into poverty, resigned
herself to her dreary lot. Diffident as she seemed, she was in reality
proud, and would not make a single advance towards the son of a father
said to be rich. People who knew the value of a growing property, said
that the vineyard at Marsac was worth more than eighty thousand
francs, to say nothing of the traditional bits of land which old
Sechard used to buy as they came into the market, for old Sechard had
savings--he was lucky with his vintages, and a clever salesman.
Perhaps David was the only man in Angouleme who knew nothing of his
father's wealth. In David's eyes Marsac was a hovel bought in 1810 for
fifteen or sixteen thousand francs, a place that he saw once a year at
vintage time when his father walked him up and down among the vines
and boasted of an output of wine which the young printer never saw,
and he cared nothing about it.

David was a student leading a solitary life; and the love that gained
even greater force in solitude, as he dwelt upon the difficulties in
the way, was timid, and looked for encouragement; for David stood more
in awe of Eve than a simple clerk of some high-born lady. He was
awkward and ill at ease in the presence of his idol, and as eager to
hurry away as he had been to come. He repressed his passion, and was
silent. Often of an evening, on some pretext of consulting Lucien, he
would leave the Place du Murier and go down through the Palet Gate as
far as L'Houmeau, but at the sight of the green iron railings his
heart failed. Perhaps he had come too late, Eve might think him a
nuisance; she would be in bed by this time no doubt; and so he turned
back. But though his great love had only appeared in trifles, Eve read
it clearly; she was proud, without a touch of vanity in her pride, of
the deep reverence in David's looks and words and manner towards her,
but it was the young printer's enthusiastic belief in Lucien that drew
her to him most of all. He had divined the way to win Eve. The mute
delights of this love of theirs differed from the transports of stormy
passion, as wildflowers in the fields from the brilliant flowers in
garden beds. Interchange of glances, delicate and sweet as blue
water-flowers on the surface of the stream; a look in either face,
vanishing as swiftly as the scent of briar-rose; melancholy, tender as
the velvet of moss--these were the blossoms of two rare natures,
springing up out of a rich and fruitful soil on foundations of rock.
Many