ady by the Didots, caught at
this latter notion, saw a fortune in it, and looked upon Lucien as the
benefactor whom he could never repay.

Any one may guess how the ruling thoughts and inner life of this pair of
friends unfitted them for carrying on the business of a printing house.
So far from making fifteen to twenty thousand francs, like Cointet
Brothers, printers and publishers to the diocese, and proprietors of the
_Charente Chronicle_ (now the only newspaper in the department)--Sechard
& Son made a bare three hundred francs per month, out of which the
foreman's salary must be paid, as well as Marion's wages and the rent
and taxes; so that David himself was scarcely making twelve hundred
francs per annum. Active and industrious men of business would have
bought new type and new machinery, and made an effort to secure orders
for cheap printing from the Paris book trade; but master and foreman,
deep in absorbing intellectual interests, were quite content with such
orders as came to them from their remaining customers.

In the long length the Cointets had come to understand David's character
and habits. They did not slander him now; on the contrary, wise policy
required that they should allow the business to flicker on; it was to
their interest indeed to maintain it in a small way, lest it should fall
into the hands of some more formidable competitor; they made a practice
of sending prospectuses and circulars--job-printing, as it is called--to
the Sechard's establishment. So it came about that, all unwittingly,
David owed his existence, commercially speaking, to the cunning schemes
of his competitors. The Cointets, well pleased with his "craze," as they
called it, behaved to all appearance both fairly and handsomely; but,
as a matter of fact, they were adopting the tactics of the mail-coach
owners who set up a sham opposition coach to keep _bona fide_ rivals out
of the field.

Inside and outside, the condition of the Sechard printing establishment
bore testimony to the sordid avarice of the old "bear," who never spent
a penny on repairs. The old house had stood in sun and rain, and borne
the brunt of the weather, till it looked like some venerable tree trunk
set down at the entrance of the alley, so riven it was with seams and
cracks of all sorts and sizes. The house front, built of brick and
stone, with no pretensions to symmetry, seemed to be bending beneath the
weight of a worm-eaten roof covered with the cur