I will work," he said to himself. "After all, if I have a rough time of
it, so had the old man; besides, I shall be working for myself, shall I
not?"

"I am leaving you a treasure," said Sechard, uneasy at his son's
silence.

David asked what the treasure might be.

"Marion!" said his father.

Marion, a big country girl, was an indispensable part of the
establishment. It was Marion who damped the paper and cut it to size;
Marion did the cooking, washing, and marketing; Marion unloaded the
paper carts, collected accounts, and cleaned the ink-balls; and if
Marion had but known how to read, old Sechard would have put her to set
up type into the bargain.

Old Sechard set out on foot for the country. Delighted as he was with
his sale of the business, he was not quite easy in his mind as to the
payment. To the throes of the vendor, the agony of uncertainty as to the
completion of the purchase inevitably succeeds. Passion of every sort
is essentially Jesuitical. Here was a man who thought that education was
useless, forcing himself to believe in the influence of education.
He was mortgaging thirty thousand francs upon the ideas of honor and
conduct which education should have developed in his son; David had
received a good training, so David would sweat blood and water to fulfil
his engagements; David's knowledge would discover new resources; and
David seemed to be full of fine feelings, so--David would pay! Many a
parent does in this way, and thinks that he has acted a father's part;
old Sechard was quite of that opinion by the time that he had reached
his vineyard at Marsac, a hamlet some four leagues out of Angouleme. The
previous owner had built a nice little house on the bit of property, and
from year to year had added other bits of land to it, until in 1809 the
old "bear" bought the whole, and went thither, exchanging the toil of
the printing press for the labor of the winepress. As he put it himself,
"he had been in that line so long that he ought to know something about
it."

During the first twelvemonth of rural retirement, Sechard senior showed
a careful countenance among his vine props; for he was always in his
vineyard now, just as, in the old days, he had lived in his shop,
day in, day out. The prospect of thirty thousand francs was even more
intoxicating than sweet wine; already in imagination he fingered the
coin. The less the claim to the money, the more eager he grew to pouch
it. Not seldom his anx