The Count of Monte Cristo

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Chapter 29. The House of Morrel & Son.

Any one who had quitted Marseilles a few years previously, well
acquainted with the interior of Morrel's warehouse, and had returned at
this date, would have found a great change. Instead of that air of life,
of comfort, and of happiness that permeates a flourishing and prosperous
business establishment--instead of merry faces at the windows, busy
clerks hurrying to and fro in the long corridors--instead of the court
filled with bales of goods, re-echoing with the cries and the jokes of
porters, one would have immediately perceived all aspect of sadness and
gloom. Out of all the numerous clerks that used to fill the deserted
corridor and the empty office, but two remained. One was a young man of
three or four and twenty, who was in love with M. Morrel's daughter, and
had remained with him in spite of the efforts of his friends to induce
him to withdraw; the other was an old one-eyed cashier, called "Cocles,"
or "Cock-eye," a nickname given him by the young men who used to throng
this vast now almost deserted bee-hive, and which had so completely