ed; the horses
slipped, puffed, steamed, and the coachman's long whip cracked
incessantly, flying hither and thither, coiling up, then flinging out its
length like a slender serpent, as it lashed some rounded flank, which
instantly grew tense as it strained in further effort.

But the day grew apace. Those light flakes which one traveller, a native
of Rouen, had compared to a rain of cotton fell no longer. A murky light
filtered through dark, heavy clouds, which made the country more
dazzlingly white by contrast, a whiteness broken sometimes by a row of
tall trees spangled with hoarfrost, or by a cottage roof hooded in snow.

Within the coach the passengers eyed one another curiously in the dim
light of dawn.

Right at the back, in the best seats of all, Monsieur and Madame Loiseau,
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 c