Kolb helps David evade arrest and hide

Kolb helps David Séchard evade arrest and hide after a formal demand makes his confinement for debt imminent. By discovering that the Cointet brothers are helping to organize the pursuit, Kolb turns a threatened arrest into a carefully staged escape: he leads the watchers away from David while Ève Séchard reaches a concealed refuge prepared by Basine Clerget. The hiding place protects David not only from his creditors but also allows him to continue his experiments in secret.

The threat and its provincial setting

The danger reaches its peak when Doublon delivers a command announcing the use of imprisonment for debt. David tells his family that, from the following day, he will be able to go out only at night. For Ève Séchard and Madame Chardon, hiding is a source of shame, not merely an inconvenience. Kolb and Marion, who have long thought David too guileless to protect himself, are alarmed for their master and come forward to offer their help. Their concern gives the crisis a personal dimension: David’s family and servants must respond together to a legal threat they have scarcely imagined facing.

The narrator places that threat against the particular conditions of provincial life. In a small town, creditor and debtor are likely to remain in one another’s sight; arrest is therefore described as an exceptional and socially harsh measure. Local customs and legal obstacles can also restrain its use. An officer’s authority ends at the jurisdictional boundary, and the rule protecting the home limits entry to seize a debtor; in the debtor’s own home, the officer needs the justice of the peace’s assistance. This setting helps explain why concealment and local loyalties matter so much: the pursuit depends on finding David, while the province’s close-knit society and legal procedures can make that pursuit difficult.

Kolb discovers the pursuit plan

To learn what David’s enemies intend, Kolb goes to Doublon’s house pretending that he wants to betray his master. The house is described in telling practical detail: a broad tiled passage leads to the study, whose street-facing windows are barred, while the bailiff’s garden lies behind it. The arrangement explains how Kolb can wait near the office and overhear what is being discussed in the adjoining cabinet.

Inside, Boniface Cointet asks how David can be seized the next morning. Kolb also recognizes Cérizet’s voice and realizes that a man David had trusted is participating in the conspiracy. Doublon outlines a surveillance network: his agents, euphemistically called practitioners, are to be stationed far apart from the Beaulieu promenade and Place du Mûrier in different directions. They will follow David without letting him notice, wait until he enters what he believes is a safe house, and allow him a few days before making their move. Lookouts are already posted at the Place du Mûrier, by the courthouse, and near Doublon’s own house; whistles will signal if David leaves.

Kolb slips out without alerting the men in the study and tells the servant he will return the next morning. He then hurries to a horse-rental stable, selects a horse, and has it saddled. Returning to David’s home, he reports the betrayal, the watchers around the house, and Cointet’s role. The discovery changes the family’s understanding of the case: the pressure is not simply a creditor’s attempt to collect a debt. Ève identifies the Cointets as papermakers who want David’s secret. Their interest in his invention gives the pursuit a commercial purpose as well as a legal one.

The decoy and escape

Kolb proposes a diversion that uses the very surveillance meant to trap David. He will ride out with David and draw the followers after them; while the watchers pursue the pair, Ève can go to Basine Clerget without being followed. David initially points out that the spies might track Ève as well, but the plan separates their movements and gives her a chance to reach the refuge alone. Ève agrees to arrange matters with Basine, whom she regards as a trusted friend able to act for her.

As David and Kolb leave, they hear the watchers’ whistles. Instead of trying to shake them immediately, they lead the agents down to the house of the horse renter near the lower Porte Palet. There Kolb takes David onto the horse behind him and rides into the countryside at speed. The watchers cannot keep up or discover where the two men are going. Kolb’s apparent willingness to let the pursuers see him is the mechanism of the escape: he gives them a moving target while Ève follows a different route.

Ève first visits Postel under the pretext of seeking his advice, then manages to reach Basine’s house unseen. The detour provides cover, but it also costs her time and requires her to pass through a household where Postel’s complaints about the choice she made in marriage underline how little practical help his sympathy offers. Once Ève is safely with Basine, the two women prepare a hiding place without drawing attention to it.

The hidden room and its consequences

The refuge is a small adjoining cabinet in Basine’s room, lit by a skylight beyond the view of outsiders. The women open a small chimney connecting it with the chimney of the workshop where the workers tend their irons. They spread worn blankets on the floor to muffle any noise David might make by accident, then furnish the cabinet with a narrow bed, a stove for his experiments, and a table and chair for sleeping, working, and writing. Basine promises to bring him food at night. Because no one normally enters her room, the arrangement is intended to keep David beyond the reach of both his enemies and the police.

The escape therefore does more than postpone an arrest. It divides the family’s efforts: Kolb protects David on the road, Ève secures the refuge, and Basine provides a place where David can remain hidden. The women’s plan for communication extends that separation into daily life: they will correspond through the post, Basine will put David’s letters into the mail, and Ève will write under Basine’s name. David is not free to return openly to his household, but the prepared stove and writing table mean that concealment does not have to end his work. The episode sets the immediate triumph of loyalty and ingenuity against the continuing threat of a creditor network that has learned how valuable his invention may be.