nfidant. "You will see how things will go with my
children when I am under ground. Lord! it makes me shudder to think of
it."

Old Sechard died in the month of March, 1929, leaving about two hundred
thousand francs in land. His acres added to the Verberie made a fine
property, which Kolb had managed to admiration for some two years.

David and his wife found nearly a hundred thousand crowns in gold in the
house. The department of the Charente had valued old Sechard's money at
a million; rumor, as usual, exaggerating the amount of a hoard. Eve and
David had barely thirty thousand francs of income when they added their
little fortune to the inheritance; they waited awhile, and so it fell
out that they invested their capital in Government securities at the
time of the Revolution of July.

Then, and not until then, could the department of the Charente and David
Sechard form some idea of the wealth of the tall Cointet. Rich to the
extent of several millions of francs, the elder Cointet became a deputy,
and is at this day a peer of France. It is said that he will be Minister
of Commerce in the next Government; for in 1842 he married Mlle.
Popinot, daughter of M. Anselme Popinot, one of the most influential
statesmen of the dynasty, deputy and mayor of an arrondissement in
Paris.

David Sechard's discovery has been assimilated by the French
manufacturing world, as food is assimilated by a living body. Thanks to
the introduction of materials other than rags, France can produce paper
more cheaply than any other European country. Dutch paper, as David
foresaw, no longer exists. Sooner or later it will be necessary, no
doubt, to establish a Royal Paper Manufactory; like the Gobelins, the
Sevres porcelain works, the Savonnerie, and the Imprimerie royale, which
so far have escaped the destruction threatened by _bourgeois_ vandalism.

David Sechard, beloved by his wife, father of two boys and a girl, has
the good taste to make no allusion to his past efforts. Eve had the
sense to dissuade him from following his terrible vocation; for the
inventor like Moses on Mount Horeb, is consumed by the burning bush. He
cultivates literature by way of recreation, and leads a comfortable life
of leisure, befitting the landowner who lives on his own estate. He has
bidden farewell for ever to glory, and bravely taken his place in the
class of dreamers and collectors; for he dabbles in entomology, and is
at present investigating the transformat