with four workers to help him when there was a house to be
built.

"But he'd sell the mill in a minute if printing alone would provide him
with a living," she said. "That's where his heart is."

Elysee said, "Pierre and I offered Frank a regular income, so that he
could give all his time to his newspaper and to printing, but he
wouldn't hear of it. He got a bit haughty when I pressed him, and
informed me that the system of feudal patronage is dead. I assured him
that I was well aware of that, and that is why I am here and not in
France."

"Frank is proud, Papa," said Nicole.

Elysee nodded. "I fear he is too often a proud papa."

Auguste roared, and Nicole, though she blushed, could not help laughing.

"The town grows bigger every year," Auguste said. Nicole nodded
sympathetically; she seemed to have guessed what he was thinking: How
numerous the whites were, as he had seen for himself in the East, and
how inexorably they were filling up this part of the country, like a
river in flood. Last year the New York papers had reported the results
of the 1830 census; the United States was over twelve million, Auguste
had read, a number he could not even imagine. And 150,000 of those were
here in the state of Illinois, balanced against the six thousand Sauk
and Fox. Black Hawk's people, the British Band, numbered only two
thousand. Hopeless.

"Victor had a hundred or so people the year you came here," said Elysee.
"Now there are over four hundred. As you see, the bluff is completely
covered with houses. And we have many new industries and crafts. A
preacher, a Reverend Hale, has put up a church on the prairie to the
east of us. I am not sure whether his work counts as an industry or a
craft. There is Frank's sawmill, as Nicole said. There are also a flour
mill and a brewery, and a mason works at a limestone quarry nearby. And
your father is planning to set up a kiln on the estate, so we can build
a new Victoire of brick."

"How sick is my father?" Auguste asked abruptly, dreading the answer he
would get.

"Ah, Nicole, there are your children waiting to greet us," Grandpapa
cried, as if he had not heard Auguste's question.

Where the road made a sharp turn and started upward on a higher level,
stood a two-story frame building painted white. A sign over the door
read, THE VICTOR VISITOR, F. HOPKINS, PUBr, PRINTING AND ENGRAVING.
CARPENTRY.

Auguste could hear the press clanking away inside the house as they
approac