o the interest that he
had taken in his pupil, but to the great intellectual power which the
sometime street-boy fully recognized.

Before long Cerizet began to fraternize with the Cointets' workpeople,
drawn to them by the mutual attraction of blouse and jacket, and the
class feeling, which is, perhaps, strongest of all in the lowest ranks
of society. In their company Cerizet forgot the little good doctrine
which David had managed to instil into him; but, nevertheless, when the
others joked the boy about the presses in his workshop ("old sabots," as
the "bears" contemptuously called them), and showed him the magnificent
machines, twelve in number, now at work in the Cointets' great printing
office, where the single wooden press was only used for experiments,
Cerizet would stand up for David and fling out at the braggarts.

"My gaffer will go farther with his 'sabots' than yours with their
cast-iron contrivances that turn out mass books all day long," he
would boast. "He is trying to find out a secret that will lick all the
printing offices in France and Navarre."

"And meantime you take your orders from a washer-woman, you snip of a
foreman, on two francs a day."

"She is pretty though," retorted Cerizet; "it is better to have her to
look at than the phizes of your gaffers."

"And do you live by looking at his wife?"

From the region of the wineshop, or from the door of the printing
office, where these bickerings took place, a dim light began to break in
upon the brothers Cointet as to the real state of things in the Sechard
establishment. They came to hear of Eve's experiment, and held it
expedient to stop these flights at once, lest the business should begin
to prosper under the poor young wife's management.

"Let us give her a rap over the knuckles, and disgust her with the
business," said the brothers Cointet.

One of the pair, the practical printer, spoke to Cerizet, and asked him
to do the proof-reading for them by piecework, to relieve their reader,
who had more than he could manage. So it came to pass that Cerizet
earned more by a few hours' work of an evening for the brothers Cointet
than by a whole day's work for David Sechard. Other transactions
followed; the Cointets seeing no small aptitude in Cerizet, he was told
that it was a pity that he should be in a position so little favorable
to his interests.

"You might be foreman some day in a big printing office, making
six francs a day," said one of