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
curved pantiles in common use in the South of France. The decrepit
casements were fitted with the heavy, unwieldy shutters necessary in
that climate, and held in place by massive iron cross bars. It would
have puzzled you to find a more dilapidated house in Angouleme;
nothing but sheer tenacity of mortar kept it together. Try to picture
the workshop, lighted at either end, and dark in the middle; the walls
covered with handbills and begrimed by friction of all the workmen who
had rubbed past them for thirty years; the cobweb of cordage across
the ceiling, the stacks of paper, the old-fashioned presses, the pile
of slabs for weighting the damp sheets, the rows of cases, and the two
dens in the far corners where the master printer and foreman sat--and
you will have some idea of the life led by the two friends.

One day early in May, 1821, David and Lucien were standing together by
the window that looked into the yard. It was nearly two o'clock, and
the four or five men were going out to dinner. David waited until the
apprentice had shut the street door with the bell fastened to it; then
he drew Lucien out into the yard as if the smell of paper, ink, and
presses and old woodwork had grown intolerable to him, and together
they sat down under the vines, keeping the office and the door in
view. The sunbeams, playing among the trellised vine-shoots, hovered