eculated at the outset of the Revolution.
Then Ouvrard could buy up first the entire stock of paper and then the
manufacturers; but in the year 1821 there were so many paper-mills in
France, that no one could hope to repeat his success; and David had
neither audacity enough nor capital enough for such speculation.
Machinery for producing paper in any length was just coming into use
in England. It was one of the most urgent needs of the time, therefore,
that the paper trade should keep pace with the requirements of the
French system of civil government, a system by which the right of
discussion was to be extended to every man, and the whole fabric based
upon continual expression of individual opinion; a grave misfortune, for
the nation that deliberates is but little wont to act.

So, strange coincidence! while Lucien was drawn into the great machinery
of journalism, where he was like to leave his honor and his intelligence
torn to shreds, David Sechard, at the back of his printing-house,
foresaw all the practical consequences of the increased activity of the
periodical press. He saw the direction in which the spirit of the age
was tending, and sought to find means to the required end. He saw also
that there was a fortune awaiting the discoverer of cheap paper, and the
event has justified his clearsightedness. Within the last fifteen years,
the Patent Office has received more than a hundred applications from
persons claiming to have discovered cheap substances to be employed in
the manufacture of paper. David felt more than ever convinced that this
would be no brilliant triumph, it is true, but a useful and immensely
profitable discovery; and after his brother-in-law went to Paris, he
became more and more absorbed in the problem which he had set himself to
solve.

The expenses of his marriage and of Lucien's journey to Paris had
exhausted all his resources; he confronted the extreme of poverty at
the very outset of married life. He had kept one thousand francs for the
working expenses of the business, and owed a like sum, for which he had
given a bill to Postel the druggist. So here was a double problem for
this deep thinker; he must invent a method of making cheap paper, and
that quickly; he must make the discovery, in fact, in order to apply the
proceeds to the needs of the household and of the business. What words
can describe the brain that can forget the cruel preoccupations caused
by hidden want, by the daily needs