still a young man. I saw before me ten good
years during which I might earn a little money, a great deal, perhaps,