occupied partly by a shop for the sale of the commonest
kind of wine, painted a coarse bright red, decorated with curtains of
red calico, furnished with a leaden counter, and guarded by formidable
iron bars. Above the gate of an odious alley hung a frightful lantern,
on which were the words "Night lodgings here." The outer walls were
covered with iron crossbars, showing, apparently, the insecurity of the
building, which was owned by the wine-merchant, who also inhabited the
entresol. The widow Poiret (nee Michonneau) kept furnished lodgings
on the first, second, and third floors, consisting of single rooms for
workmen and for the poorest class of students.

Cerizet occupied one room on the ground-floor and another in the
entresol, to which he mounted by an interior staircase; this entresol
looked out upon a horrible paved court, from which arose mephitic odors.
Cerizet paid forty francs a month to the widow Poiret for his breakfast
and dinner; he thus conciliated her by becoming her boarder; he also
made himself acceptable to the wine-merchant by procuring him an immense
sale of wine and liquors among his clients--profits realized before
sunrise; the wine-shop beginning operations about three in the morning
in summer, and five in winter.

The hour of the great Market, which so many of his clients, male and
female, attended, was the determining cause of Cerizet's early hours.
The Sieur Cadenet, the wine-merchant, in view of the custom which he
owed to the usurer, had let him the two rooms for the low price of
eighty francs a year, and had given him a lease for twelve years, which
Cerizet alone had a right to break, without paying indemnity, at three
months' notice. Cadenet always carried in a bottle of excellent wine for
the dinner of this useful tenant; and when Cerizet was short of money
he had only to say to his friend, "Cadenet, lend me a few hundred
francs,"--loans which he faithfully repaid.

Cadenet, it was said, had proof of the widow Poiret having deposited
in Cerizet's hands some two thousand francs for investment, which may
explain the progress of the latter's affairs since the day when he
first took up his abode in the quarter, supplied with a last note of a
thousand francs and Dutocq's protection. Cadenet, prompted by a cupidity
which success increased, had proposed, early in the year, to put twenty
thousand francs into the hands of his friend Cerizet. But Cerizet had
positively declined them, on the grou