ABSTRACT
The courier on the Lyons Mail on Floreal 8 was Jean-Joseph Excoffon, a man of 50, who had held his rather lucrative post for some years, and was on the eve of selling it to a successor approved by the Central Bureau. He found the employment growing too hard for him, and had got a good bid for the succession. He was of a bourgeois family domiciled some time in Paris : his rather odd name showed a Savoyard origin. He was a married man, with one son, a schoolboy of 17, and lived in family apartments in the Place Dauphine, near the Pont-Neuf. He was a broad-built, vigorous person, a little weather-beaten, wearing his hair in a short queue, and always well dressed, with a big grey overcoat {houppelande) to draw over him on chilly nights. He is described as a courteous and genial person, full of small talk, and popular wherever he went. He was a keen business man, and had a sort of side-occupation in traffic with jewellery-official documents describe him as bijoutier, but he was quite competent in other commercial business.
