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,