which are devoted by the populace to debauch. The house
toward which they directed their steps is one of the striking features
in the faubourg Saint-Jacques, and it is quite as important to study it
here as it was to study those of Phellion and Thuillier. It is not known
(true, no commission has yet been appointed to examine this phenomenon),
no one knows why certain quarters become degraded and vulgarized,
morally as well as materially; why, for instance, the ancient residence
of the court and the church, the Luxembourg and the Latin quarter, have
become what they are to-day, in spite of the presence of the finest
palaces in the world, in spite of the bold cupola of Sainte-Genevieve,
that of Mansard on the Val-de-Grace, and the charms of the Jardin des
Plantes. One asks one's self why the elegance of life has left that
region; why the Vauquer houses, the Phellion and the Thuillier houses
now swarm with tenants and boarders, on the site of so many noble and
religious buildings, and why such mud and dirty trades and poverty
should have fastened on a hilly piece of ground, instead of spreading
out upon the flat land beyond the confines of the ancient city.

The angel whose beneficence once hovered above this quarter being dead,
usury, on the lowest scale, rushed in and took his place. To the old
judge, Popinot, succeeded Cerizet; and strange to say,--a fact which it
is well to study,--the effect produced, socially speaking, was much the
same. Popinot loaned money without interest, and was willing to lose;
Cerizet lost nothing, and compelled the poor to work hard and stay
virtuous. The poor adored Popinot, but they did not hate Cerizet. Here,
in this region, revolves the lowest wheel of Parisian financiering. At
the top, Nucingen & Co., the Kellers, du Tillet, and the Mongenods; a
little lower down, the Palmas, Gigonnets, and Gobsecks; lower still, the
Samonons, Chaboisseaus, and Barbets; and lastly (after the pawn-shops)
comes this king of usury, who spreads his nets at the corners of the
streets to entangle all miseries and miss none,--Cerizet, "money lender
by the little week."

The frogged frock-coat will have prepared you for the den in which this
convicted stock-broker carried on his present business.

The house was humid with saltpetre; the walls, sweating moisture, were
enamelled all over with large slabs of mould. Standing at the corner
of the rue des Postes and rue des Poules, it presented first a
ground-floor,