Marion was obliged to run into debt for necessaries for them all. Kolb was earning a franc for daily wage as a brick-layer’s laborer; and at last poor Eve, who, for the sake of her husband and child, had sacrificed her last resources to entertain David’s father, saw that she had only ten francs left. She had hoped to the last to soften the old miser’s heart by her affectionate respect, and patience, and pretty attentions; but old Séchard was obdurate as ever. When she saw him turn the same cold eyes on her, the same look that the Cointets had given her, and Petit-Claud and Cérizet, she tried to watch and guess old Séchard’s intentions. Trouble thrown away! Old Séchard, never sober, never drunk, was inscrutable; intoxication is a double veil. If the old man’s tipsiness was sometimes real, it was quite often feigned for the purpose of extracting David’s secret from his wife. Sometimes he coaxed, sometimes he frightened his daughter-in-law. “I will drink up my property; _I will buy an annuity_,” he would threaten when Eve told him that she knew nothing. The humiliating struggle was wearing her out; she kept silence at last, lest she should show disrespect to her husband’s father. “But, father,” she said one day when driven to extremity, “there is a very simple way of finding out everything. Pay David’s debts; he will come home, and you can settle it between you.” “Ha! that is what you want to get out of me, is it?” he cried. “It is as well to know!” But if Séchard had no belief in his son, he had plenty of faith in the Cointets. He went to consult them, and the Cointets dazzled him of set purpose, telling him that his son’s experiments might mean millions of francs. “If David can prove that he has succeeded, I shall not hesitate to go into partnership with him, and reckon his discovery as half the capital,” the tall Cointet told him. The suspicious old man learned a good deal over nips of brandy with the work-people, and something more by questioning Petit-Claud and feigning stupidity; and at length he felt convinced that the Cointets were the real movers behind Métivier; they were plotting to ruin Séchard’s printing establishment, and to lure him (Séchard) on to pay his son’s debts by holding out the discovery as a bait. The old man of the people did not suspect that Petit-Claud was in the plot, nor had he any idea of the toils woven to ensnare the great secret. A day came at last when he grew angry and out of patience with the daughter-in-law who would not so much as tell him where David was hiding; he determined to force the laboratory door, for he had discovered that David was wont to make his experiments in the workshop where the rollers were melted down. He came downstairs very early one morning and set to work upon the lock. “Hey! Papa Séchard, what are you doing there?” Marion called out. (She had risen at daybreak to go to her papermill, and now she sprang across to the workshop.)