This is how it is done: we always have in the office a package prepared beforehand, a box tied with stout string which arrives, presumably from some railway station, while the visitor is there. "Twenty francs cartage," says the one of us who brings in the package. (Twenty francs, or some times thirty, according to the victim's appearance.) Every one at once begins to fumble in his pocket. "Twenty francs cartage! I haven't it."--"Nor I--What luck!" Some one runs to the counting-room.--Closed! They look for the cashier. Gone out. And the hoarse voice of the drayman waxing impatient in the ante-room: "Come, come, make haste." (I am generally selected for the drayman's part, because of my voice.) What is to be done? Send back the package? the Governor won't like that. "Messieurs, I beg you to allow me," the innocent victim ventures to observe, opening his purse.--"Ah! monsieur, if you would."--He pays his twenty francs, we escort him to the door, and as soon as his back is turned we divide the fruit of the crime, laughing like brigands. Fie! Monsieur Passajon. Such performances at your time of life! Oh! _Mon Dieu_! I know all about it. I know that I should honor myself much more if I left this vile place. But, what then? why, I must abandon all that I have at stake here. No, it is not possible. It is urgently necessary that I remain, that I keep a close watch, that I am always on hand to have the advantage of a windfall, if one should come. Oh! I swear by my ribbon, by my thirty years of academic service, if ever an affair like this of the Nabob makes it possible for me to recoup my losses, I will not wait a moment, I will take myself off in hot haste to look after my little vineyard near Monbars, cured forever of my speculative ideas. But alas! that is a very chimerical hope,--played out, discredited, well known as we are on 'Change, with our shares no longer quoted at the Bourse, our obligations fast becoming waste paper, such a wilderness of falsehood and debts, and the hole that is being dug deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three million five hundred thousand francs. And yet that three millions is not what embarrasses us. On the other hand it is what keeps us up; but we owe the concierge a little bill of a hundred and twenty five francs for postage stamps, gas and the like. That's the dangerous thing.) And they would have us believe that a man, a great financier like this Nabob, even though he was just from the Congo or had come from the moon this very day, is fool enough to put his money in such a trap. Nonsense! Is it possible? Tell that story elsewhere, my dear Governor. IV. A DEBUT IN SOCIETY. "Monsieur Bernard Jansoulet!"