Way in the rear, on the best seats, facing each other, Mr. and
Mrs. Loiseau, wholesale wine dealers of the Rue Grand-Pont, were
slumbering.

Former clerk to a merchant who had been ruined in business, Loiseau
had bought his employer's stock and made a fortune. He was selling
very cheap very bad wine to small liquor dealers in the country, and
was considered by his friends and acquaintances as a sharp crook,
a real Norman full of wiles and joviality. His reputation as a
crook was so well established that one evening at the Prefecture,
Mr. Tournel, a writer of fables and songs, a biting and fine wit,
a local literary glory, having proposed to the ladies' whom he
saw rather drowsy, to play a game of "L'oiseau vole," (the bird
steals--flies) the joke flew through the salons of the Prefect and
from there, reaching those of the town, made all the jaws of the
Province laugh for a whole month.

In addition to this unsavory reputation, Loiseau was famous for his
various practical jokes, his good or bad tricks; and nobody could
mention his name without adding immediately:--"Loiseau is merciless;
he spares nobody!"--

Undersized, he had a balloon shaped stomach surmounted by a florid
face between a pair of grayish whiskers.

His wife, tall, stout determined, with a loud voice, a woman of
quick decision, represented order and arithmetic in the business
house which her husband enlivened by his mirthful activity.

Beside them sat, more dignified and belonging to a superior class,