intrusion. You coughed, not daring a direct question.
"Foreign business, sir?" "Correspondence?" "Cashier?" "Corinthian goods?" "Dates?" "Prunes?" "Olive Oil?" the heads of these diverse departments asked you mechanically, without even looking up, until you reached the end of the line.
"No!" you would answer to the least imposing of this staff, a young man with the polite air of a novice, the office boy, clad in trousers too short for his long body, his arms doing a perpetual steeple-chase with the sleeve of his jacket, beating the short-winded goods by the length of a hand, a wrist, or part of a forearm.
"No!" you said, "I would like to speak to Monsieur Daelmans"
"Daelmans-Deynze," the terrified young man would answer. "Monsieur Daelmans-Deynze … the door right ahead of you. Let me go first, please. He may be busy. Your name, please, sir?"
Finally, the last formality having been complied with, you advanced, skirting the line of desks, and passing in review the twenty clerks, fat and lean, chlorotic or pimpled, pale or ruddy, blond or dark, varying from sixty to eighteen—the age of the distressed young man—but all equally busy, profoundly disdainful of the profane motive that brought you, a simple observer, an artist, an intermittent worker, into this environment of incessant activity, one of the sanctuaries consecrated to Mercury of the winged feet.
And it was hardly worth while for Monsieur Lynen, the old cashier, to raise his bald head and gold spectacles as you went by, or for Monsieur Bietermans, second to him in importance, the correspondent for foreign
