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 ground that he ran risks