“Leave me to manage the Cointets,” said he to his son; “don’t you meddle in this business.” The old man saw what the Cointets meant; and they took alarm at his clearsighted sagacity. His son was making a blunder, he said, and he, Séchard, had come to put a stop to it. “What was to become of the connection if David gave up the paper? It all depended upon the paper. All the attorneys and solicitors and men of business in L’Houmeau were Liberals to a man. The Cointets had tried to ruin the Séchards by accusing them of Liberalism, and by so doing gave them a plank to cling to--the Séchards should keep the Liberal business. Sell the paper indeed! Why, you might as well sell the stock-in-trade and the license!” Old Séchard asked the Cointets sixty thousand francs for the printing business, so as not to ruin his son; he was fond of his son; he was taking his son’s part. The vinegrower brought his son to the front to gain his point, as a peasant brings in his wife. His son was unwilling to do this, that, or the other; it varied according to the offers which he wrung one after another from the Cointets, until, not without an effort, he drew them on to give twenty-two thousand francs for the _Charente Chronicle_. But, at the same time, David must pledge himself thenceforward to print no newspaper whatsoever, under a penalty of thirty thousand francs for damages. That transaction dealt the deathblow to the Séchard establishment; but the old vinegrower did not trouble himself much on that head. Murder usually follows robbery. Our worthy friend intended to pay himself with the ready money. To have the cash in his own hands he would have given in David himself over and above the bargain, and so much the more willingly since that this nuisance of a son could claim one-half of the unexpected windfall. Taking this fact into consideration, therefore, the generous parent consented to abandon his share of the business but not the business premises; and the rental was still maintained at the famous sum of twelve hundred francs per annum. The old man came into town very seldom after the paper was sold to the Cointets. He pleaded his advanced age, but the truth was that he took little interest in the establishment now that it was his no longer. Still, he could not quite shake off his old kindness for his stock-in-trade; and when business brought him into Angoulême, it would have been hard to say which was the stronger attraction to the old house--his wooden presses or the son whom (as a matter of form) he asked for rent. The old foreman, who had gone over to the rival establishment, knew exactly how much this fatherly generosity was worth; the old fox meant to reserve a right to interfere in his son’s affairs, and had taken care to appear in the bankruptcy as a privileged creditor for arrears of rent.