mmerce can detect the delinquents, or compel
them to pay their due to the Government. And though Metivier and the
Cointets were "outside brokers," in the language of the Stock Exchange,
none the less among them they could set some hundreds of thousands of
francs moving every three months in the markets of Paris, Bordeaux, and
Angouleme. Now it so fell out that that very evening Cointet Brothers
had received Lucien's forged bills in the course of business. Upon this
debt, tall Cointet forthwith erected a formidable engine, pointed, as
will presently be seen, against the poor, patient inventor.

By seven o'clock next morning, Boniface Cointet was taking a walk by the
mill stream that turned the wheels in his big factory; the sound of the
water covered his talk, for he was talking with a companion, a young
man of nine-and-twenty, who had been appointed attorney to the Court of
First Instance in Angouleme some six weeks ago. The young man's name was
Pierre Petit-Claud.

"You are a schoolfellow of David Sechard's, are you not?" asked tall
Cointet by way of greeting to the young attorney. Petit-Claud had lost
no time in answering the wealthy manufacturer's summons.

"Yes, sir," said Petit-Claud, keeping step with tall Cointet.

"Have you renewed the acquaintance?"

"We have met once or twice at most since he came back. It could hardly
have been otherwise. In Paris I was buried away in the office or at
the courts on week-days, and on Sundays and holidays I was hard at
work studying, for I had only myself to look to." (Tall Cointet nodded
approvingly.) "When we met again, David and I, he asked me what I
had done with myself. I told him that after I had finished my time at
Poitiers, I had risen to be Maitre Olivet's head-clerk, and that some
time or other I hoped to make a bid for his berth. I know a good deal
more of Lucien Chardon (de Rubempre he calls himself now), he was Mme.
de Bargeton's lover, our great poet, David Sechard's brother-in-law, in
fact."

"Then you can go and tell David of your appointment, and offer him your
services," said tall Cointet.

"One can't do that," said the young attorney.

"He has never had a lawsuit, and he has no attorney, so one can do
that," said Cointet, scanning the other narrowly from behind his colored
spectacles.

A certain quantity of gall mingled with the blood in Pierre
Petit-Claud's veins; his father was a tailor in L'Houmeau, and his
schoolfellows had looked down upon him