twenty-two thousand francs for the Charente Chronicle. But, at the
same time, David must pledge himself thenceforward to print no

newspaper whatever">whatsoever, under a penalty of thirty thousand francs for
damages.

That transaction dealt the deathblow to the Sechard establishment; but
the old vinegrower did not trouble himself much on that head. Murder

usually follows robbery. Our worthy friend intended to pay himself
with the ready money. To have the cash in his own hands he would have

given in David himself over and above the bargain, and so much the
more willingly since that this nuisance of a son could claim one-half

of the unexpected windfall. Taking this fact into consideration,
therefore, the generous parent consented to abandon his share of the

business but not the business premises; and the rental was still
maintained at the famous sum of twelve hundred francs per annum.

The old man came into town very seldom after the paper was sold to the
Cointets. He pleaded his advanced age, but the truth was that he took

little interest in the establishment now that it was his no longer.
Still, he could not quite shake off his old kindness for his stock-in-

trade; and when business brought him into Angouleme, it would have
been hard to say which was the stronger attraction to the old house--

his wooden presses or the son whom (as a matter of form) he asked for
rent. The old foreman, who had gone over to the rival establishment,

knew exactly how much this fatherly generosity was worth; the old fox
meant to reserve a right to interfere in his son's affairs, and had

taken care to appear in the bankruptcy as a privilegedcreditor for
arrears of rent.

The causes of David's heedlessness throw a light on the character of
that young man. Only a few days after his establishment in the

paternal printing office, he came across an old school friend in the
direst poverty. Lucien Chardon, a young fellow of one-and-twenty or

thereabouts, was the son of a surgeon-major who had retired with a
wound from the republican army. Nature had meant M. Chardon senior for

a chemist; chance opened the way for a retaildruggist's business in
Angouleme. After many years of scientificresearch, death cut him off

in the midst of his incompleted experiments, and the great discovery
that should have brought wealth to the family was never made. Chardon

had tried to find a specific for the gout. Gout is a rich man's
malady; the rich will pay large sums to recover health when they have

lost it, and for this reason the druggistdeliberately selected gout
as his problem. Halfway between the man of science on the one side and

the charlatan on the other, he saw that the scientific method was the
one road to assured success, and had studied the causes of the

complaint, and based his remedy on a certain general theory of
treatment, with modifications in practice for varying temperaments.

Then, on a visit to Paris undertaken to solicit the approval of the
Academie des Sciences, he died, and lost all the fruits of his labors.

It may have been that some presentiment of the end had led the country
druggist to do all that in him lay to give his boy and girl a good

education; the family had been living up to the income brought in by
the business; and now when they were left almost destitute, it was an

aggravation of their misfortune that they had been brought up in the
expectations of a brilliant future; for these hopes were extinguished

by their father's death. The great Desplein, who attended Chardon in
his last illness, saw him die in convulsions of rage.

The secret of the army surgeon's ambition lay in his passionate" target="_blank" title="a.易动情的；易怒的">passionate love
for his wife, the last survivor of the family of Rubempre, saved as by

a miracle from the guillotine in 1793. He had gained time by declaring
that she was pregnant, a lie told without the girl's knowledge or

consent. Then, when in a manner he had created a claim to call her his
wife, he had married her in spite of their common poverty. The

children of this marriage, like all children of love, inherited the
mother's wonderful beauty, that gift so often fatal when accompanied

by poverty. The life of hope and hard work and despair, in all of
which Mme. Chardon had shared with such keen sympathy, had left deep

traces in her beautiful face, just as the slow decline of a scanty
income had changed her ways and habits; but both she and her children

confronted evil days bravely enough. She sold the druggist's shop in
the Grand' Rue de L'Houmeau, the principalsuburb of Angouleme; but it

was impossible for even one woman to exist on the three hundred francs
of income brought in by the investment of the purchase-money, so the

mother and daughter accepted the position, and worked to earn a
living. The mother went out as a monthly nurse, and for her gentle

manners was preferred to any other among the wealthy houses, where she
lived without expense to her children, and earned some seven francs a

week. To save her son the embarrassment of seeing his mother reduced
to this humble position, she assumed the name of Madame Charlotte; and

persons requiring her services were requested to apply to M. Postel,
M. Chardon's successor in the business. Lucien's sister worked for a

laundress, a decent woman much respected in L'Houmeau, and earned
fifteen daily sous. As Mme. Prieur's forewoman she had a certain

position in the workroom, which raised her slightly above the class of
working-girls.

