“Go no farther,” said Boniface Cointet in unctuous tones; “it would not be right. Mme. Séchard will offer to renew your lease; tell her that you are thinking of setting up for yourself. Offer her half the value of the plant and license, and, if she takes the bid, come to me. In any case, spin the matter out. . . . Have they no money?” “Not a sou,” said Cérizet. “Not a sou,” repeated tall Cointet.--“I have them now,” said he to himself. Métivier, paper manufacturers’ wholesale agent, and Cointet Brothers, printers and paper manufacturers, were also bankers in all but name. This surreptitious banking system defies all the ingenuity of the Inland Revenue Department. Every banker is required to take out a license which, in Paris, costs five hundred francs; but no hitherto devised method of controlling commerce can detect the delinquents, or compel them to pay their due to the Government. And though Métivier and the Cointets were “outside brokers,” in the language of the Stock Exchange, none the less among them they could set some hundreds of thousands of francs moving every three months in the markets of Paris, Bordeaux, and Angoulême. Now it so fell out that that very evening Cointet Brothers had received Lucien’s forged bills in the course of business. Upon this debt, tall Cointet forthwith erected a formidable engine, pointed, as will presently be seen, against the poor, patient inventor. By seven o’clock next morning, Boniface Cointet was taking a walk by the mill stream that turned the wheels in his big factory; the sound of the water covered his talk, for he was talking with a companion, a young man of nine-and-twenty, who had been appointed attorney to the Court of First Instance in Angoulême some six weeks ago. The young man’s name was Pierre Petit-Claud. “You are a schoolfellow of David Séchard’s, are you not?” asked tall Cointet by way of greeting to the young attorney. Petit-Claud had lost no time in answering the wealthy manufacturer’s summons. “Yes, sir,” said Petit-Claud, keeping step with tall Cointet. “Have you renewed the acquaintance?” “We have met once or twice at most since he came back. It could hardly have been otherwise. In Paris I was buried away in the office or at the courts on week-days, and on Sundays and holidays I was hard at work studying, for I had only myself to look to.” (Tall Cointet nodded approvingly.) “When we met again, David and I, he asked me what I had done with myself. I told him that after I had finished my time at Poitiers, I had risen to be Maître Olivet’s head-clerk, and that some time or other I hoped to make a bid for his berth. I know a good deal more of Lucien Chardon (de Rubempré he calls himself now), he was Mme. de Bargeton’s lover, our great poet, David Séchard’s brother-in-law, in fact.” “Then you can go and tell David of your appointment, and offer him your services,” said tall Cointet. “One can’t do that,” said the young attorney.