"Bah! Nothing more is required for their fabrication than a little ignorance and a little love of gossip. Are these so rare, my good M. Roulleau?" The doctor made two or three vigorous puffs. Presently he held his cigar in his hand, and broke out again: "What possessed the man to dream of such a thing? He knows nothing of me, absolutely nothing. I may forge, burn, steal, poison the young man, let the girl starve. Do you mean to tell me that every thing is placed in my hands?" "The will I have had the pleasure to frame under Monsieur Moreau's instructions authorises Monsieur Max Deshoulieres as _depositaire_ to receive all rents and moneys due to Monsieur Moreau or his heirs, and to hold them in trust until the arrival of Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin, sister's son to Monsieur Moreau; always deducting a certain sum, named, sufficient to maintain his wife's niece, Mademoiselle Therese Veuillot, upon the condition only that she continues to reside in this town of Charville--" "Pardon," said the doctor, interrupting: "the sum assigned for this purpose can hardly be called a maintenance." Roulleau shrugged his thin shoulders. "It is bare without doubt," he replied; "and I ventured to point out this fact to Monsieur Moreau. But he was peremptory. He was peremptory also in his provisions that you should deliver up the papers to no one but Monsieur Saint-Martin in person. He is peremptory, it appears to me, in all his expressions." "Peremptory!" broke in M. Deshoulieres once more: "he is immovable-- made of adamant. Not one man in a thousand could have forced himself to perpetrate all these absurdities in a condition like his. To have opposed him further would have been to kill him. What creatures we are! Here is a man, shrewd, keen-witted, prompt; an old man, whose hold on life was palpably failing, who had but recently buried his wife, who could not close his eyes to the fact that he was himself rapidly approaching death. And yet this man makes no provision for the inevitable. It finds him without so much as his earthly affairs settled, clinging to a stranger for unwilling help." The notary did not answer. Perhaps some shadow of the inevitable swept also over him as the doctor spoke. His hand shook as he poured more wine into his tumbler, and drank it thirstily. M. Deshoulieres sat thinking. Outside sounded a measured tramp, tramp: a company of soldiers were marching through the little Place. The children ran and marched too, in imitation. The sun gleamed sharply on the bayonets the men carried over their shoulders; the steps died away along a narrow street. Presently M. Deshoulieres said in a musing tone,-- "There will surely be no difficulty in discovering this nephew?" "One cannot tell. There are strange stories of disappearances. At all events, if ten years elapse without his arrival, the property is dispersed among charities. And his injunctions against advertising were very strict."