e look-out for squalls, to use his own expression. To this
end he took up his quarters in one of the attics which he had reserved
by the terms of the lease, wilfully shutting his eyes to the bareness
and want that made his son's home desolate. If they owed him rent, they
could well afford to keep him. He ate his food from a tinned iron
plate, and made no marvel at it. "I began in the same way," he told his
daughter-in-law, when she apologized for the absence of silver spoons.

Marion was obliged to run into debt for necessaries for them all. Kolb
was earning a franc for daily wage as a brick-layer's laborer; and
at last poor Eve, who, for the sake of her husband and child, had
sacrificed her last resources to entertain David's father, saw that she
had only ten francs left. She had hoped to the last to soften the old
miser's heart by her affectionate respect, and patience, and pretty
attentions; but old Sechard was obdurate as ever. When she saw him turn
the same cold eyes on her, the same look that the Cointets had given
her, and Petit-Claud and Cerizet, she tried to watch and guess old
Sechard's intentions. Trouble thrown away! Old Sechard, never sober,
never drunk, was inscrutable; intoxication is a double veil. If the old
man's tipsiness was sometimes real, it was quite often feigned for the
purpose of extracting David's secret from his wife. Sometimes he coaxed,
sometimes he frightened his daughter-in-law.

"I will drink up my property; _I will buy an annuity_," he would
threaten when Eve told him that she knew nothing.

The humiliating struggle was wearing her out; she kept silence at last,
lest she should show disrespect to her husband's father.

"But, father," she said one day when driven to extremity, "there is a
very simple way of finding out everything. Pay David's debts; he will
come home, and you can settle it between you."

"Ha! that is what you want to get out of me, is it?" he cried. "It is as
well to know!"

But if Sechard had no belief in his son, he had plenty of faith in the
Cointets. He went to consult them, and the Cointets dazzled him of set
purpose, telling him that his son's experiments might mean millions of
francs.

"If David can prove that he has succeeded, I shall not hesitate to
go into partnership with him, and reckon his discovery as half the
capital," the tall Cointet told him.

The suspicious old man learned a good deal over nips of brandy with the
work-people, and something mor