buying cotton cheaply and in doubling the quantity ventured upon by
his predecessor. This simple system enabled Phileas to triple the
manufacture and to pose as the benefactor of the workingmen; so that
he was able to disperse his hosiery in Paris and all over France at a
profit, when the luckiest of his competitors were only able to sell
their goods at cost price.

At the beginning of 1814, Phileas had emptied his warerooms. The
prospect of a war on French soil, the hardships of which were likely
to press chiefly on Champagne, made him cautious. He manufactured
nothing, and held himself ready to meet all events with his capital
turned into gold. At this period the custom-house lines were no longer
maintained. Napoleon could not do without his thirty thousand
custom-house officers for service in the field. Cotton, then
introduced through a thousand loopholes, slipped into the markets of
France. No one can imagine how sly and how alert cotton had become at
this epoch, nor with what eagerness the English laid hold of a country
where cotton stockings sold for six francs a pair, and cambric shirts
were objects of luxury.

Manufacturers from the second class, the principal workmen, reckoning
on the genius of Napoleon, had bought up the cottons that came from
Spain. They worked it up in hopes of being able later to give the law
to the merchants of Paris. Phileas observed these facts. When the war
ravaged Champagne, he kept himself between the French army and Paris.
After each lost battle he went among the workmen who had buried their
products in casks,--a sort of silo of hosiery,--then, gold in hand,
this Cossack of weaving bought up, from village to village, below the
cost of fabrication, tons of merchandise which might otherwise become
at any time a prey to an enemy whose feet were as much in need of