“Wants to earn money?  Advise him first not to lose any!”

The most sensible one, who guessed the name of the acquaintance I was interested in, said: 

“You have been a managing clerk; go back to it.”

And as the situation chanced to be vacant, I went back to my old master.  I took my old seat and den as managing clerk between the outer office and Counsellor Boule’s glass cage.  I correct the drafts of the inferior clerks; I see the clients and instruct them how to proceed.  They often take me for the counsellor himself.  I go to the courts nearly every day, and hang about chief clerks’ and judges’ chambers; and go to the theatre once a week with the “paper” supplied to the office.

Do I call this a profession?  No, merely a stop-gap which allows me to live and wait for something to turn up.  I sometimes have forebodings that I shall go on like this forever, waiting for something which will never turn up; that this temporary occupation may become only too permanent.

There is an old clerk in the office who has never had any other occupation, whose appearance is a kind of warning to me.  He has a red face—­the effect of the office stove, I think—­straight, white hair, the expression when spoken to of a startled sheep-gentle, astonished, slightly flurried.  His attenuated back is rounded off with a stoop between the neck and shoulders.  He can hardly keep his hands from shaking.  His signature is a work of art.  He can stick at his desk for six hours without stirring.  While we lunch at a restaurant, he consumes at the office some nondescript provisions which he brings in the morning in a paper bag.  On Sundays he fishes, for a change; his rod takes the place of his pen, and his can of worms serves instead of inkstand.

He and I have already one point of resemblance.  The old clerk was once crossed in love with a flowergirl, one Mademoiselle Elodie.  He has told me this one tragedy of his life.  In days gone by I used to think this thirty-year-old love-story dull and commonplace; to-day I understand M. Jupille; I relish him even.  He and I have become sympathetic.  I no longer make him move from his seat by the fire when I want to ask him a question:  I go to him.  On Sundays, on the quays by the Seine, I pick him out from the crowd intent upon the capture of tittlebats, because he is seated upon his handkerchief.  I go up to him and we have a talk.

“Fish biting, Monsieur Jupille?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Sport is not what it used to be?”

“Ah!  Monsieur Mouillard, if you could have seen it thirty years ago!”

This date is always cropping up with him.  Have we not all our own date, a few months, a few days, perhaps a single hour of full-hearted joy, for which half our life has been a preparation, and of which the other half must be a remembrance?

June 5th.

“Monsieur Mouillard, here is an application for leave to sign judgment in a fresh matter.”