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 costermongers, was the gnawing rodent of the whole faubourg.
"Well," said Cerizet as Dutocq opened his door, "Theodose has just come in; let us go to his room." The advocate of the poor was fain to allow the two men to pass before him.
All three crossed a little room, the tiled floor of which, covered with a coating of red encaustic, shone in the light; thence into a little salon with crimson curtains and mahogany furniture, covered with red Utrecht velvet; the wall opposite the window being occupied by book-shelves containing a legal library.