Eve made no reply; she took leave of the brothers, vowing inwardly to
look after Cerizet.

"Well, here are our enemies in the place!" laughed David, when Eve
brought out the papers for his signature at dinner-time.

"Pshaw!" said she, "I will answer for Kolb and Marion; they alone
would look after things. Besides, we shall be making an income of four
thousand francs from the workshop, which only costs us money as it is;
and looking forward, I see a year in which you may realize your
hopes."

"You were born to be the wife of a scientific worker, as you said by
the weir," said David, grasping her hand tenderly.

But though the Sechard household had money sufficient that winter,
they were none the less subjected to Cerizet's espionage, and all
unconsciously became dependent upon Boniface Cointet.

"We have them now!" the manager of the paper-mill had exclaimed as he
left the house with his brother the printer. "They will begin to
regard the rent as regular income; they will count upon it and run
themselves into debt. In six months' time we will decline to renew the
agreement, and then we shall see what this man of genius has at the
bottom of his mind; we will offer to help him out of his difficulty by
taking him into partnership and exploiting his discovery."

Any shrewd man of business who should have seen tall Cointet's face as
he uttered those words, "taking him into partnership," would have