Marion was obliged to run into debt for necessaries for them all. Kolb was earning a franc for daily wage as a bricklayer’s laborer; and at last poor Eve, who, for the sake of her husband and child, had sacrificed her last resources to entertain David’s father, saw that she had only ten francs left. She had hoped to the last to soften the old miser’s heart by her affectionate respect, and patience, and pretty attentions; but old Séchard was obdurate as ever. When she saw him turn the same cold eyes on her, the same look that the Cointets had given her, and Petit-Claud and Cérizet, she tried to watch and guess old Séchard’s intentions. Trouble thrown away! Old Séchard, never sober, never drunk, was inscrutable; intoxication is a double veil. If the old man’s tipsiness was sometimes real, it was quite often feigned for the purpose of extracting David’s secret from his wife. Sometimes he coaxed, sometimes he frightened his daughter-in-law.
“I will drink up my property; I will buy an annuity,” he would threaten when Eve told him that she knew nothing.
The humiliating struggle was wearing her out; she kept silence at last, lest she should show disrespect to her husband’s father.
“But, father,” she said one day when driven to extremity, “there is a very simple way of finding out everything. Pay David’s debts; he will come home, and you can settle it between you.”
“Ha! that is what you want to get out of me, is it?” he cried. “It is as well to know!”
But if Séchard had no belief in his son, he had plenty of faith in the Cointets. He went to consult them, and the Cointets dazzled him of set purpose, telling him that his son’s experiments might mean millions of francs.
“If David can prove that he has succeeded, I shall not hesitate to go into partnership with him, and reckon his discovery as half the capital,” the tall Cointet told him.
The suspicious old man learned a good deal over nips of brandy with the workpeople, and something more by questioning Petit-Claud and feigning stupidity; and at length he felt convinced that the Cointets were the real movers behind Métivier; they were plotting to ruin Séchard’s printing establishment, and to lure him (Séchard) on to pay his son’s debts by holding out the discovery as a bait. The old man of the people did not suspect that Petit-Claud was in the plot, nor had he any idea of the toils woven to ensnare the great secret. A day came at last when he grew angry and out of patience with the daughter-in-law who would not so much as tell him where David was hiding; he determined to force the laboratory door, for he had discovered that David was wont to make his experiments in the workshop where the rollers were melted down.
He came downstairs very early one morning and set to work upon the lock.
“Hey! Papa Séchard, what are you doing there?” Marion called out. (She had risen at daybreak to go to her paper mill, and now she sprang across to the workshop.)
“I am in my own house, am I not?” said the old man, in some confusion.
“Oh, indeed, are you turning thief in your old age? You are not drunk this time either—I shall go straight to the mistress and tell her.”
“Hold your tongue, Marion,” said Séchard, drawing two crowns of six francs each from his pocket. “There—”
“I will hold my tongue, but don’t you do it again,” said Marion, shaking her finger at him, “or all Angoulême shall hear of it.”
The old man had scarcely gone out, however, when Marion went up to her mistress.
“Look, madame,” she said, “I have had twelve francs out of your father-in-law, and here they are—”
“How did you do it?”
“What was he wanting to do but to take a look at the master’s pots and pans and stuff, to find out the secret, forsooth. I knew quite well that there was nothing in the little place, but I frightened him and talked as if he were setting about robbing his son, and he gave me twelve francs to say nothing about it.”
Just at that moment Basine came in radiant, and with a letter for her friend, a letter from David written on magnificent paper, which she handed over when they were alone.
“My adored Eve—I am writing to you the first letter on my first sheet of paper made by the new process. I have solved the problem of sizing the pulp in the trough at last. A pound of pulp costs five sous, even supposing that the raw material is grown on good soil with special culture; three francs’ worth of sized pulp will make a ream of paper, at twelve pounds to the ream. I am quite sure that I can lessen the weight of books by one-half. The envelope, the letter, and samples enclosed are all manufactured in different ways. I kiss you; you shall have wealth now to add to our happiness, everything else we had before.”
“There!” said Eve, handing the samples to her father-in-law, “when the vintage is over let your son have the money, give him a chance to make his fortune, and you shall be repaid ten times over; he has succeeded at last!”
Old Séchard hurried at once to the Cointets. Every sample was tested and minutely examined; the prices, from three to ten francs per ream, were noted on each separate slip; some were sized, others unsized; some were of almost metallic purity, others soft as Japanese paper; in color there was every possible shade of white. If
