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, by means of investing my savings in the banking-house which I should enter. So I wrote, inclosing my photograph, the one taken at Crespon’s, in the Market Place, which represents me with chin closely shaven, a keen eye beneath my thick white eyebrows, my steel chain about my neck, my ribbon as an academy official, “the air of a conscript father upon his curule-chair,” as M. Chalmette, our dean used to say. (He insisted also that I much resembled the late King Louis XVIII; less strongly, however.) I supplied, further, the best of references; the most flattering recommendations from the gentlemen of the college. By return of post, the governor replied that my appearance pleased him--I believe it, _parbleu!_ an antechamber in the charge of a person with a striking face like mine is a bait for the shareholder--and that I might come when I liked. I ought, you may say to me, myself also to have made my inquiries. Eh! no doubt. But I had to give so much information about myself that it never occurred to me to ask for any about them. Besides, how could a man be suspicious, seeing this admirable installation, these lofty ceilings, these great safes, as big as cupboards, and these mirrors, in which you can see yourself from head to knee? And then those sonorous prospectuses, those millions that I seemed to hear flying through the air, those colossal enterprises with their fabulous profits. I was dazzled, fascinated. It must be mentioned, too, that at the time the house did not bear quite the aspect which it has to-day. Certainly, business was already going badly--our business always has gone badly--the paper appeared only at irregular intervals. But a little _combinazione_ of the governor’s enabled him to save appearances.