M’sieur Minervois was not a tall man; he was slight of figure. He had long hair, as fine, dark, shining and soft as a skein of brown silk. It brushed his shoulders and fell into his face whenever he stooped over his work – which was almost all the time. His eyes too were remarkable – large, soft and brown, suggesting his southern origins. M’sieur Forcalquier’s looks formed a striking contrast to the extreme handsomeness of his master. He had a bony face with deep sunken eyes, a shaven head covered in pale bristles. But for all his cadaverous, almost skeletal, aspect he was of a most courteous disposition.

They were refugees from France, but the distinction between a refugee and an enemy was altogether too fine a one for the people of Spitalfields. M’sieur Minervois and M’sieur Forcalquier were known everywhere as French spies. They endured much on account of this unjust reputation: gangs of Spitalfields boys and girls thought it the best part of any holiday to lie in wait for the two Frenchmen and beat them and roll them in the dirt – an article in which Spitalfields was peculiarly rich. On other days the Frenchmen’s neighbours relieved their feelings by surliness and catcalls and refusing to sell them any thing they might want or need. Strange had been of some assistance in mediating between M’sieur Minervois and his landlord and in arguing this latter gentleman into a more just understanding of M’sieur Minervois’s character and situation – and by sending Jeremy Johns into all the taverns in the vicinity to drink gin and get into conversations with the natives of the place and to make it generally known that the two Frenchmen were the protégés of one of England’s two magicians – “and,” said Strange, raising a finger to Jeremy in instruction, “if they reply that Norrell is the greater of the two, you may let it pass – but say to them that I have a shorter temper and am altogether more sensitive to slights to my friends.” M’sieur Minervois and M’sieur Forcalquier were grateful to Strange for his efforts, but, under such dismal circumstances, they had found that their best friend was brandy, taken with a strict regularity throughout the day.

They stayed shut up inside the house in Elder-street. The shutters were closed day and night against the inhospitableness of Spitalfields. They lived and worked by candlelight and had long since broken off all relations with clocks. They were rather amazed to see Strange and Childermass, being under the impression that it was the middle of the night. They had one servant – the tiny, wide-eyed orphan girl – who could not understand them and who was very much afraid of them and whose name they did not know. But in a careless, lofty way, the two men were kind to her and had given her a little room of her own with a feather-bed in it and linen sheets – so that she thought the gloomy house a very paradise. Her chief duties were to go and fetch them food and brandy and opium – which they then divided with her, keeping the brandy and opium for themselves, but giving her most of the food. She also fetched and heated water for their baths and their shaving – for both were rather vain. But they were entirely indifferent to dirt or disorder in the house, which was just as well for the little orphan knew as much of housekeeping as she did of Ancient Hebrew.