with his own father, especially as he credited that father with the

best intentions, and took his covetous greed for a printer's
attachment to his old familiar tools. Still, as Jerome-Nicolas Sechard

had taken the whole place over from Rouzeau's widow for ten thousand
francs, paid in assignats, it stood to reason that thirty thousand

francs in coin at the present day was an exorbitant demand.
"Father, you are cutting my throat!" exclaimed David.

"_I_," cried the old toper, raising his hand to the lines of cord
across the ceiling, "I who gave you life? Why, David, what do you

suppose the license is worth? Do you know that the sheet of
advertisements alone, at fivepence a line, brought in five hundred

francs last month? You turn up the books, lad, and see what we make by
placards and the registers at the Prefecture, and the work for the

mayor's office, and the bishop too. You are a do-nothing that has no
mind to get on. You are haggling over the horse that will carry you to

some pretty bit of property like Marsac."
Attached to the valuation of plant there was a deed of partnership

between Sechard senior and his son. The good father was to let his
house and premises to the new firm for twelve hundred francs per

annum, reserving one of the two rooms in the roof for himself. So long
as David's purchase-money was not paid in full, the profits were to be

divided equally; as soon as he paid off his father, he was to be made
sole proprietor of the business.

David made a mentalcalculation of the value of the license, the
goodwill, and the stock of paper, leaving the plant out of account. It

was just possible, he thought, to clear off the debt. He accepted the
conditions. Old Sechard, accustomed to peasants' haggling, knowing

nothing of the wider business views of Paris, was amazed at such a
prompt conclusion.

"Can he have been putting money by?" he asked himself. "Or is he
scheming out, at this moment, some way of not paying me?"

With this notion in his head, he tried to find out whether David had
any money with him; he wanted to be paid something on account. The old

man's inquisitiveness roused his son's distrust; David remained close
buttoned up to the chin.

Next day, old Sechard made the apprentice move all his own household
stuff up into the attic until such time as an empty market cart could

take it out on the return journey into the country; and David entered
into possession of three bare, unfurnished rooms on the day that saw

him installed in the printing-house, without one sou wherewith to pay
his men's wages. When he asked his father, as a partner, to contribute

his share towards the working expenses, the old man pretended not to
understand. He had found the printing-house, he said, and he was not

bound to find the money too. He had paid his share. Pressed close by
his son's reasoning, he answered that when he himself had paid

Rouzeau's widow he had not had a penny left. If he, a poor, ignorant
working man, had made his way, Didot's apprentice should do still

better. Besides, had not David been earning money, thanks to an
education paid for by the sweat of his old father's brow? Now surely

was the time when the education would come in useful.
"What have you done with your 'polls?' " he asked, returning to the

charge. He meant to have light on a problem which his son left
unresolved the day before.

"Why, had I not to live?" David asked indignantly, "and books to buy
besides?"

"Oh! you bought books, did you? You will make a poor man of business.
A man that buys books is hardly fit to print them," retorted the

"bear."
Then David endured the most painful of humiliations--the sense of

shame for a parent; there was nothing for it but to be passive while
his father poured out a flood of reasons--sordid, whining,

contemptible, money-getting reasons--in which the niggardly old man
wrapped his refusal. David crushed down his pain into the depths of

his soul; he saw that he was alone; saw that he had no one to look to
but himself; saw, too, that his father was trying to make money out of

him; and in a spirit of philosophicalcuriosity, he tried to find out
how far the old man would go. He called old Sechard's attention to the

fact that he had never as yet made any inquiry as to his mother's
fortune; if that fortune would not buy the printing-house, it might go

some ways towards paying the working expenses.
"Your mother's fortune?" echoed old Sechard; "why, it was her beauty

and intelligence!"
David understood his father thoroughly after that answer; he

understood that only after an interminable, expensive, and disgraceful
lawsuit could he obtain any account of the money which by rights was

his. The noble heart accepted the heavy burden laid upon it, seeing
clearly beforehand how difficult it would be to free himself from the

engagements into which he had entered with his father.
"I will work," he said to himself. "After all, if I have a rough time

of it, so had the old man; besides, I shall be working for myself,
shall I not?"

"I am leaving you a treasure," said Sechard, uneasy at his son's
silence.

David asked what the treasure might be.
"Marion!" said his father.

Marion, a big country girl, was an indispensable part of the
establishment. It was Marion who damped the paper and cut it to size;

Marion did the cooking, washing, and marketing; Marion unloaded the
paper carts, collected accounts, and cleaned the ink-balls; and if

Marion had but known how to read, old Sechard would have put her to
set up type into the bargain.

Old Sechard set out on foot for the country. Delighted as he was with
his sale of the business, he was not quite easy in his mind as to the

payment. To the throes of the vendor, the agony of uncertainty as to
the completion of the purchase inevitably succeeds. Passion of every

sort is essentially Jesuitical. Here was a man who thought that
education was useless, forcing himself to believe in the influence of

education. He was mortgaging thirty thousand francs upon the ideas of
honor and conduct which education should have developed in his son;

David had received a good training, so David would sweat blood and
water to fulfil his engagements; David's knowledge would discover new

resources; and David seemed to be full of fine feelings, so--David
would pay! Many a parent does in this way, and thinks that he has

acted a father's part; old Sechard was quite of that opinion by the
time that he had reached his vineyard at Marsac, a hamlet some four

leagues out of Angouleme. The previous owner had built a nice little
house on the bit of property, and from year to year had added other

bits of land to it, until in 1809 the old "bear" bought the whole, and
went thither, exchanging the toil of the printing press for the labor

of the winepress. As he put it himself, "he had been in that line so
long that he ought to know something about it."

During the first twelvemonth of rural retirement, Sechard senior
showed a careful countenance among his vine props; for he was always

in his vineyard now, just as, in the old days, he had lived in his
shop, day in, day out. The prospect of thirty thousand francs was even

more intoxicating than sweet wine; already in imagination he fingered
the coin. The less the claim to the money, the more eager he grew to

pouch it. Not seldom his anxieties sent him hurrying from Marsac to
Angouleme; he would climb up the rocky staircases into the old city

and walk into his son's workshop to see how business went. There stood
the presses in their places; the one apprentice, in a paper cap, was

cleaning the ink-balls; there was a creaking of a press over the
printing of some trade circular, the old type was still unchanged, and

in the dens at the end of the room he saw his son and the foreman
reading books, which the "bear" took for proof-sheets. Then he would

join David at dinner and go back to Marsac, chewing the cud of uneasy
reflection.

Avarice, like love, has the gift of second sight, instinctively