After this, Max managed to grease the sub-prefect's stoves every night with an oil which sent forth so fetid a smell that it was impossible for any one to stay in the house.

Even that was not enough; his wife, going to mass one morning, found her shawl glued together on the inside with some tenacious substance, so that she was obliged to go without it.

The sub-prefect finally asked for another appointment.

The cowardly submissiveness of this officer had much to do with firmly establishing the weird and comic authority of the Knights of Idleness.
Beyond the rue des Minimes and the place Misere, a section of a quarter was at that time enclosed between an arm of the "Riviere forcee" on the lower side and the ramparts on the other, beginning at the place d'Armes and going as far as the pottery market.

This irregular square is filled with poor-looking houses crowded one against the other, and divided here and there by streets so narrow that two persons cannot walk abreast.
This section of the town, a sort of cour des Miracles, was occupied by poor people or persons working at trades that were little remunerative,--a population living in hovels, and buildings called picturesquely by the familiar term of "blind houses." From the earliest ages this has no doubt been an accursed quarter, the haunt of evil-doers; in fact one thoroughfare is named "the street of the Executioner." For more than five centuries it has been customary for the executioner to have a red door at the entrance of his house.