on of three bare, unfurnished rooms on the day that saw him
installed in the printing-house, without one sou wherewith to pay his
men's wages. When he asked his father, as a partner, to contribute
his share towards the working expenses, the old man pretended not to
understand. He had found the printing-house, he said, and he was not
bound to find the money too. He had paid his share. Pressed close by
his son's reasoning, he answered that when he himself had paid Rouzeau's
widow he had not had a penny left. If he, a poor, ignorant working man,
had made his way, Didot's apprentice should do still better. Besides,
had not David been earning money, thanks to an education paid for by
the sweat of his old father's brow? Now surely was the time when the
education would come in useful.

"What have you done with your 'polls?'" he asked, returning to
the charge. He meant to have light on a problem which his son left
unresolved the day before.

"Why, had I not to live?" David asked indignantly, "and books to buy
besides?"

"Oh! you bought books, did you? You will make a poor man of business. A
man that buys books is hardly fit to print them," retorted the "bear."

Then David endured the most painful of humiliations--the sense of shame
for a parent; there was nothing for it but to be passive while his
father poured out a flood of reasons--sordid, whining, contemptible,
money-getting reasons--in which the niggardly old man wrapped his
refusal. David crushed down his pain into the depths of his soul; he saw
that he was alone; saw that he had no one to look to but himself; saw,
too, that his father was trying to make money out of him; and in a
spirit of philosophical curiosity, he tried to find out how far the old
man would go. He called old Sechard's attention to the fact that he
had never as yet made any inquiry as to his mother's fortune; if that
fortune would not buy the printing-house, it might go some ways towards
paying the working expenses.

"Your mother's fortune?" echoed old Sechard; "why, it was her beauty and
intelligence!"

David understood his father thoroughly after that answer; he understood
that only after an interminable, expensive, and disgraceful lawsuit
could he obtain any account of the money which by rights was his. The
noble heart accepted the heavy burden laid upon it, seeing clearly
beforehand how difficult it would be to free himself from the
engagements into which he had entered with his father.

"