Bank, which occupied, in the Rue Neuve-Drouot, one of those buildings erected on the site of the old Opera; the young man was taken into a vast parallelogram filled with strangely shaped machines. At first he could not make out what they were: they looked rather like huge pianos.

Glancing toward the adjacent office, Michel caught sight of several enormous safes: not only did these resemble fortresses but they were even crenellated, and each of them could easily have lodged a garrison of twenty men.

Michel could not help shuddering at the sight of these armored coffers. "They look absolutely bombproof, " he reflected.

A middle-aged man, his morning quill already behind his ear, was solemnly strolling among these monuments. Michel soon identified him as belonging to the genus Number, order Cashier; precise, orderly, and ill- tempered, this individual invariably accepted money with enthusiasm and paid it out only grudgingly. He seemed to regard such disbursements as thefts; receipts, on the other hand, he treated as restitutions. Some sixty clerks, copyists, and shipping agents were busily scribbling and calculating under his direction. Michel was to take his place among them; an office boy led him to the important personage who was expecting him. "Monsieur, " the Cashier remarked, "when you enter these precincts, you will first of all forget that you belong to the Boutardin family. That is the procedure. "

"It suits me fine, " Michel replied.

"To begin your apprenticeship, you will be assigned to Machine Number Four. " Michel turned around and discovered the calculating machine behind him. It had been several centuries since Pascal had constructed a device of this kind, whose conception had seemed so remarkable at the time. Since then, the architect Perrault[9], Count Stanhope[10], Thomas de Colmar, Maurel and Jayet[11] had made any number of valuable modifications to such machines. The Casmodage Bank possessed veritable masterpieces of the genre, instruments which indeed did resemble huge pianos: by operating a sort of keyboard, sums were instantaneously produced, remainders, products, quotients, rules of proportion, calculations of amortization and of interest compounded for infinite periods and at all possible rates. There were high notes which afforded up to one hundred fifty percent! The capacities of these extraordinary machines would easily have defeated even the Mondeux[12] and the [proper name missing in the manuscript].

Except that you had to know how to play them: Michel would be obliged to take lessons in fingering. It was evident that he had entered the employment of a banking house which required and adopted all the resources of technology. Moreover, at this period, the volume of business and the diversity of correspondence gave mere office devices an extraordinary importance. For example, the Casmodage Bank issued no less than three thousand letters a day, posted to every corner of the world. A fifteen-horsepower Lenoir never ceased copying these letters, which five hundred employees incessantly fed into it.

Nevertheless electric telegraphy must have greatly diminished the number of letters, for new improvements now permitted the sender to correspond directly with the addressee; secrecy of correspondence was thus preserved, and the most intricate deals could be transacted over great distances. Each banking house had its own special wires, according to the Wheatstone[13] System long since in use throughout England. Quotations of countless stocks on the international market were automatically inscribed on dials utilized by the Exchanges of Paris, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Turin, Berlin, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, Constantinople, New York, Valparaiso, Calcutta, Sydney, Peking, and Nuku Hiva. Further, photographic telegraphy, invented during the last century by Professor Giovanni Caselli[14] of Florence, permitted transmission of the facsimile of any form of writing or illustration, whether manuscript or print, and letters of credit or contracts could now be signed at a distance of five thousand leagues.

The telegraph network now covered the entire surface of the earth's continents and the depths of the seas; America was not more than a second away from Europe, and in a formal experiment made in London in 1903, two agents corresponded with each other after having caused their dispatches to circumnavigate the globe.

It is apparent that in this phase of business, the consumption of paper had increased to unheard-of proportions; France, which a century before had produced some sixty million kilograms of paper, now utilized more than three hundred million kilograms;

moreover there was no longer any need to fear the exhaustion of rag-based stocks, which had been advantageously replaced by alfa, aloes, Jerusalem artichoke, lupine, and twenty other cheaply cultivated plants; in twelve hours, the Watt and Burgess[15] processes could turn a piece of wood into a splendid grade of paper; forests no longer served for firewood, but for printing.

The Casmodage Bank had been one of the first to adopt this wood-based paper; when used for contracts, letters, and deeds, it was prepared with Lemfelder's gallic acid, which rendered it impregnable to the chemical agents of forgers; since the number of thieves had increased with the volume of commerce, it was essential to take protective measures.

Such was this establishment, in which enormous deals were transacted. Young Dufrénoy was to play the most modest of roles in it, as the first servant of his calculating machine, and would enter upon his functions that very day. Such mechanical labor was very difficult for him, for he did not possess the sacred fire, and the machine functioned quite poorly under his fingers; try as he would, a month after his installation, he made more errors than on his first day, and yet he struggled with the infernal keyboard until he felt he had reached the brink of madness.

He was kept under severe discipline, moreover, in order to break any impulses of independence or artistic instincts; he had no Sunday free, and no evening to spend with his uncle, and his only consolation was to write him, in secret. Soon discouragement and disgust got the better of him, and he grew incapable of continuing the tasks he had been assigned. At the end of November, the following conversation regarding him occurred between Monsieur Casmodage, Boutardin fils, and the Cashier:

"The boy is monumentally inept, " the banker observed.

"The claims of truth oblige me to agree, " replied the Cashier.

"He is what used to be called an artist, " Athanase broke in, "and what we would call a ninny. "

"In his hands, the machine is becoming a dangerous instrument, " returned the banker. "He brings us sums instead of subtractions, and he's never been able to give us a calculation of interest at only fifteen percent!"

"A pathetic case, " observed the cousin.

"But how can we use him?" inquired the Cashier.

"Can he read?" asked Monsieur Casmodage.

"Presumably, " Athanase replied.

"We might use him for the Ledger; he could dictate to Quinsonnas, who's been asking for an assistant. "

"A fine idea, " observed the cousin. "He's not good for much else besides dictating—his handwriting is dreadful. "

"And nowadays everyone writes such a fine hand, " commented the Cashier.

"If he doesn't work out at this new job, " declared Monsieur Casmodage, "he won't be good for anything but sweeping the offices!"

"And even that...," observed the cousin.

"Bring him in, " said the banker.

Michel appeared before the redoubtable triumvirate.