m
in triumph, and laid them on his wife's lap.

"A ream of this paper, royal size, would cost five francs at the
most," he added, while Eve handled the specimens with almost childish
surprise.

"Why, how did you make these sample bits?" she asked.

"With an old kitchen sieve of Marion's."

"And are you not satisfied yet?" asked Eve.

"The problem does not lie in the manufacturing process; it is a
question of the first cost of the pulp. Alas, child, I am only a late
comer in a difficult path. As long ago as 1794, Mme. Masson tried to
use printed paper a second time; she succeeded, but what a price it
cost! The Marquis of Salisbury tried to use straw as a material in
1800, and the same idea occurred to Seguin in France in 1801. Those
sheets in your hand are made from the common rush, the _arundo
phragmites_, but I shall try nettles and thistles; for if the material
is to continue to be cheap, one must look for something that will grow
in marshes and waste lands where nothing else can be grown. The whole
secret lies in the preparation of the stems. At present my method is
not quite simple enough. Still, in spite of this difficulty, I feel
sure that I can give the French paper trade the privilege of our
literature; papermaking will be for France what coal and iron and
coarse potter's clay are for England--a monopoly. I mean to be the
Jacquart of the trade."

Eve rose to her feet. David's simple-mindedness had roused her to
enthusiasm, to admiration; she held out her arms to him and held him
tightly to her, while she laid her head upon his shoulder.

"You give me my reward as if I had succeeded already," he said.

For all answer, Eve held up her sweet face, wet with tears, to his,
and for a moment she could not speak.

"The kiss was not for the man of genius," she said, "but for my
comforter. Here is a rising glory for the glory that has set; and, in
the midst of my grief for the brother that has fallen so low, my
husband's greatness is revealed to me.--Yes, you will be great, great
like the Graindorges, the Rouvets, and Van Robais, and the Persian who
discovered madder, like all the men you have told me about; great men
whom nobody remembers, because their good deeds were obscure
industrial triumphs."

"What are they doing just now?"

It was Boniface Cointet who spoke. He was walking up and down outside
in the Place du Murier with Cerizet watching the silhouettes of the
husband and wife on the blinds. He