clerk replied that in the absence of
M. Metivier he could not take it upon himself to stay proceedings, for
his employer had made it a rule to let the law take its course. Eve
wrote again, offering this time to renew the bills and pay all the costs
hitherto incurred. To this the clerk consented, provided that Sechard
senior guaranteed payment. So Eve walked over to Marsac, taking Kolb and
her mother with her. She braved the old vinedresser, and so charming was
she, that the old man's face relaxed, and the puckers smoothed out at
the sight of her; but when, with inward quakings, she came to speak of a
guarantee, she beheld a sudden and complete change of the tippleographic
countenance.

"If I allowed my son to put his hand to the lips of my cash box whenever
he had a mind, he would plunge it deep into the vitals, he would take
all I have!" cried old Sechard. "That is the way with children; they
eat up their parents' purse. What did I do myself, eh? _I_ never cost my
parents a farthing. Your printing office is standing idle. The rats and
the mice do all the printing that is done in it. . . . You have a pretty
face; I am very fond of you; you are a careful, hard-working woman; but
that son of mine!--Do you know what David is? I'll tell you--he is a
scholar that will never do a stroke of work! If I had reared him, as
I was reared myself, without knowing his letters, and if I had made a
'bear' of him, like his father before him, he would have money saved and
put out to interest by now. . . . Oh! he is my cross, that fellow is,
look you! And, unluckily, he is all the family I have, for there is
never like to be a later edition. And when he makes you unhappy----"

Eve protested with a vehement gesture of denial.

"Yes, he does," affirmed old Sechard; "you had to find a wet-nurse for
the child. Come, come, I know all about it, you are in the county court,
and the whole town is talking about you. I was only a 'bear,' _I_ have
no book learning, _I_ was not foreman at the Didots', the first printers
in the world; but yet I never set eyes on a bit of stamped paper. Do
you know what I say to myself as I go to and fro among my vines, looking
after them and getting in my vintage, and doing my bits of business?--I
say to myself, 'You are taking a lot of trouble, poor old chap; working
to pile one silver crown on another, you will leave a fine property
behind you, and the bailiffs and the lawyers will get it all; . . . or
else it will