Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road.

This is your host and storyteller, John Hagadorn.

Today, Chapter 29, The House of Morrill and Son, from the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas.

And now our story.

Anyone who had quitted Marseilles a few years previously, well acquainted with the interior

of Morel's warehouse, and had returned at this date, would have found a great change.

Instead of that air of life 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 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 in the empty office,

but two remained.

One was a young man of three or four and twenty, who was in love with

M. Marelle'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 Kakai, a name named given him by the young

men who used to throng this vast, now almost deserted beehive,

and which had so completely replaced his real name that he would not, in all probability,

have replied to anyone who addressed him by it.

Cockay, or Cockles, remained in Monsieur Morel's service,

at a most singular change had taken place in his position.

He had at the same time risen to the rank of cashier and sunk to the rank of a servant.

He was, however, the same cockles, good, patient, devoted, but inflexible on the subject of arithmetic,

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