over a sumptuous dinner, Jerome-Nicolas Sechard, after copious
potations, began with a "Now for business," a remark so singularly

misplaced between two hiccoughs, that David begged his parent to
postpone serious matters until the morrow. But the old "bear" was by

no means inclined to put off the long-expected battle; he was too well
prepared to turn his tipsiness to good account. He had dragged the

chain these fifty years, he would not wear it another hour; to-morrow
his son should be the "gaffer."

Perhaps a word or two about the business premises may be said here.
The printing-house had been established since the reign of Louis XIV.

in the angle made by the Rue de Beaulieu and the Place du Murier; it
had been devoted to its present purposes for a long time past. The

ground floor consisted of a single huge room lighted on the side next
the street by an old-fashionedcasement, and by a large sash window

that gave upon the yard at the back. A passage at the side led to the
private office; but in the provinces the processes of typography

excite such a lively interest, that customers usually preferred to
enter by way of the glass door in the street front, though they at

once descended three steps, for the floor of the workshop lay below
the level of the street. The gaping newcomer always failed to note the

perils of the passage through the shop; and while staring at the
sheets of paper strung in groves across the ceiling, ran against the

rows of cases, or knocked his hat against the tie-bars that secured
the presses in position. Or the customer's eyes would follow the agile

movements of a compositor, picking out type from the hundred and
fifty-two compartments of his case, reading his copy, verifying the

words in the composing-stick, and leading the lines, till a ream of
damp paper weighted with heavy slabs, and set down in the middle of

the gangway, tripped up the bemused spectator, or he caught his hip
against the angle of a bench, to the huge delight of boys, "bears,"

and "monkeys." No wight had ever been known to reach the further end
without accident. A couple of glass-windowed cages had been built out

into the yard at the back; the foreman sat in state in the one, the
master printer in the other. Out in the yard the walls were agreeably

decorated by trellised vines, a tempting bit of color, considering the
owner's reputation. On the one side of the space stood the kitchen, on

the other the woodshed, and in a ramshackle penthouse against the hall
at the back, the paper was trimmed and damped down. Here, too, the

forms, or, in ordinary language, the masses of set-up type, were
washed. Inky streams issuing thence blended with the ooze from the

kitchen sink, and found their way into the kennel in the street
outside; till peasants coming into the town of a market day believed

that the Devil was taking a wash inside the establishment.
As to the house above the printing office, it consisted of three rooms

on the first floor and a couple of attics in the roof. The first room
did duty as dining-room and lobby; it was exactly the same length as

the passage below, less the space taken up by the old-fashionedwooden
staircase; and was lighted by a narrow casement on the street and a

bull's-eye window looking into the yard. The chief characteristic of
the apartment was a cynic simplicity, due to money-making greed. The

bare walls were covered with plain whitewash, the dirty brick floor
had never been scoured, the furniture consisted of three rickety

chairs, a round table, and a sideboard stationed between the two doors
of a bedroom and a sitting-room. Windows and doors alike were dingy

with accumulated grime. Reams of blank paper or printed matter usually
encumbered the floor, and more frequently than not the remains of

Sechard's dinner, empty bottles and plates, were lying about on the
packages.

The bedroom was lighted on the side of the yard by a window with
leaded panes, and hung with the old-world tapestry that decorated

house fronts in provincial towns on Corpus Christi Day. For furniture
it boasted a vast four-post bedstead with canopy, valances and quilt

of crimson serge, a couple of worm-eaten armchairs, two tapestry-
covered chairs in walnut wood, an aged bureau, and a timepiece on the

mantel-shelf. The Seigneur Rouzeau, Jerome-Nicolas' master and
predecessor, had furnished the homely old-world room; it was just as

he had left it.
The sitting-room had been partly modernized by the late Mme. Sechard;

the walls were adorned with a wainscot, fearful to behold, painted the
color of powder blue. The panels were decorated with wall-paper--

Oriental scenes in sepia tint--and for all furniture, half-a-dozen
chairs with lyre-shaped backs and blue leather cushions were ranged

round the room. The two clumsyarched windows that gave upon the Place
du Murier were curtainless; there was neither clock nor candle sconce

nor mirror above the mantel-shelf, for Mme. Sechard had died before
she carried out her scheme of decoration; and the "bear," unable to

conceive the use of improvements that brought in no return in money,
had left it at this point.

Hither, pede titubante, Jerome-Nicolas Sechard brought his son, and
pointed to a sheet of paper lying on the table--a valuation of plant

drawn up by the foreman under his direction.
"Read that, my boy," said Jerome-Nicolas, rolling a drunken eye from

the paper to his son, and back to the paper. "You will see what a
jewel of a printing-house I am giving you."

" 'Three wooden presses, held in position by iron tie-bars, cast-iron
plates----' "

"An improvement of my own," put in Sechard senior.
" '----Together with all the implements, ink-tables, balls, benches,

et cetera, sixteen hundred francs!' Why, father," cried David, letting
the sheet fall, "these presses of yours are old sabots not worth a

hundred crowns; they are only fit for firewood."
"Sabots?" cried old Sechard, "SABOTS? There, take the inventory and

let us go downstairs. You will soon see whether your paltry iron-work
contrivances will work like these solid old tools, tried and trusty.

You will not have the heart after that to slander honest old presses
that go like mail coaches, and are good to last you your lifetime

without needing repairs of any sort. Sabots! Yes, sabots that are like
to hold salt enough to cook your eggs with--sabots that your father

has plodded on with these twenty years; they have helped him to make
you what you are."

The father, without coming to grief on the way, lurched down the worn,
knotty staircase that shook under his tread. In the passage he opened

the door of the workshop, flew to the nearest press (artfully oiled
and cleaned for the occasion) and pointed out the strong oaken cheeks,

polished up by the apprentice.
"Isn't it a love of a press?"

A weddingannouncement lay in the press. The old "bear" folded down
the frisket upon the tympan, and the tympan upon the form, ran in the

carriage, worked the lever, drew out the carriage, and lifted the
frisket and tympan, all with as much agility as the youngest of the

tribe. The press, handled in this sort, creaked aloud in such fine
style that you might have thought some bird had dashed itself against

the window pane and flown away again.
"Where is the English press that could go at that pace?" the parent

asked of his astonished son.
Old Sechard hurried to the second, and then to the third in order,

repeating the manoeuvre with equal dexterity. The third presenting to
his wine-troubled eye a patch overlooked by the apprentice, with a

notable oath he rubbed it with the skirt of his overcoat, much as a
horse-dealer polishes the coat of an animal that he is trying to sell.

"With those three presses, David, you can make your nine thousand
francs a year without a foreman. As your future partner, I am opposed

to your replacing these presses by your cursed cast-iron machinery,
that wears out the type. You in Paris have been making such a to-do

over that damned Englishman's invention--a foreigner, an enemy of
France who wants to help the ironfounders to a fortune. Oh! you wanted

Stanhopes, did you? Thanks for your Stanhopes, that cost two thousand
five hundred francs apiece, about twice as much as my three jewels put