A picture of a majestically-robed Christ in a side window took Lewis back to his first board meeting--nearly three years before--when he had braved Monsieur Vandémanque seated in all his glory as Chairman of the Board, at the top of a green table, on a raised armchair. Above the twenty-five hairless pates (Lewis alone had black hair) allegories chased one another across the gilded panels. On the lower floors of the bank, through the thick pile carpet, the funnel-like pigeon-holes could be heard sucking slender Gallic savings into the cellars. In the old counting-house in the basement the nation's sustenance was being prepared: thrift and the love of securities seasoned with the lure of impossible dividends. It was the culminating point of a six months' struggle, carried on by the retiring members of the board, to prevent the young Lewis from having a seat on the board when the time came for their re-election. Monsieur Vandémanque loathed this bold iconoclast with his ill-breeding, vanity and the haphazard methods of a financial dabbler. After the reading of the directors' report, Lewis got up very sedately, and mercilessly criticized the previous year's management, particularly with regard to current accounts and the use made of the reserve, and, after casually breaking it to them that he held about three times as many shares as they imagined, announced his intention of entering a protest denouncing the resolutions submitted to the two last meetings as being irregular. Lewis sat down in the midst of a horrified audience, composed of intelligent, respectable men, who, the associates of other respectable people, always shrank from anything crude or obvious, beneath the limp banner of the words "the correct thing." They muttered amongst themselves:--"These young fellows must be made to fall into line." "If that isn't enough for you, the next time I shall not come unsupported," said Lewis out loud. "Who will you have with you?" He smiled. "... Proof." "The Franco-African is and will always be a house of crystal." "Then it will break." He was sure of controlling the majority of shares before another year passed; and he did. "What exactly do you intend to do?" Monsieur Vandémanque, eager for compromise, had asked, on the day when Lewis had forced himself in as general manager, nominated by the shareholders. "Play an open game, that's all," he answered. "Pass the ball to the three-quarter line when I get it, and win the game as quickly as possible." The old man looked at him uncomprehendingly, but his face was purple. "You are going to reduce me ..." "To obedience or penury," answered Lewis, with his usual brutality. A year before he would not have dared talk like that. The shock killed Monsieur Vandémanque. Six months later his high-priest's hands ceased to tremble and the veins on his forehead to bulge, and now he was lying there beneath the first chrysanthemums of the year.