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