He then went upstairs, continuing his inspection, talking, and agitating himself more and more, without finding any respite. On the second floor he entered the correspondence department, picking quarrels, secretly exasperated against the perfect regularity of this machine that he had himself built up. This department was the one that was daily assuming the most considerable importance; it now required two hundred employees--some opening, reading, and classifying the letters coming from the provinces and abroad, whilst others gathered into compartments the goods ordered by the correspondents. And the number of letters was increasing to such an extent that they no longer counted them; they weighed them, receiving as much as a hundred pounds per day. He, feverish, went through the three offices, questioning Levasseur as to the weight of the correspondence; eighty pounds, ninety pounds, sometimes, on a Monday, a hundred pounds. The figure increased daily, he ought to have been delighted. But he stood shuddering, in the noise made by the neighbouring squad of packers nailing down the cases. Vainly he roamed about the house; the fixed idea remained fast in his mind, and as his power unfolded itself before him, as the mechanism of the business and the army of employees passed before his gaze, he felt more profoundly than ever the insult of his powerlessness. Orders from all Europe were flowing in, a special post-office van was required for his correspondence; and yet she said no, always no. He went downstairs again, visiting the central cashier's office, where four clerks guarded the two giants safes, in which there had passed the previous year forty-eight million francs. He glanced at the clearing-house, which now occupied twenty-five clerks, chosen from amongst the most trustworthy. He went into the next office, where twenty-five young men, junior clerks, were engaged in checking the debit-notes, and calculating the salesmen's commission. He returned to the chief cashier's office, exasperated at the sight of the safes, wandering amidst these millions, the uselessness of which drove him mad. She said no, always no.