The bank collector deposited his peaked cap on a straw-bottomed chair beside him, mopped his streaming brow, and moistening his thumb with a rapid, eminently professional movement, passed one by one between his fingers the ten big blue bank notes his debtor had just paid over to him. The heat was stifling; it was the 15th of May—settling day, and about four o’clock of the afternoon. Bernard, an employé at the Comptoir National, was nearly at the end of his day’s round when he reached M. Moche’s abode, which lay at the far end of the quartier, No. 125 Rue Saint-Fargeau.