s for the printing
business, so as not to ruin his son; he was fond of his son; he was
taking his son's part. The vinegrower brought his son to the front to
gain his point, as a peasant brings in his wife.

His son was unwilling to do this, that, or the other; it varied
according to the offers which he wrung one after another from the
Cointets, until, not without an effort, he drew them on to give
twenty-two thousand francs for the _Charente Chronicle_. But, at the
same time, David must pledge himself thenceforward to print no newspaper
whatsoever, under a penalty of thirty thousand francs for damages.

That transaction dealt the deathblow to the Sechard establishment; but
the old vinegrower did not trouble himself much on that head. Murder
usually follows robbery. Our worthy friend intended to pay himself with
the ready money. To have the cash in his own hands he would have given
in David himself over and above the bargain, and so much the more
willingly since that this nuisance of a son could claim one-half of the
unexpected windfall. Taking this fact into consideration, therefore, the
generous parent consented to abandon his share of the business but not
the business premises; and the rental was still maintained at the famous
sum of twelve hundred francs per annum.

The old man came into town very seldom after the paper was sold to the
Cointets. He pleaded his advanced age, but the truth was that he took
little interest in the establishment now that it was his no longer.
Still, he could not quite shake off his old kindness for his
stock-in-trade; and when business brought him into Angouleme, it would
have been hard to say which was the stronger attraction to the old
house--his wooden presses or the son whom (as a matter of form) he asked
for rent. The old foreman, who had gone over to the rival establishment,
knew exactly how much this fatherly generosity was worth; the old fox
meant to reserve a right to interfere in his son's affairs, and had
taken care to appear in the bankruptcy as a privileged creditor for
arrears of rent.

The causes of David's heedlessness throw a light on the character of
that young man. Only a few days after his establishment in the paternal
printing office, he came across an old school friend in the direst
poverty. Lucien Chardon, a young fellow of one-and-twenty or
thereabouts, was the son of a surgeon-major who had retired with a
wound from the republican army. Nature had meant M. Cha