This joy, so offensive to Rose's memory, now seems to me very comical. I stimulate the captain to further confidences. And I say to him, in a tone of reproach: "Captain, I think you are not just to Rose." "Egad!" he rejoins, quickly. "You do not know; you don't know anything about it. She did not go to tell you of all the scenes that she made, her tyranny, her jealousy, her egoism. Nothing belonged to me here any longer. Everything in my house was hers. For instance, you would not believe it, my Voltaire arm-chair was never at my disposition. She had it all the time. She had everything, for that matter. To think that I could no longer eat asparagus with oil, because she did not like it! Oh! she did well to die. It was the best thing that could happen to her, for, in some way or other, I should have gotten rid of her. Yes, yes, I should have gotten rid of her. She was becoming too much for me. I had had enough. And let me tell you; if I had died before her, Rose would have been prettily trapped. I had a bitter pill in store for her. My word for it!" His lip curls in a smile that ends in an atrocious grimace. He continues, chopping each of his words with moist little puffs of laughter: "You know that I made a will, in which I gave her everything,--house, money, dividends, everything. She must have told you; she told everybody. Yes, but what she did not tell you, because she did not know it, is that, two months later, I made a second will, cancelling the first, in which I did not leave her anything,--not a sou." Unable to contain himself longer, he bursts out laughing, a strident laugh that scatters through the garden like a flight of scolding sparrows. And he cries: "Ah! that's an idea, hey? Oh! her head,--you can see it from here,--on learning that I had left my little fortune to the French Academy. For, my little Célestine, it is true; I had left my fortune to the French Academy. Ah! that's an idea!" I allow his laughter to become quieter, and then I gravely ask him: "And now, Captain, what are you going to do?" The captain gives me a long, sly, amorous look, and says: "Well, that depends on you." "On me?" "Yes, on you; on you alone." "And how is that?" A moment of silence follows, during which, straightening up and twisting his pointed beard, he seeks to envelop me in a seductive fluid. "Come," he says, suddenly, "let us go straight to the point. Let us speak squarely,--soldier-fashion. Do you wish to take Rose's place?" I was expecting the attack. I had seen it coming from the depth of his eyes. It does not surprise me. I receive it with a serious and unmoved expression. "And the wills, Captain?" "Oh! I tear them up." I object: "But I do not know how to cook." "Oh! I will do the cooking; I will make my bed; I will do everything." He becomes gallant, sprightly; his eye sparkles. He leans towards the hedge, stretching out his neck. His eyes become bloodshot. And in a lower voice he says: