oke about. Never did two tradesmen
of the worst type, with the worst manners, the lowest pair of
villains imaginable, go into partnership in a dirtier business. Their
stock-in-trade consisted of the peculiar idiom of the man about town,
the audacity of poverty, the cunning that comes of experience, and a
special knowledge of Parisian capitalists, their origin, connections,
acquaintances, and intrinsic value. This partnership of two 'dabblers'
(let the Stock Exchange term pass, for it is the only word which
describes them), this partnership of dabblers did not last very long.
They fought like famished curs over every bit of garbage.

"The earlier speculations of the firm of Cerizet and Claparon were,
however, well planned. The two scamps joined forces with Barbet,
Chaboisseau, Samanon, and usurers of that stamp, and bought up
hopelessly bad debts.

"Claparon's place of business at that time was a cramped entresol in the
Rue Chabannais--five rooms at a rent of seven hundred francs at
most. Each partner slept in a little closet, so carefully closed from
prudence, that my head-clerk could never get inside. The furniture of
the other three rooms--an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private
office--would not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a
distress-warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look of
it; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered with a green
cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of candle sconces, growing
tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt-framed mirror over the
chimney-piece, and in the grate a charred stick or two of firewood which
had lasted them for two winters, as my head-clerk put it. As for the
office, you can guess what it was like--more letter-files than business
letters, a set of common pigeon-holes for either partner, a cylinder
desk, empty as the cash-box, in the middle of the room, and a couple
of armchairs on either side of a coal fire. The carpet on the floor was
bought cheap at second-hand (like the bills and bad debts). In short,
it was the mahogany furniture of furnished apartments which usually
descends from one occupant of chambers to another during fifty years of
service. Now you know the pair of antagonists.

"During the first three months of a partnership dissolved four months
later in a bout of fisticuffs, Cerizet and Claparon bought up two
thousand francs' worth of bills bearing Maxime's signature (since
Maxime was his name), and