“There is a good deal of talk about you in the house,” said La Sauvage. “While you were asleep, a little whipper-snapper in a black suit came here, a puppy that said he was M. Hannequin’s head-clerk, and must see you at all costs; but as you were asleep and tired out with the funeral yesterday, I told him that M. Villemot, Tabareau’s head-clerk, was acting for you, and if it was a matter of business, I said, he might speak to M. Villemot. ‘Ah, so much the better!’ the youngster said. ‘I shall come to an understanding with him. We will deposit the will at the Tribunal, after showing it to the President.’ So at that, I told him to ask M. Villemot to come here as soon as he could.--Be easy, my dear sir, there are those that will take care of you. They shall not shear the fleece off your back. You will have some one that has beak and claws. M. Villemot will give them a piece of his mind. I have put myself in a passion once already with that abominable hussy, La Cibot, a porter’s wife that sets up to judge her lodgers, forsooth, and insists that you have filched the money from the heirs; you locked M. Pons up, she says, and worked upon him till he was stark, staring mad. She got as good as she gave, though, the wretched woman. ‘You are a thief and a bad lot,’ I told her; ‘you will get into the police-courts for all the things that you have stolen from the gentlemen,’ and she shut up.” The clerk came out to speak to Schmucke. “Would you wish to be present, sir, when the seals are affixed in the next room?” “Go on, go on,” said Schmucke; “I shall pe allowed to die in beace, I bresume?” “Oh, under any circumstances a man has a right to die,” the clerk answered, laughing; “most of our business relates to wills. But, in my experience, the universal legatee very seldom follows the testator to the tomb.” “I am going,” said Schmucke. Blow after blow had given him an intolerable pain at the heart. “Oh! here comes M. Villemot!” exclaimed La Sauvage. “Mennesir Fillemod,” said poor Schmucke, “rebresent me.” “I hurried here at once,” said Villemot. “I have come to tell you that the will is completely in order; it will certainly be confirmed by the court, and you will be put in possession. You will have a fine fortune.” “_I?_ Ein fein vordune?” cried Schmucke, despairingly. That he of all men should be suspected of caring for the money! “And meantime what is the justice of the peace doing here with his wax candles and his bits of tape?” asked La Sauvage. “Oh, he is affixing seals.... Come, M. Schmucke, you have a right to be present.” “No--go in yourself.” “But where is the use of the seals if M. Schmucke is in his own house and everything belongs to him?” asked La Sauvage, doing justice in feminine fashion, and interpreting the Code according to their fancy, like one and all of her sex.