"Sixth,--I will give you your board and eighteen livres a month which will serve for your expenses and little by little enable you to pay your debts. It would be too dangerous for your character and very improper in me to count with you the price of your work and require you to pay me board. If you devote yourself as you should, with the greatest zeal to the improvement of my business, and if by your talents you procure me more, I will give you a fourth part of the profits of all that comes to me through you. You know my way of thinking; you have experienced that I never allow myself to be surpassed in generosity; merit therefore that I do more for you than I promise; but remember that I give nothing for words, that I accept only actions.
"If my conditions suit you--if you feel strong enough to execute them in good faith, accept them and sign your acceptance at the bottom of this letter which you shall return to me; in that case assure M. Paignon of my sincere esteem and of my gratitude; say to him that I shall have the honor of seeing him and of asking him to dinner to-morrow, so dispose yourself to return with me to take the place which I was very far from believing you would occupy so soon, and perhaps never."
"Monsieur, very honored, dear father;--I sign all your conditions in the firm desire to execute them with the help of the Lord; but how sadly all this recalls to me a time when such laws and such ceremonies were unnecessary to engage me to do my duty! It is right that I suffer the humiliation that I have justly merited, and if all this, joined to my good conduct, may procure for me and merit entirely the return of your good graces and of your friendship, I shall be only too happy. In faith of which, I sign all that is contained in this letter.
During the three years which followed the young man's return to his father's house he made such rapid progress in the art of watchmaking that we find him in 1753 making his first appearance in public in the defense of an escapement for watches of which he claimed to be the inventor.
In the December number of _Le Mercure_ of that year, the following letter was published, which needs no commentary to show how thoroughly his father's conditions had been understood by the youthful genius and with what serious purpose he had set to work.