The Angoulême paper-mills manufacture paper for stationers. Notepaper, foolscap, crown, and post-demy are all necessarily sized; and these papers have been the pride of the Angoulême mills for a long while past, stationery being the specialty of the Charente. This fact gave color to the Cointet’s urgency upon the point of sizing in the pulping-trough; but, as a matter of fact, they cared nothing for this part of David’s researches. The demand for writing-paper is exceedingly small compared with the almost unlimited demand for unsized paper for printers. As Boniface Cointet traveled to Paris to take out the patent in his own name, he was projecting plans that were like to work a revolution in his paper-mill. Arrived in Paris, he took up his quarters with Métivier, and gave his instructions to his agent. Métivier was to call upon the proprietors of newspapers, and offer to deliver paper at prices below those quoted by all other houses; he could guarantee in each case that the paper should be a better color, and in every way superior to the best kinds hitherto in use. Newspapers are always supplied by contract; there would be time before the present contracts expired to complete all the subterranean operations with buyers, and to obtain a monopoly of the trade. Cointet calculated that he could rid himself of Séchard while Métivier was taking orders from the principal Paris newspapers, which even then consumed two hundred reams daily. Cointet naturally offered Métivier a large commission on the contracts, for he wished to secure a clever representative on the spot, and to waste no time in traveling to and fro. And in this manner the fortunes of the firm of Métivier, one of the largest houses in the paper trade, were founded. The tall Cointet went back to Angoulême to be present at Petit-Claud’s wedding, with a mind at rest as to the future. Petit-Claud had sold his professional connection, and was only waiting for M. Milaud’s promotion to take the public prosecutor’s place, which had been promised to him by the Comtesse du Châtelet. The public prosecutor’s second deputy was appointed first deputy to the Court of Limoges, the Keeper of the Seals sent a man of his own to Angoulême, and the post of first deputy was kept vacant for a couple of months. The interval was Petit-Claud’s honeymoon. While Boniface Cointet was in Paris, David made a first experimental batch of unsized paper far superior to that in common use for newspapers. He followed it up with a second batch of magnificent vellum paper for fine printing, and this the Cointets used for a new edition of their diocesan prayer-book. The material had been privately prepared by David himself; he would have no helpers but Kolb and Marion. When Boniface came back the whole affair wore a different aspect; he looked at the samples, and was fairly satisfied.