on of the thinness, which told of overwork
and a brain in continual ferment. His lank, sleek gray hair, cut in
somewhat ecclesiastical fashion; the black trousers, black stockings,
black waistcoat, and long puce-colored greatcoat (styled a _levite_ in
the south), all completed his resemblance to a Jesuit.

Boniface was called "tall Cointet" to distinguish him from his
brother, "fat Cointet," and the nicknames expressed a difference in
character as well as a physical difference between a pair of equally
redoubtable personages. As for Jean Cointet, a jolly, stout fellow,
with a face from a Flemish interior, colored by the southern sun of
Angouleme, thick-set, short and paunchy as Sancho Panza; with a smile
on his lips and a pair of sturdy shoulders, he was a striking contrast
to his older brother. Nor was the difference only physical and
intellectual. Jean might almost be called Liberal in politics; he
belonged to the Left Centre, only went to mass on Sundays, and lived
on a remarkably good understanding with the Liberal men of business.
There were those in L'Houmeau who said that this divergence between
the brothers was more apparent than real. Tall Cointet turned his
brother's seeming good nature to advantage very skilfully. Jean was
his bludgeon. It was Jean who gave all the hard words; it was Jean who
conducted the executions which little beseemed the elder brother's
benevolence. Jean took the storms department; he would fly into a
rage, and propose terms that nobody would think of accepting, to pave
the way for his brother's less unreasonable propositions. And by such
policy the pair attained their ends, sooner or later.

Eve, with a woman's tact, had soon divined the characters of the two
brothers; she was on her guard with foes so formidable. David,
informed beforehand of everything by his wife, lent a profoundly
inattentive mind to his enemies' proposals.

"Come to an understanding with my wife," he said, as he left the
Cointets in the office and went back to his laboratory. "Mme. Sechard
knows more about the business than I do myself. I am interested in
something that will pay better than this poor place; I hope to find a
way to retrieve the losses that I have made through you----"

"And how?" asked the fat Cointet, chuckling.

Eve gave her husband a look that meant, "Be careful!"

"You will be my tributaries," said David, "and all other consumers of
papers besides."

"Then what are you investigating?" as