intet went in search of him
and comforted him. Boniface was delightfully amiable.

"Do not lose heart," he said; "go on! I am a good fellow, I understand
you; I will stand by you to the end."

"Really," David said to his wife at dinner, "we are with good people;
I should not have expected that the tall Cointet would be so generous."
And he repeated his conversation with his wily partner.

Three months were spent in experiments. David slept at the mill; he
noted the effects of various preparations upon the pulp. At one time
he attributed his non-success to an admixture of rag-pulp with his own
ingredients, and made a batch entirely composed of the new material;
at another, he endeavored to size pulp made exclusively from rags;
persevering in his experiments under the eyes of the tall Cointet, whom
he had ceased to mistrust, until he had tried every possible combination
of pulp and size. David lived in the paper-mill for the first six months
of 1823--if it can be called living, to leave food untasted, and go
in neglect of person and dress. He wrestled so desperately with
the difficulties, that anybody but the Cointets would have seen the
sublimity of the struggle, for the brave fellow was not thinking of his
own interests. The moment had come when he cared for nothing but the
victory. With marvelous sagacity he watched the unaccountable freaks of
the semi-artificial substances called into existence by man for ends of
his own; substances in which nature had been tamed, as it were, and
her tacit resistance overcome; and from these observations drew great
conclusions; finding, as he did, that such creations can only be
obtained by following the laws of the more remote affinities of things,
of "a second nature," as he called it, in substances.

Towards the end of August he succeeded to some extent in sizing the
paper pulp in the vat; the result being a kind of paper identical with
a make in use for printers' proofs at the present day--a kind of paper
that cannot be depended upon, for the sizing itself is not always
certain. This was a great result, considering the condition of the paper
trade in 1823, and David hoped to solve the final difficulties of the
problem, but--it had cost ten thousand francs.

Singular rumors were current at this time in Angouleme and L'Houmeau.
It was said that David Sechard was ruining the firm of Cointet Brothers.
Experiments had eaten up twenty thousand francs; and the result, said
gossip, w