old three thousand broad sheets at a penny apiece, and
made three hundred francs in all at a cost of thirty francs.

But when every peasant's hut and every little wine-shop for twenty
leagues round was papered with these legends, a fresh speculation
must be discovered; the Alsacien could not go beyond the limits of the
department. Eve, turning over everything in the whole printing house,
had found a collection of figures for printing a "Shepherd's Calendar,"
a kind of almanac meant for those who cannot read, letterpress being
replaced by symbols, signs, and pictures in colored inks, red, black and
blue. Old Sechard, who could neither read nor write himself, had made a
good deal of money at one time by bringing out an almanac in hieroglyph.
It was in book form, a single sheet folded to make one hundred and
twenty-eight pages.

Thoroughly satisfied with the success of the broad sheets, a piece
of business only undertaken by country printing offices, Mme. Sechard
invested all the proceeds in the _Shepherd's Calendar_, and began it
upon a large scale. Millions of copies of this work are sold annually
in France. It is printed upon even coarser paper than the _Almanac of
Liege_, a ream (five hundred sheets) costing in the first instance about
four francs; while the printed sheets sell at the rate of a halfpenny
apiece--twenty-five francs per ream.

Mme. Sechard determined to use one hundred reams for the first
impression; fifty thousand copies would bring in two thousand francs. A
man so deeply absorbed in his work as David in his researches is seldom
observant; yet David, taking a look round his workshop, was astonished
to hear the groaning of a press and to see Cerizet always on his feet,
setting up type under Mme. Sechard's direction. There was a pretty
triumph for Eve on the day when David came in to see what she was doing,
and praised the idea, and thought the calendar an excellent stroke of
business. Furthermore, David promised to give advice in the matter of
colored inks, for an almanac meant to appeal to the eye; and finally, he
resolved to recast the ink-rollers himself in his mysterious workshop,
so as to help his wife as far as he could in her important little
enterprise.

But just as the work began with strenuous industry, there came letters
from Lucien in Paris, heart-sinking letters that told his mother and
sister and brother-in-law of his failure and distress; and when Eve,
Mme. Chardon, and David each secr