and of the printing office, Kolb helped at home instead of selling
broadsheets. Kolb and Marion pulled off the impressions from one form
while David worked another press with Cerizet, and superintended the
printing in various inks. Every sheet must be printed four separate
times, for which reason none but small houses will attempt to produce
a _Shepherd's Calendar_, and that only in the country where labor is
cheap, and the amount of capital employed in the business is so small
that the interest amounts to little. Wherefore, a press which turns out
beautiful work cannot compete in the printing of such sheets, coarse
though they may be.

So, for the first time since old Sechard retired, two presses were at
work in the old house. The calendar was, in its way, a masterpiece; but
Eve was obliged to sell it for less than a halfpenny, for the Cointets
were supplying hawkers at the rate of three centimes per copy. Eve made
no loss on the copies sold to hawkers; on Kolb's sales, made directly,
she gained; but her little speculation was spoiled. Cerizet saw that
his fair employer distrusted him; in his own conscience he posed as the
accuser, and said to himself, "You suspect me, do you? I will have
my revenge," for the Paris street-boy is made on this wise. Cerizet
accordingly took pay out of all proportion to the work of proof-reading
done for the Cointets, going to their office every evening for the
sheets, and returning them in the morning. He came to be on familiar
terms with them through the daily chat, and at length saw a chance of
escaping the military service, a bait held out to him by the brothers.
So far from requiring prompting from the Cointets, he was the first to
propose the espionage and exploitation of David's researches.

Eve saw how little she could depend upon Cerizet, and to find another
Kolb was simply impossible; she made up her mind to dismiss her one
compositor, for the insight of a woman who loves told her that Cerizet
was a traitor; but as this meant a deathblow to the business, she took
a man's resolution. She wrote to M. Metivier, with whom David and the
Cointets and almost every papermaker in the department had business
relations, and asked him to put the following advertisement into a trade
paper:

"FOR SALE, as a going concern, a Printing Office, with License and
Plant; situated at Angouleme. Apply for particulars to M. Metivier, Rue
Serpente."

The Cointets saw the advertisement. "That lit