“Monsieur!” protested poor Eve, turning to Petit-Claud, “have you vowed to ruin us? My husband had never uttered a word against his father.” (Here the old man looked cunningly at her.) “David has told me scores of times that you loved him in your way,” she added, looking at her father-in-law, and understanding his suspicions.
Petit-Claud was only following out the tall Cointet’s instructions. He was widening the breach between the father and son, lest Séchard senior should extricate David from his intolerable position. “The day that David Séchard goes to prison shall be the day of your introduction to Mme. de Senonches,” the “tall Cointet” had said no longer ago than yesterday.
Mme. Séchard, with the quick insight of love, had divined Petit-Claud’s mercenary hostility, even as she had once before felt instinctively that Cérizet was a traitor. As for David, his astonishment may be imagined; he could not understand how Petit-Claud came to know so much of his father’s nature and his own history. Upright and honorable as he was, he did not dream of the relations between his lawyer and the Cointets; nor, for that matter, did he know that the Cointets were at work behind Métivier. Meanwhile old Séchard took his son’s silence as an insult, and Petit-Claud, taking advantage of his client’s bewilderment, beat a retreat.
“Goodbye, my dear David; you have had warning, notice of appeal doesn’t invalidate the warrant for arrest. It is the only course left open to your creditors, and it will not be long before they take it. So, go away at once—Or, rather, if you will take my advice, go to the Cointets and see them about it. They have capital. If your invention is perfected and answers the purpose, go into partnership with them. After all, they are very good fellows—”
“Your invention?” broke in old Séchard.
“Why, do you suppose that your son is fool enough to let his business slip away from him without thinking of something else?” exclaimed the attorney. “He is on the brink of the discovery of a way of making paper at a cost of three francs per ream, instead of ten, he tells me.”
“One more dodge for taking me in! You are all as thick as thieves in a fair. If David has found out such a plan, he has no need of me—he is a millionaire! Goodbye, my dears, and a good day to you all,” and the old man disappeared down the staircase.
“Find some way of hiding yourself,” was Petit-Claud’s parting word to David, and with that he hurried out to exasperate old Séchard still further. He found the vinegrower growling to himself outside in the Place du Mûrier, went with him as far as L’Houmeau, and there left him with a threat of putting in an execution for the costs due to him unless they were paid before the week was out.
“I will pay you if you will show me how to disinherit my son without injuring my daughter-in-law or the boy,” said old Séchard, and they parted forthwith.
“How well the ‘tall Cointet’ knows the folk he is dealing with! It is just as he said; those seven hundred francs will prevent the father from paying seven thousand,” the little lawyer thought within himself as he climbed the path to Angoulême. “Still, that old slyboots of a papermaker must not overreach us; it is time to ask him for something besides promises.”
“Well, David dear, what do you mean to do?” asked Eve, when the lawyer had followed her father-in-law.
“Marion, put your biggest pot on the fire!” called David; “I have my secret fast.”
At this Eve put on her bonnet and shawl and walking shoes with feverish haste.
“Kolb, my friend, get ready to go out,” she said, “and come with me; if there is any way out of this hell, I must find it.”
When Eve had gone out, Marion spoke to David. “Do be sensible, sir,” she said, “or the mistress will fret herself to death. Make some money to pay off your debts, and then you can try to find treasure at your ease—”
“Don’t talk, Marion,” said David; “I am going to overcome my last difficulty, and then I can apply for the patent and the improvement on the patent at the same time.”
This “improvement on the patent” is the curse of the French patentee. A man may spend ten years of his life in working out some obscure industrial problem; and when he has invented some piece of machinery, or made a discovery of some kind, he takes out a patent and imagines that he has a right to his own invention; then there comes a competitor; and unless the first inventor has foreseen all possible contingencies, the second comer makes an “improvement on the patent” with a screw or a nut, and takes the whole thing out of his hands. The discovery of a cheap material for paper pulp, therefore, is by no means the conclusion of the whole matter. David Séchard was anxiously looking ahead on all sides lest the fortune sought in the teeth of such difficulties should be snatched out of his hands at the last. Dutch paper, as flax paper is still called, though it is no longer made in Holland, is slightly sized; but every sheet is sized separately by hand, and this increases the cost of production. If it were possible to discover some way of sizing the paper in the pulping-trough, with some inexpensive glue, like that in use today (though even now it is not quite perfect), there would be no “improvement on the patent” to fear. For the past month, accordingly, David had been making experiments in sizing pulp. He had two discoveries before him.
Eve went to see her mother. Fortunately, it so happened that Mme. Chardon was nursing the deputy-magistrate’s wife, who had just given the Milauds of Nevers an heir presumptive; and Eve,
