The exchange of roles was the beginning of an intellectual comradeship.  Before long, Lucien told David of his own father’s farsighted views of the application of science to manufacture, while David pointed out the new ways in literature that Lucien must follow if he meant to succeed.  Not many days had passed before the young men’s friendship became a passion such as is only known in early manhood.  Then it was that David caught a glimpse of Eve’s fair face, and loved, as grave and meditative natures can love.  The et nunc et semper et in secula seculorum of the Liturgy is the device taken by many a sublime unknown poet, whose works consist in magnificent epics conceived and lost between heart and heart.  With a lover’s insight, David read the secret hopes set by the mother and sister on Lucien’s poet’s brow; and knowing their blind devotion, it was very sweet to him to draw nearer to his love by sharing her hopes and her self-sacrifice.  And in this way Lucien came to be David’s chosen brother.  As there are ultras who would fain be more Royalist than the King, so David outdid the mother and sister in his belief in Lucien’s genius; he spoiled Lucien as a mother spoils her child.

Once, under pressure of the lack of money which tied their hands, the two were ruminating after the manner of young men over ways of promptly realizing a large fortune; and, after fruitless shakings of all the trees already stripped by previous comers, Lucien bethought himself of two of his father’s ideas.  M. Chardon had talked of a method of refining sugar by a chemical process, which would reduce the cost of production by one-half; and he had another plan for employing an American vegetable fibre for making paper, something after the Chinese fashion, and effecting an enormous saving in the cost of raw material.  David, knowing the importance of a question raised already by the Didots, caught at this latter notion, saw a fortune in it, and looked upon Lucien as the benefactor whom he could never repay.

Any one may guess how the ruling thoughts and inner life of this pair of friends unfitted them for carrying on the business of a printing house.  So far from making fifteen to twenty thousand francs, like Cointet Brothers, printers and publishers to the diocese, and proprietors of the Charente Chronicle (now the only newspaper in the department)—­Sechard & Son made a bare three hundred francs per month, out of which the foreman’s salary must be paid, as well as Marion’s wages and the rent and taxes; so that David himself was scarcely making twelve hundred francs per annum.  Active and industrious men of business would have bought new type and new machinery, and made an effort to secure orders for cheap printing from the Paris book trade; but master and foreman, deep in absorbing intellectual interests, were quite content with such orders as came to them from their remaining customers.