ready made. You can go into partnership on the strength of those
samples, inserting a clause to protect yourselves in case the
conditions of the patent are not fulfilled in the manufacturing
process."

"It is one thing to make samples of paper on a small scale in your own
room with a small mould, monsieur, and another to turn out a
quantity," said the tall Cointet, addressing David. "Quite another
thing, as you may judge from this single fact. We manufacture colored
papers. We buy parcels of coloring absolutely identical. Every cake of
indigo used for 'blueing' our post-demy is taken from a batch supplied
by the same maker. Well, we have never yet been able to obtain two
batches of precisely the same shade. There are variations in the
material which we cannot detect. The quantity and the quality of the
pulp modify every question at once. Suppose that you have in a caldron
a quantity of ingredients of some kind (I don't ask to know what they
are), you can do as you like with them, the treatment can be uniformly
applied, you can manipulate, knead, and pestle the mass at your
pleasure until you have a homogeneous substance. But who will
guarantee that it will be the same with a batch of five hundred reams,
and that your plan will succeed in bulk?"

David, Eve, and Petit-Claud looked at one another; their eyes said
many things.

"Take a somewhat similar case," continued the tall Cointet after a
pause. "You cut two or three trusses of meadow hay, and store it in a
loft before 'the heat is out of the grass,' as the peasants say; the
hay ferments, but no harm comes of it. You follow up your experiment
by storing a couple of thousand trusses in a wooden barn--and, of
course, the hay smoulders, and the barn blazes up like a lighted
match. You are an educated man," continued Cointet; "you can see the
application for yourself. So far, you have only cut your two trusses
of hay; we are afraid of setting fire to our paper-mill by bringing in
a couple of thousand trusses. In other words, we may spoil more than
one batch, make heavy losses, and find ourselves none the better for
laying out a good deal of money."

David was completely floored by this reasoning. Practical wisdom spoke
in matter-of-fact language to theory, whose word is always for the
future.

"Devil fetch me, if I'll sign such a deed of partnership!" the stout
Cointet cried bluntly. "You may throw away your money if you like,
Boniface; as for me, I shall keep mi