“Je laysse deux mille franks à Meluin, mon maystre d’hostel. “Je ordonne pour principal exécuteur de ma volonté mon cousin le Duc de Guise, é aprez luy l’Archevesque de Glascou, l’evesque de Rosse, et M. Duruisseau, mon chancelier. “J’entends que sans faulte le preau jouisse de ces deux prependes. “Je recommande Marie Pages, ma filleule, à ma cousine Madame de Guise, é la prie de prendre en son service; é ma tante de S. Pierre fayre mettre Montbraye en quelque bon lieu, ou la retenir en service pour l’honneur de Dieu. “Faict ce jourd’hui 7 Feubrier, mil sinq cens octante é sept. “MARIE R.” WILL OF ALESSANDRO TASSONI (1635) Tassoni was an Italian diplomat, poet and critic; he was born at Modena in 1565 of an old patrician family. His greatest work was the publication, “The Stolen Bucket.” The following are excerpts from his will: “I leave my soul--the most precious thing I possess--to its first great cause, the invisible, ineffable, eternal. “As for my body, destined as it is to corruption, my own desire would have been that it should be burned; but that being contrary to the custom of the religion in which I was born, I beg those in whose house I should die--for I have none of my own--to bury me by preference in consecrated ground; or if I should be found dead, without any other roof over me than the vault of heaven, I entreat the charitable neighbors or passers-by to render me this last service. “My wish would be that my funeral should only employ one priest, that there should be simply the small cross and a single candle, and that as regards expense no more shall be incurred than will pay for a sack to stuff my remains into, and a porter to carry it. “I give twelve gold crowns to the parish, because I cannot carry them away.” CHAPTER III WILLS IN FICTION AND POETRY “This brief abridgment of my will I make, My soul and body to the skies and ground.” ON WILL-MAKING An excellent treatise on the foibles of testators and the motives which prompt devises, legacies and bequests, is to be found in the work of William Hazlitt, “Table Talk or Original Essays,” under the title, “On Will-making,” a portion of which is here subjoined. The fame of the author and the merit of the essay justify its introduction. “Few things show the human character in a more ridiculous light than the circumstance of will-making. It is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition, and we take care to make a good use of it. We husband it with jealousy, put it off as long as we can, and then use every precaution that the world shall be no gainer by our deaths. This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them, for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good and to plague and disappoint as many people as possible.”