Up above, under the roof, were the small bedrooms for the saleswomen. But he went downstairs again and entered the chief cashier's office, which was near his own. It was a room with a glazed wicket, and contained an enormous safe, fixed in the wall. Two cashiers there centralised the receipts which Lhomme, the chief cashier at the counters, brought in every evening; they also settled the current expenses, paid the manufacturers, the staff, all the crowd of people who lived by the house. The cashiers' office communicated with another, full of green cardboard boxes, where ten clerks checked the invoices. Then came another office, the clearing-house: six young men bending over black desks, having behind them quite a collection of registers, were getting up the discount accounts of the salesmen, by checking the debit notes. This work, which was new to them, did not get on very well. Mouret and Bourdoncle had crossed the cashiers' office and the invoice room. When they passed through the other office the young men, who were laughing and joking, started up in surprise. Mouret, without reprimanding them, explained the system of the little bonus he thought of giving them for each error discovered in the debit notes; and when he went out the clerks left off laughing, as if they had been whipped, and commenced working in earnest, looking up the errors. On the ground-floor, occupied by the shops, Mouret went straight to the pay-desk No. 10, where Albert Lhomme was cleaning his nails, waiting for customers. People regularly spoke of “the Lhomme dynasty,” since Madame Aurélie, firsthand at the dress department, after having helped her husband on to the post of chief cashier, had managed to get a pay desk for her son, a tall fellow, pale and vicious, who couldn't stop anywhere, and who caused her an immense deal of anxiety. But on reaching the young man, Mouret kept in the background, not wishing to render himself unpopular by performing a policeman's duty, and retaining from policy and taste his part of amiable god. He nudged Bourdoncle gently with his elbow--Bourdoncle, the infallible man, that model of exactitude, whom he generally charged with the work of reprimanding. “Monsieur Albert,” said the latter, severely, “you have taken another address wrong; the parcel has come back. It's unbearable!” The cashier, thinking it his duty to defend himself, called as a witness the messenger who had tied up the packet. This messenger, named Joseph, also belonged to the Lhomme dynasty, for he was Albert's foster brother, and owed his place to Madame Aurelie's influence, As the young man wanted to make him say it was the customer's mistake, Joseph stuttered, twisted the shaggy beard that ornamented his scarred face, struggling between his old soldier's conscience and gratitude towards his protectors. “Let Joseph alone,” Bourdoncle exclaimed at last, “and don't say any more. Ah! it's a lucky thing for you that we are mindful of your mother's good services!”