CHAPTER IX

THE BANKER OF THE POOR

It was not on the next day, Monday, but on the following day, Tuesday,
that Dutocq and Theodose went to see Cerizet, the former having called
la Peyrade's attention to the fact that Cerizet always absented
himself on Sundays and Mondays, taking advantage of the total absence
of clients on those days, 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