, even to the black
gloves which covered the hands of this subaltern Mephistopheles, whose
whole anterior life may be summed up in a single phrase:--

He was an artist in evil, with whom, from the first, evil had succeeded;
a man misled by these early successes to continue the plotting of
infamous deeds within the lines of strict legality. Becoming the head of
a printing-office by betraying his master [see "Lost Illusions"], he
had afterwards been condemned to imprisonment as editor of a liberal
newspaper. In the provinces, under the Restoration, he became the bete
noire of the government, and was called "that unfortunate Cerizet"
by some, as people spoke of "the unfortunate Chauvet" and "the heroic
Mercier." He owed to this reputation of persecuted patriotism a place as
sub-prefect in 1830. Six months later he was dismissed; but he insisted
that he was judged without being heard; and he made so much talk about
it that, under the ministry of Casimir Perier, he became the editor of
an anti-republican newspaper in the pay of the government. He left that
position to go into business, one phase of which was the most nefarious
stock-company that ever fell into the hands of the correctional police.
Cerizet proudly accepted the severe sentence he received; declaring it
to be a revengeful plot on the part of the republicans, who, he said,
would never forgive him for the hard blows he had dealt them in his
journal. He spent the time of his imprisonment in a hospital. The
government by this time were ashamed of a man whose almost infamous
habits and shameful business transactions, carried on in company with a
former banker, named Claparon, led him at last into well-deserved public
contempt.

Cerizet, thus fallen, step by step, to the lowest rung of the social
ladder, had recourse to pity in order to obtain the place of copying
clerk in Dutocq's office. In the depths of his wretchedness the man
still dreamed of revenge, and, as he had nothing to lose, he employed
all means to that end. Dutocq and himself were bound together in
depravity. Cerizet was to Dutocq what the hound is the huntsman. Knowing
himself the necessities of poverty and wretchedness, he set up that
business of gutter usury called, in popular parlance, "the loan by the
little week." He began this at first by help of Dutocq, who shared the
profits; but, at the present moment this man of many legal crimes, now
the banker of fishwives, the money-lender of costermonge