“The celebrated Crœsus who has just died has revealed in his will certain little peculiarities of which few suspected him. He was a great protector of rats; and on the day but one before that of his death he was at the races with four of these animals in his calêche. He had a brother who gave him very good advice on this subject, like the Cléante of ‘Tartuffe,’ to whom he replied by a little posthumous epigram, indicative of his churlish disposition; he has left him, out of his large fortune, a dole of 20,000 francs per annum. There is no revenge so hard and bitter as that of an old man. There are, we venture to think, many brothers, all the same, who would be very glad of a fraternal legacy of eight hundred a-year, and, moreover, we know nothing of the provocation that may have been given; like Lord Campbell, ‘we should like to hear the dog’s story.’” Possibly the old Marquis felt the separation he contemplated between himself and the fortune he had amassed, but if he entertained any malicious sentiments against those to whom he was obliged to leave what he could not take away with him, he seems to have been fully justified in the somewhat severe animadversions he has passed on some of his legatees. To a lady relative, who had been full of attentions for him, he left a broken cup, jeering her with the taunt that while she thought she was taking him in he was laughing in his sleeve at the grimace she would make when she found that it was he who had got all her little gifts, her smiles and favors out of her, knowing all the while that he had no intention of repaying them as she expected. “As for you,” he says at the end of the will, “you, my good and admirable valet, who have so long taken me for your dupe, you will now learn that it is you who have been mine; when at the conclusion of my dinner you thought I was applauding your economy and your zeal, in carefully putting together the remains of bottles of wine and keeping them for the next meal, it never occurred to you that I was well aware you took for your own use whole bottles. When you came with tearful eyes and coaxing voice to wait on me the moment I was suffering from any trifling indisposition, presenting to me my _tisanes_ with an assumed air of condolence and anxiety, you little thought how my instinct, following you into the servants’ hall, guessed the language in which you expressed yourself there. ‘The old fellow,’ you used to say, ‘can’t last much longer, and then I shall come in for my hard-earned legacy.’ “Well, my dear fellow, I am sorry to tell you this was all a mistake, and you have got to learn that masters are not always so much stupider as you suppose than their servants.