Jacques Lerouge

Jacques Lerouge came up from Rouen at eighteen with a letter of introduction to a bookseller who had died the week before. He slept in a printer's loft, learned to set type faster than anyone in the shop, and found that the anonymous pamphlets paid better than the signed books.

He writes fast, draws faster and has no respect for anyone above the rank of baker. His sheets are passed under the tables of the Procope and pinned inside the arcades of the Palais-Royal before the Watch is awake. He has been in prison twice, for a week each time, and says the second time was useful: he met his best engraver there.