ou," he added
hastily, seeing how white Cerizet's face grew.

"You want something more of me?" cried Cerizet.

"Well, here it is," said Petit-Claud. "Follow me carefully. You will be
a master printer in Angouleme in two months' time . . . but you will not
have paid for your business--you will not pay for it in ten years. You
will work a long while yet for those that have lent you the money, and
you will be the cat's-paw of the Liberal party. . . . Now _I_ shall draw
up your agreement with Gannerac, and I can draw it up in such a way that
you will have the business in your own hands one of these days. But--if
the Liberals start a paper, if you bring it out, and if I am deputy
public prosecutor, then you will come to an understanding with the
Cointets and publish articles of such a nature that they will have the
paper suppressed. . . . The Cointets will pay you handsomely for that
service. . . . I know, of course, that you will be a hero, a victim
of persecution; you will be a personage among the Liberals--a Sergeant
Mercier, a Paul-Louis Courier, a Manual on a small scale. I will take
care that they leave you your license. In fact, on the day when the
newspaper is suppressed, I will burn this letter before your eyes. . . .
Your fortune will not cost you much."

A working man has the haziest notions as to the law with regard to
forgery; and Cerizet, who beheld himself already in the dock, breathed
again.

"In three years' time," continued Petit-Claud, "I shall be public
prosecutor in Angouleme. You may have need of me some day; bear that in
mind."

"It's agreed," said Cerizet, "but you don't know me. Burn that letter
now and trust to my gratitude."

Petit-Claud looked Cerizet in the face. It was a duel in which one man's
gaze is a scalpel with which he essays to probe the soul of another,
and the eyes of that other are a theatre, as it were, to which all his
virtue is summoned for display.

Petit-Claud did not utter a word. He lighted a taper and burned the
letter. "He has his way to make," he said to himself.

"Here is one that will go through fire and water for you," said Cerizet.

David awaited the interview with the Cointets with a vague feeling of
uneasiness; not, however, on account of the proposed partnership, nor
for his own interests--he felt nervous as to their opinion of his work.
He was in something the same position as a dramatic author before his
judges. The inventor's pride in the discovery s