And herewith begins the tragedy, or, if you like to have it so, a terrible comedy--the death of an old bachelor delivered over by circumstances too strong for him to the rapacity and greed that gathered about his bed. And other forces came to the support of rapacity and greed; there was the picture collector’s mania, that most intense of all passions; there was the cupidity of the Sieur Fraisier, whom you shall presently behold in his den, a sight to make you shudder; and lastly, there was the Auvergnat thirsting for money, ready for anything--even for a crime--that should bring him the capital he wanted. The first part of the story serves in some sort as a prelude to this comedy in which all the actors who have hitherto occupied the stage will reappear. The degradation of a word is one of those curious freaks of manners upon which whole volumes of explanation might be written. Write to an attorney and address him as “Lawyer So-and-so,” and you insult him as surely as you would insult a wholesale colonial produce merchant by addressing your letter to “Mr. So-and-so, Grocer.” There are plenty of men of the world who ought to be aware, since the knowledge of such subtle distinctions is their province, that you cannot insult a French writer more cruelly than by calling him _un homme de lettres_--a literary man. The word _monsieur_ is a capital example of the life and death of words. Abbreviated from monseigneur, once so considerable a title, and even now, in the form of _sire_, reserved for emperors and kings, it is bestowed indifferently upon all and sundry; while the twin-word _messire_, which is nothing but its double and equivalent, if by any chance it slips into a certificate of burial, produces an outcry in the Republican papers.