Early in life, she had lost her parents by the cholera, and, at ten years of age, strangers had taken care of her, until she left them to find her own living. At this period she had made Fleur-de-Marie's passing acquaintance, and later, as she dwelt in Rudolph's lodging-house--that of the prince whom she only thought to be a workman--she had been in the habit of going out on Sundays and other holidays with young men of her house, but they had given up the companionship when they found how virtuous she was, without knowing it. Germain, also her neighbor in the house, had, however, fallen desperately in love with Rigolette, without daring to breathe one word respecting it. Far from imitating his predecessors, who resorted to other sources of solace, without losing their regard for her, Germain had delightfully enjoyed his intimacy with the girl, and the pleasure afforded by her society on Sundays and every other evening that he was disengaged. During these long hours, Rigolette was always gay and merry, and Germain affectionate, serious, and attentive, and often slightly melancholy. This sadness was his only disadvantage, for his manners, being naturally refined, did not suffer by comparison with the ridiculous pretensions of M. Girandeau, a traveling clerk, or with the boisterous eccentricities of Cabrion, an artist, though Girandeau, by his excessive loquacity, and the painter, by his no less excessive hilarity, had the advantage of Germain, whose gentlemanly gravity rather awed his lively neighbor. Rigolette had never evinced any partiality for either of her three lovers; but, with excellent judgment, she soon discovered that Germain combined all the qualities which would render any reasonable woman happy. When the latter was imprisoned, her feeling manifested itself as love. CHAPTER IV. PIQUE-VINAIGRE. The prisoner who was placed alongside of Barbillon in the visitor's room, was a man about forty years of age, and of slender make, and with a cunning, intelligent, jovial, and jeering face; he had an enormous mouth, almost entirely without teeth; when he spoke he twisted it from side to side, according to the pretty general custom of those who address the populace of market places; his nose was flat, his head immensely large, and almost entirely bald; he wore an old gray waistcoat, trousers of an indescribable color, pieced in a thousand different places; his naked feet, red from the cold, half wrapped up in old linen, were thrust into wooden shoes. This man, named Fortune Gobert, nick-named Pique-Vinaigre (Sharp Vinegar, to prevent mistakes), formerly a juggler, and a prisoner for the crime of passing counterfeit money, was accused of breaking the terms of his ticket-of-leave, and of burglary.