He was an artist in evil, with whom, from the first, evil had succeeded; a man misled by these early successes to continue the plotting of infamous deeds within the lines of strict legality.  Becoming the head of a printing-office by betraying his master [see “Lost Illusions"], he had afterwards been condemned to imprisonment as editor of a liberal newspaper.  In the provinces, under the Restoration, he became the bete noire of the government, and was called “that unfortunate Cerizet” by some, as people spoke of “the unfortunate Chauvet” and “the heroic Mercier.”  He owed to this reputation of persecuted patriotism a place as sub-prefect in 1830.  Six months later he was dismissed; but he insisted that he was judged without being heard; and he made so much talk about it that, under the ministry of Casimir Perier, he became the editor of an anti-republican newspaper in the pay of the government.  He left that position to go into business, one phase of which was the most nefarious stock-company that ever fell into the hands of the correctional police.  Cerizet proudly accepted the severe sentence he received; declaring it to be a revengeful plot on the part of the republicans, who, he said, would never forgive him for the hard blows he had dealt them in his journal.  He spent the time of his imprisonment in a hospital.  The government by this time were ashamed of a man whose almost infamous habits and shameful business transactions, carried on in company with a former banker, named Claparon, led him at last into well-deserved public contempt.

Cerizet, thus fallen, step by step, to the lowest rung of the social ladder, had recourse to pity in order to obtain the place of copying clerk in Dutocq’s office.  In the depths of his wretchedness the man still dreamed of revenge, and, as he had nothing to lose, he employed all means to that end.  Dutocq and himself were bound together in depravity.  Cerizet was to Dutocq what the hound is the huntsman.  Knowing himself the necessities of poverty and wretchedness, he set up that business of gutter usury called, in popular parlance, “the loan by the little week.”  He began this at first by help of Dutocq, who shared the profits; but, at the present moment this man of many legal crimes, now the banker of fishwives, the money-lender of costermongers, was the gnawing rodent of the whole faubourg.

“Well,” said Cerizet as Dutocq opened his door, “Theodose has just come in; let us go to his room.”

The advocate of the poor was fain to allow the two men to pass before him.

All three crossed a little room, the tiled floor of which, covered with a coating of red encaustic, shone in the light; thence into a little salon with crimson curtains and mahogany furniture, covered with red Utrecht velvet; the wall opposite the window being occupied by book-shelves containing a legal library.  The chimney-piece was covered with vulgar ornaments, a clock with four columns in mahogany, and candelabra