The two women's slenderearnings, together with Mme. Chardon's three
hundred francs of rentes, amounted to about eight hundred francs a

year, and on this sum three persons must be fed, clothed, and lodged.
Yet, with all their frugalthrift, the pittance was scarcely

sufficient; nearly the whole of it was needed for Lucien. Mme. Chardon
and her daughter Eve believed in Lucien as Mahomet's wife believed in

her husband; their devotion for his future knew no bounds. Their
present landlord was the successor to the business, for M. Postel let

them have rooms at the further end of a yard at the back of the
laboratory for a very low rent, and Lucien slept in the poor garret

above. A father's passion for natural science had stimulated the boy,
and at first induced him to follow in the same path. Lucien was one of

the most brilliant pupils at the grammar school of Angouleme, and when
David Sechard left, his future friend was in the third form.

When chance brought the school-fellows together again, Lucien was
weary of drinking from the rude cup of penury, and ready for any of

the rash, decisive steps that youth takes at the age of twenty.
David's generous offer of forty francs a month if Lucien would come to

him and learn the work of a printer's reader came in time; David had
no need whatever of a printer's reader, but he saved Lucien from

despair. The ties of a school friendship thus renewed were soon drawn
closer than ever by the similarity of their lot in life and the

dissimilarity of their characters. Both felt high swelling hopes of
manifold success; both consciously possessed the high order of

intelligence which sets a man on a level with lofty heights, consigned
though they were socially to the lowest level. Fate's injustice was a

strong bond between them. And then, by different ways, following each
his own bent of mind, they had attained to poesy. Lucien, destined for

the highest speculative fields of natural science, was aiming with hot
enthusiasm at fame through literature; while David, with that

meditative temperament which inclines to poetry, was drawn by his
tastes towards natural science.

The exchange of roles was the beginning of an intellectual
comradeship. Before long, Lucien told David of his own father's

farsighted views of the application of science to manufacture, while
David pointed out the new ways in literature that Lucien must follow

if he meant to succeed. Not many days had passed before the young
men's friendship became a passion such as is only known in early

manhood. Then it was that David caught a glimpse of Eve's fair face,
and loved, as grave and meditative natures can love. The et nunc et

semper et in secula seculorum of the Liturgy is the device taken by
many a sublime unknown poet, whose works consist in magnificent epics

conceived and lost between heart and heart. With a lover's insight,
David read the secret hopes set by the mother and sister on Lucien's

poet's brow; and knowing their blind devotion, it was very sweet to
him to draw nearer to his love by sharing her hopes and her self-

sacrifice. And in this way Lucien came to be David's chosen brother.
As there are ultras who would fain be more Royalist than the King, so

David outdid the mother and sister in his belief in Lucien's genius;
he spoiled Lucien as a mother spoils her child.

Once, under pressure of the lack of money which tied their hands, the
two were ruminating after the manner of young men over ways of

promptly realizing a large fortune; and, after fruitless shakings of
all the trees already stripped by previous comers, Lucien bethought

himself of two of his father's ideas. M. Chardon had talked of a
method of refining sugar by a chemical process, which would reduce the

cost of production by one-half; and he had another plan for employing
an American vegetable fibre for making paper, something after the

Chinese fashion, and effecting an enormous saving in the cost of raw
material. David, knowing the importance of a question raised already

by the Didots, caught at this latter notion, saw a fortune in it, and