"Monsieur Dufrénoy, " said the Director, his lips spread in the most scornful of smiles, "your notorious incapacity compels us to withdraw you from the operation of Machine Number Four; the results you have been producing are a constant cause of errors in our statements; this cannot continue. "

"I regret the fact, Monsieur—" Michel replied coldly.

"Your regrets are of no use whatever, " the banker replied severely; "henceforth you will be assigned to the Ledger. I am told that, you can read. You will dictate. "

Michel said nothing. The change meant nothing to him; the Ledger and the Machine were interchangeable as far as he was concerned. He then withdrew, after asking when his position would change.

"Tomorrow, " answered Athanase. "Monsieur Quinsonnas will be informed. "

The young man left the offices, thinking not of his new employment but of this Quinsonnas, whose very name alarmed him! What could such a man be? Some individual who had grown old copying articles for the Ledger, balancing accounts current for sixty years, subject to the fever of outstanding balances and the frenzy of double entry! Michel marveled that the bookkeeper had not yet been replaced by a machine.

Yet he felt an authentic joy at abandoning his calculating machine; he was proud of having operated it so poorly; its pseudopiano aspect had repulsed him. Back in his room, he soon found night coming on amid his reflections; he went to bed but could not sleep; a sort of nightmare overwhelmed his brain. The Ledger flashed before him, assuming fantastic dimensions; sometimes he felt he was being pressed between the white pages like some dried plant in an herbal, or else caught in the binding, which squeezed him in its brazen clamps. He got up in great agitation, seized by an invincible desire to examine this formidable device.

"It's all nonsense, " he told himself, "but at least I'll get to the bottom of it. " He leaped out of bed, opened the door of his room, and groping, stumbling, arms extended, eyes blinking, ventured downstairs into the offices.

The huge halls were dark and silent, where only a few hours ago the din of finance—the clink of coins, the rustle of banknotes, the squeak of pens on paper—had filled them with that sound so peculiar to banking houses. Michel groped his way ahead, losing himself in the center of this labyrinth; he was not too certain where the Ledger was situated but felt sure to find it; first he would have to cross the hall of the machines—he recognized them in the darkness. "They're sleeping, " he mused, "not calculating now. " And he continued his reconnaissance, passing through the hall of the giant safes, bumping into one at every step. Suddenly he felt the ground give way under his feet, a dreadful noise filled his ears; all the doors slammed shut; the bolts and locks slid into place, and deafening whistles were set off up in the cornices; a sudden illumination filled the offices with garish light, while Michel seemed to be sliding into some bottomless abyss.

Dazed and terrified, the moment the ground seemed to be solid under his feet, he tried to run away. Impossible! He was a prisoner now, caught in an iron cage.

At that very moment, several men in various stages of undress rushed toward him.

"A thief!" exclaimed one.

"We've got him!" said another.

"Go call the police!"

Michel instantly recognized among these witnesses of his disaster Monsieur Casmodage and Cousin Athanase.

"You!" exclaimed the former.

"Him!" exclaimed the latter.

"You were trying to crack my safe!"

"That's the last straw!"

"He's a sleepwalker, " someone said.

For the honor of young Dufrénoy, this notion rallied the majority of these men in their nightshirts. The prisoner was uncaged, innocent victim of these ultramodern safes, which protected themselves automatically. Stretching out his arms in the dark, Michel had brushed against the Bond Safe, an apparatus of virginal sensitivity; an alarm had immediately sounded and the floor opened by means of a sliding panel, while the electric lights were automatically turned on at the sound of the locking doors. The employees, wakened by powerful buzzers, rushed toward the cage which had been lowered into the cellar.

"That will teach you, " the banker scolded the young man, "to wander around where you have no business being!"

Shamed, Michel found nothing to say in his defense.

"Clever, that machine!" exclaimed Athanase.

"Still, " interjected Monsieur Casmodage, "it won't be complete until the thief is deposited in a police wagon and automatically driven to the Prefecture!"

"As a matter of fact, " Michel thought, "not until the machine itself applies the article of the criminal code relative to trespass and burglary!" But he kept this refinement to himself, and fled to his room amid loud bursts of laughter.

Chapter VI:     In Which Quinsonnas Appears on the Ledger's Summit

The next day, Michel made his way to the bookkeeping offices amid ironic whispers; his adventure of the night before had run from mouth to mouth, and this morning not one clerk troubled to suppress his laughter.

Michel arrived in a vast hall under a ground-glass dome; in the center, on a single pedestal, a marvel of mechanical contrivance, towered the Ledger of the Casmodage Bank. It deserved its capital letter, for it was some six meters high; an intricate mechanism allowed it to be aimed like a telescope at every point on the horizon; a system of delicate catwalks, ingeniously combined, could be raised or lowered according to the writer's needs.

On white pages some 3 meters wide, the bank's daily operations were spelled out in letters 8 centimeters high. Petty Cash, General Cash, Loans, silhouetted in gold ink, delighted the attention of those who had a taste for such things. Other many-colored inks enlivened the amounts carried forward and the pagination; as for the figures, splendidly superimposed in the addition columns, francs were expressed in scarlet, and centimes, carried to the third decimal, glowed a dark green.

Michel was astounded at the sight of this monument. He asked for Monsieur Quinsonnas and was shown a young man perched on the highest catwalk; mounting a spiral staircase, he reached the Ledger's summit in a very few moments. Here he found Monsieur Quinsonnas was illuminating a capital F one meter high with incomparable dexterity.

"Monsieur Quinsonnas?"

"Be so good as to come closer," replied the bookkeeper. "To whom have I the honor of speaking?"

"To... to Monsieur Dufrénoy. "

"Would you be the hero of last night's adventure which—"

"I am, " Michel answered bravely.

"It does you credit, " Quinsonnas continued. "You are an honest man—a thief would never have let himself be caught. Such is my opinion. "

Michel stared hard at his interlocutor—was he being teased? The bookkeeper's tremendously serious countenance permitted no such supposition. "I await your orders, " Michel said.

"And I yours.