But they were full of possibilities, men of action, and men, too, of thought, with already a pronounced disbelief in the custom-house.

In these days of big carnivals they would have been patented as the dukes of Little Manchac and Barataria.
Young Ursin Lemaitre (in full the name was Lemaitre-Vignevielle) had not only the hearty friendship of these good people, but also a natural turn for accounts; and as his two friends were looking about them with an enterprising eye, it easily resulted that he presently connected himself with the blacksmithing profession.

Not exactly at the forge in the Lafittes' famous smithy, among the African Samsons, who, with their shining black bodies bared to the waist, made the Rue St.Pierre ring with the stroke of their hammers; but as a--there was no occasion to mince the word in those days--smuggler.
Smuggler--patriot--where was the difference?
Beyond the ken of a community to which the enforcement of the revenue laws had long been merely so much out of every man's pocket and dish, into the all-devouring treasury of Spain.

At this date they had come under a kinder yoke, and to a treasury that at least echoed when the customs were dropped into it; but the change was still new.

What could a man be more than Capitaine Lemaitre was--the soul of honor, the pink of courtesy, with the courage of the lion, and the magnanimity of the elephant; frank--the very exchequer of truth! Nay, go higher still: his paper was good in Toulouse street.