ton fell no longer. A murky
light filtered through dark, heavy clouds, which made the country more
dazzlingly white by contrast, a whiteness broken sometimes by a row of
tall trees spangled with hoarfrost, or by a cottage roof hooded in snow.

Within the coach the passengers eyed one another curiously in the dim
light of dawn.

Right at the back, in the best seats of all, Monsieur and Madame
Loiseau, wholesale wine merchants of the Rue Grand-Pont, slumbered
opposite each other. Formerly clerk to a merchant who had failed in
business, Loiseau had bought his master's interest, and made a
fortune for himself. He sold very bad wine at a very low price to the
retail-dealers in the country, and had the reputation, among his friends
and acquaintances, of being a shrewd rascal a true Norman, full of quips
and wiles. So well established was his character as a cheat that, in
the mouths of the citizens of Rouen, the very name of Loiseau became a
byword for sharp practice.

Above and beyond this, Loiseau was noted for his practical jokes of
every description--his tricks, good or ill-natured; and no one could
mention his name without adding at once: "He's an extraordinary
man--Loiseau." He was undersized and potbellied, had a florid face with
grayish whiskers.

His wife-tall, strong, determined, with a loud voice and decided manner
--represented the spirit of order and arithmetic in the business house
which Loiseau enlivened by his jovial activity.

Beside them, dignified in bearing, belonging to a superior caste, sat
Monsieur Carre-Lamadon, a man of considerable importance, a king in the
cotton trade, proprietor of three spinning-mills, officer of the Legion
of Honor, and member of the General Council. During the whole time the
Empire was in the ascendancy he remained the chief of the well-disposed
Opposition, merely in order to command a higher value for his devotion
when he should rally to the cause which he meanwhile opposed with
"courteous weapons," to use his own expression.

Madame Carre-Lamadon, much younger than her husband, was the consolation
of all the officers of good family quartered at Rouen. Pretty, slender,
graceful, she sat opposite her husband, curled up in her furs, and
gazing mournfully at the sorry interior of the coach.

Her neighbors, the Comte and Comtesse Hubert de Breville, bore one of
the noblest and most ancient names in Normandy. The count, a nobleman
advanced in years and of aristocratic bearin