"Oh, no! I could not go farther than the entrance; and the porter was not at all a person inclined to talk."
"Gents, gents, take your places; here's the gov'nor coming up!" shouted Hop-the-Gutter, coming into the office with the carcass still in his hand.
The young men instantly took their seats at their respective desks, over which they bent, handling their pens with great dexterity; whilst Hop-the-Gutter deposited his turkey's skeleton in a box filled with law papers.
Jacques Ferrand entered the room. His red hair, mingled with gray, escaping from beneath an old black silk cap, fell in disorder down each side of his temples. Some of the veins which marbled his head appeared injected with blood, whilst his face, his flat nose, his furrowed cheeks, were all of ghastly paleness. The expression of his look, concealed by his large green spectacles, could not be seen; but the great alteration in the man's features announced the ravages of a consuming passion.
He crossed the office slowly, without saying a word to one of the clerks, or without even appearing to notice that they were there; then went into the room in which the chief clerk was employed, traversed it as well as his own cabinet, and again instantly descended the small staircase which led to the courtyard.
Jacques Ferrand having left all the doors open behind him, the clerks had a right to be astonished at the strange demeanour of their employer, who had come up one staircase and gone down another without pausing for a moment in any of the apartments he had mechanically traversed.