o nearly completed left
no room for any other feelings.

At seven o'clock that evening, while Mme. du Chatelet, pleading a sick
headache, had gone to her room in her unhappiness over the rumors of
Lucien's departure; while M. de Comte, left to himself, was entertaining
his guests at dinner--the tall Cointet and his stout brother,
accompanied by Petit-Claud, opened negotiations with the competitor who
had delivered himself up, bound hand and foot.

A difficulty awaited them at the outset. How was it possible to draw
up a deed of partnership unless they knew David's secret? And if
David divulged his secret, he would be at the mercy of the Cointets.
Petit-Claud arranged that the deed of partnership should be the first
drawn up. Thereupon the tall Cointet asked to see some specimens of
David's work, and David brought out the last sheet that he had made,
guaranteeing the price of production.

"Well," said Petit-Claud, "there you have the basis of the agreement
ready made. You can go into partnership on the strength of those
samples, inserting a clause to protect yourselves in case the conditions
of the patent are not fulfilled in the manufacturing process."

"It is one thing to make samples of paper on a small scale in your own
room with a small mould, monsieur, and another to turn out a quantity,"
said the tall Cointet, addressing David. "Quite another thing, as you
may judge from this single fact. We manufacture colored papers. We buy
parcels of coloring absolutely identical. Every cake of indigo used
for 'blueing' our post-demy is taken from a batch supplied by the
same maker. Well, we have never yet been able to obtain two batches of
precisely the same shade. There are variations in the material which
we cannot detect. The quantity and the quality of the pulp modify every
question at once. Suppose that you have in a caldron a quantity of
ingredients of some kind (I don't ask to know what they are), you can do
as you like with them, the treatment can be uniformly applied, you can
manipulate, knead, and pestle the mass at your pleasure until you have
a homogeneous substance. But who will guarantee that it will be the same
with a batch of five hundred reams, and that your plan will succeed in
bulk?"

David, Eve, and Petit-Claud looked at one another; their eyes said many
things.

"Take a somewhat similar case," continued the tall Cointet after a
pause. "You cut two or three trusses of meadow hay, and store it in a
l