“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 Mûrier with Cérizet watching the silhouettes of the husband and wife on the blinds. He always came at midnight for a chat with Cérizet, for the latter played the spy upon his former master’s every movement. “He is showing her the paper he made this morning, no doubt,” said Cérizet. “What is it made of?” asked the paper manufacturer. “Impossible to guess,” answered Cérizet; “I made a hole in the roof and scrambled up and watched the gaffer; he was boiling pulp in a copper pan all last night. There was a heap of stuff in a corner, but I could make nothing of it; it looked like a heap of tow, as near as I could make out.”