Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29
The House of Morrel & Son.

Any one who had quitted Marseilles a few years previously,
well acquainted with the interior of Morrel's warehouse, and
had returned at this date, would have found a great change.
Instead of that air of life, of comfort, and of happiness
that permeates a flourishing and prosperous business
establishment -- instead of merry faces at the windows, busy
clerks hurrying to and fro in the long corridors -- instead
of the court filled with bales of goods, re-echoing with the
cries and the jokes of porters, one would have immediately
perceived all aspect of sadness and gloom. Out of all the
numerous clerks that used to fill the deserted corridor and
the empty office, but two remained. One was a young man of
three or four and twenty, who was in love with M. Morrel's
daughter, and had remained with him in spite of the efforts
of his friends to induce him to withdraw; the other was an
old one-eyed cashier, called "Cocles," or "Cock-eye," a
nickname given him by the young men who used to throng this
vast now almost deserted bee-hive, and which had so
completely replaced his real name that he would not, in all
probability, have replied to any one who addressed him by
it.

Cocles remained in M. Morrel's service, and a most singular
change had taken place in his position; he had at the same
time risen to the rank of cashier, and sunk to the rank of a
servant. He was, however, the same Cocles, good, patient,
devoted, but inflexible on the subject of arithmetic, the
only point on which he would have stood firm against the
world, even against M. Morrel; and strong in the
multiplication-table, which he had at his fingers' ends, no
matter what scheme or what trap was laid to catch him. In
the midst of the disasters that befell the house, Cocles was
the only one unmoved. But this did not arise from a want of
affection; on the contrary, from a firm conviction. Like the
rats that one by one forsake the doomed ship even before the
vessel weighs anchor, so all the numerous clerks had by
degrees deserted the office and the warehouse. Cocles had
seen them go without thinking of inquiring the cause of
their departure. Everything was as we have said, a question
of arithmetic to Cocles, and during twenty years he had
always seen all payments made with such exactitude, that it
seemed as impossible to him that the house should stop
payment, as it would to a miller that the river that had so
long turned his mill should cease to flow.

Nothing had as yet occurred to shake Cocles' belief; the
last month's payment had been made with the most scrupulous
exactitude; Cocles had detected an overbalance of fourteen
sous in his cash, and the same