e three times as much some day. Love and
thought make up my life--a divine life. I am working for Lucien's sake
and for my wife's."

"Come, give me this power of attorney, and think of nothing but your
discovery. If there should be any danger of arrest, I will let you
know in time, for we must think of all possibilities. And let me tell
you again to allow no one of whom you are not so sure as you are of
yourself to come into your place."

"Cerizet did not care to continue the lease of the plant and premises,
hence our little money difficulties. We have no one at home now but
Marion and Kolb, an Alsacien as trusty as a dog, and my wife and her
mother----"

"One word," said Petit-Claud, "don't trust that dog----"

"You do not know him," exclaimed David; "he is like a second self."

"May I try him?"

"Yes," said Sechard.

"There, good-bye, but send Mme. Sechard to me; I must have a power of
attorney from your wife. And bear in mind, my friend, that there is a
fire burning in your affairs," said Petit-Claud, by way of warning of
all the troubles gathering in the law courts to burst upon David's
head.

"Here am I with one foot in Burgundy and the other in Champagne," he
added to himself as he closed the office door on David.

Harassed by money difficulties, beset with fears for his wife's
health, stung to the quick by Lucien's disgrace, David had worked on
at his problem. He had been trying to find a single process to replace
the various operations of pounding and maceration to which all flax or
cotton or rags, any vegetable fibre, in fact, must be subjected; and
as he went to Petit-Claud's office, he abstractedly chewed a bit of
nettle stalk that had been steeping in water. On his way home,
tolerably satisfied with his interview, he felt a little pellet
sticking between his teeth. He laid it on his hand, flattened it out,
and saw that the pulp was far superior to any previous result. The
want of cohesion is the great drawback of all vegetable fibre; straw,
for instance, yields a very brittle paper, which may almost be called
metallic and resonant. These chances only befall bold inquirers into
Nature's methods!

"Now," said he to himself, "I must contrive to do by machinery and
some chemical agency the thing that I myself have done unconsciously."

When his wife saw him, his face was radiant with belief in victory.
There were traces of tears in Eve's face.

"Oh! my darling, do not trouble yourself; Petit-Clau