Places are so scarce at that time of year! Want stared him in the face, and also the vision of a poor devil falling at Hemerlingue's feet, imploring him, threatening him, leaping at his throat in an outburst of desperate frenzy. All this agitation passed across his face like a gust of wind which wrinkles the surface of a lake, hollowing out shifting caverns of all shapes therein; but he stood mute on the same spot, and at a hint from his employer that he might withdraw, went unsteadily down to resume his task in the counting-room. That evening, on returning to Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse said nothing to his daughters. He dared not. The thought of casting a shadow upon that radiant gayety, which was the whole life of the house, of dimming with great tears those sparkling eyes, seemed to him unendurable. Moreover he was timid and weak, one of those who always say: "Let us wait till to-morrow." So he waited before speaking, in the first place until the month of November should be at an end, comforting himself with the vague hope that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as if he did not know that unyielding will, like the flabby, tenacious grasp of a mollusk clinging to its gold ingot. Secondly, when his accounts were settled and another clerk had taken his place at the tall desk at which he had stood so long, he hoped speedily to find something else and to repair the disaster before he was obliged to avow it. Every morning he pretended to start for the office, allowed himself to be equipped and escorted to the door as usual, his great leather bag all ready for the numerous parcels he was to bring home at night. Although he purposely forgot some of them because of the approach of the perplexing close of the month, he no longer lacked time in which to do his daughters' errands. He had his day to himself, an interminable day, which he passed in running about Paris in search of a place. They gave him addresses and excellent recommendations. But in that month of December, when the air is so cold and the days are so short, a month overburdened with expenses and anxieties, clerks suffer in patience and employers too. Every one tries to end the year in tranquillity, postponing to the month of January, when time takes a great leap onward toward another station, all changes, ameliorations, attempts to lead a new life.