"Jumping the Gun"

Rochefoucauld said without hesitation, "Of course. In fact, more than ten years ago, I was already hoping to build a venture with you and Pierre."

Chaumont looked somewhat ill at ease, his eyes fixed on his coffee cup. "I can only scrape together 23,000 francs. Would that be a little too little?"

"That's quite enough. From now on, you'll be the second member of the company's board of directors. That sum should get you a 3% stake, with annual dividends of four

to five thousand francs. You can station an accountant in Düsseldorf."

Rochefoucauld planned to invest over 1.2 million francs in the factory, but he had given his old friend considerably more shares, treating him as a founding investor.

Another reason was that he had always greatly admired Chaumont-a hero who had truly braved cannon fire and fought for France on the battlefield, earning the Silver Iris Medal.

That had been his own dream in his youth.

That evening, gas lamps lit the banquet hall of the Archbishop's Palace in Avignon as brightly as day-just as Joseph had said before, after the Holy See obtained its loan, it took only a year and a half to finish installing gas streetlights throughout Avignon's central urban district. Gas streetlights had long been standard in France's major cities, and now the seat of the Holy See finally no longer looked quite so shabby.

Beside a long table on the eastern side of the hall, Rochefoucauld was speaking excitedly in flawless Low German to a short nobleman in his fifties with deeply sunken eyes. "Yes, the factory will contribute at least 20,000 thalers in taxes to the city government each year, along with tremendous prestige-in the future, whenever people in North Rhine need to buy farm tools, they'll immediately think of Düsseldorf.

"Even