bit of very fine
wire to open the seal of the will. La Cibot, meanwhile, looking under
the pillow, found the handkerchief with the key of the bureau knotted to
one corner; and this so much the more easily because Pons purposely left
the end hanging over the bolster, and lay with his face to the wall.

La Cibot went straight to the bureau, opened it cautiously so as to make
as little noise as possible, found the spring of the secret drawer,
and hurried into the salon with the will in her hand. Her flight roused
Pons' curiosity to the highest pitch; and as for Schmucke, he trembled
as if he were the guilty person.

"Go back," said Fraisier, when she handed over the will. "He may wake,
and he must find you there."

Fraisier opened the seal with a dexterity which proved that his was
no 'prentice hand, and read the following curious document, headed "My
Will," with ever-deepening astonishment:

"On this fifteenth day of April, eighteen hundred and forty-five,
I, being in my sound mind (as this my Will, drawn up in concert
with M. Trognon, will testify), and feeling that I must shortly
die of the malady from which I have suffered since the beginning
of February last, am anxious to dispose of my property, and have
herein recorded my last wishes:--

"I have always been impressed by the untoward circumstances that
injure great pictures, and not unfrequently bring about total
destruction. I have felt sorry for the beautiful paintings
condemned to travel from land to land, never finding some fixed
abode whither admirers of great masterpieces may travel to see
them. And I have always thought that the truly deathless work of a
great master ought to be national property; put where every one of
every nation may see it, even as the light, God's masterpiece,
shines for all His children.

"And as I have spent my life in collecting together and choosing a
few pictures, some of the greatest masters' most glorious work,
and as these pictures are as the master left them--genuine
examples, neither repainted nor retouched,--it has been a painful
thought to me that the paintings which have been the joy of my
life, may be sold by public auction, and go, some to England, some
to Russia, till they are all scattered abroad again as if they had
never been gathered together. From this wretched fate I have
determined to save both them and the frames in which they are set,
all of them the work o