shop."

HE was Cerizet's name. When, in the course of the day, some hapless
woman, without an atom of food in her room, and seeing her children
pale with hunger, would come to borrow ten or twenty sous, she would
say to the wine-merchant anxiously:--

"Is _he_ there?"

Cadenet, a short, stout man, dressed in blue, with outer sleeves of
black stuff and a wine-merchant's apron, and always wearing a cap,
seemed an angel to these mothers when he replied to them:--

"_He_ told me that you were an honest woman and I might give you forty
sous. You know what you must do about it--"

And, strange to say, _he_ was blessed by these poor people, even as they
had lately blessed Popinot.

But Cerizet was cursed on Sunday mornings when accounts were settled;
and they cursed him even more on Saturdays, when it was necessary to
work in order to repay the sum borrowed with interest. But, after all,
he was Providence, he was God from Tuesday to Friday of every week.

The room which he made his office, formerly the kitchen of the next
floor, was bare; the beams of the ceiling had been whitewashed, but
still bore marks of smoke. The walls, along which he had put benches,
and the stone floor, retained and gave out dampness. The fireplace,
where the crane remained, was partly filled by an iron stove in which
Cerizet burned sea-coal when the weather was severe. A platform about