“Honor!” poor Eve broke in. “Oh, but Lucien has fallen in so many ways! Writing against his conscience! Attacking his best friend! Living upon an actress! Showing himself in public with her. Bringing us to lie on straw—”
“Oh, that is nothing—!” cried David, and suddenly stopped short. The secret of Lucien’s forgery had nearly escaped him, and, unluckily, his start left a vague, uneasy impression on Eve.
“What do you mean by nothing?” she answered. “And where shall we find the money to meet bills for three thousand francs?”
“We shall be obliged to renew the lease with Cérizet, to begin with,” said David. “The Cointets have been allowing him fifteen percent on the work done for them, and in that way alone he has made six hundred francs, besides contriving to make five hundred francs by job printing.”
“If the Cointets know that, perhaps they will not renew the lease. They will be afraid of him, for Cérizet is a dangerous man.”
“Eh! what is that to me!” cried David, “we shall be rich in a very little while. When Lucien is rich, dear angel, he will have nothing but good qualities.”
“Oh! David, my dear, my dear; what is this that you have said unthinkingly? Then Lucien fallen into the clutches of poverty would not have the force of character to resist evil? And you think just as M. d’Arthez thinks! No one is great unless he has strength of character, and Lucien is weak. An angel who must not be tempted—what is that?”
“What but a nature that is noble only in its own region, its own sphere, its heaven? I will spare him the struggle; Lucien is not meant for it. Look here! I am so near the end now that I can talk to you about the means.”
He drew several sheets of white paper from his pocket, brandished them in triumph, and laid them on his wife’s lap.
“A ream of this paper, royal size, would cost five francs at the most,” he added, while Eve handled the specimens with almost childish surprise.
“Why, how did you make these sample bits?” she asked.
“With an old kitchen sieve of Marion’s.”
“And are you not satisfied yet?” asked Eve.
“The problem does not lie in the manufacturing process; it is a question of the first cost of the pulp. Alas, child, I am only a late comer in a difficult path. As long ago as 1794, Mme. Masson tried to use printed paper a second time; she succeeded, but what a price it cost! The Marquis of Salisbury tried to use straw as a material in 1800, and the same idea occurred to Séguin in France in 1801. Those sheets in your hand are made from the common rush, the arundo phragmites, but I shall try nettles and thistles; for if the material is to continue to be cheap, one must look for something that will grow in marshes and wastelands where nothing else can be grown. The whole secret lies in the preparation of the stems. At present my method is not quite simple enough. Still, in spite of this difficulty, I feel sure that I can give the French paper trade the privilege of our literature; papermaking will be for France what coal and iron and coarse potter’s clay are for England—a monopoly. I mean to be the Jacquart of the trade.”
Eve rose to her feet. David’s simple-mindedness had roused her to enthusiasm, to admiration; she held out her arms to him and held him tightly to her, while she laid her head upon his shoulder.
“You give me my reward as if I had succeeded already,” he said.
For all answer, Eve held up her sweet face, wet with tears, to his, and for a moment she could not speak.
“The kiss was not for the man of genius,” she said, “but for my comforter. Here is a rising glory for the glory that has set; and, in the midst of my grief for the brother that has fallen so low, my husband’s greatness is revealed to me.—Yes, you will be great, great like the Graindorges, the Rouvets, and Van Robais, and the Persian who discovered madder, like all the men you have told me about; great men whom nobody remembers, because their good deeds were obscure industrial triumphs.”
“What are they doing just now?”
It was Boniface Cointet who spoke. He was walking up and down outside in the Place du Mûrier with Cérizet watching the silhouettes of the husband and wife on the blinds. He always came at midnight for a chat with Cérizet, for the latter played the spy upon his former master’s every movement.
“He is showing her the paper he made this morning, no doubt,” said Cérizet.
“What is it made of?” asked the paper manufacturer.
“Impossible to guess,” answered Cérizet; “I made a hole in the roof and scrambled up and watched the gaffer; he was boiling pulp in a copper pan all last night. There was a heap of stuff in a corner, but I could make nothing of it; it looked like a heap of tow, as near as I could make out.”
“Go no farther,” said Boniface Cointet in unctuous tones; “it would not be right. Mme. Séchard will offer to renew your lease; tell her that you are thinking of setting up for yourself. Offer her half the value of the plant and license, and, if she takes the bid, come to me. In any case, spin the matter out. … Have they no money?”
“Not a sou,” said Cérizet.
“Not a sou,” repeated tall Cointet.—“I have them now,” said he to himself.
Métivier, paper manufacturers’
