nt on the patent" is the curse of the French patentee.
A man may spend ten years of his life in working out some obscure
industrial problem; and when he has invented some piece of machinery, or
made a discovery of some kind, he takes out a patent and imagines that
he has a right to his own invention; then there comes a competitor; and
unless the first inventor has foreseen all possible contingencies, the
second comer makes an "improvement on the patent" with a screw or a nut,
and takes the whole thing out of his hands. The discovery of a cheap
material for paper pulp, therefore, is by no means the conclusion of
the whole matter. David Sechard was anxiously looking ahead on all sides
lest the fortune sought in the teeth of such difficulties should be
snatched out of his hands at the last. Dutch paper as flax paper is
still called, though it is no longer made in Holland, is slightly sized;
but every sheet is sized separately by hand, and this increases the cost
of production. If it were possible to discover some way of sizing the
paper in the pulping-trough, with some inexpensive glue, like that in
use to-day (though even now it is not quite perfect), there would be no
"improvement on the patent" to fear. For the past month, accordingly,
David had been making experiments in sizing pulp. He had two discoveries
before him.

Eve went to see her mother. Fortunately, it so happened that Mme.
Chardon was nursing the deputy-magistrate's wife, who had just given the
Milauds of Nevers an heir presumptive; and Eve, in her distrust of all
attorneys and notaries, took into her head to apply for advice to the
legal guardian of widows and orphans. She wanted to know if she could
relieve David from his embarrassments by taking them upon herself and
selling her claims upon the estate, and besides, she had some hope of
discovering the truth as to Petit-Claud's unaccountable conduct. The
official, struck with Mme. Sechard's beauty, received her not only with
the respect due to a woman but with a sort of courtesy to which Eve was
not accustomed. She saw in the magistrate's face an expression which,
since her marriage, she had seen in no eyes but Kolb's; and for a
beautiful woman like Eve, this expression is the criterion by which men
are judged. When passion, or self-interest, or age dims that spark of
unquestioning fealty that gleams in a young man's eyes, a woman feels
a certain mistrust of him, and begins to observe him critically.
The C