ning poor Schmucke awoke to a sense of his great and heavy loss.
He looked round the empty rooms. Yesterday and the day before yesterday
the preparations for the funeral had made a stir and bustle which
distracted his eyes; but the silence which follows the day, when the
friend, father, son, or loved wife has been laid in the grave--the dull,
cold silence of the morrow is terrible, is glacial. Some irresistible
force drew him to Pons' chamber, but the sight of it was more than the
poor man could bear; he shrank away and sat down in the dining-room,
where Mme. Sauvage was busy making breakfast ready.

Schmucke drew his chair to the table, but he could eat nothing. A
sudden, somewhat sharp ringing of the door-bell rang through the house,
and Mme. Cantinet and Mme. Sauvage allowed three black-coated personages
to pass. First came Vitel, the justice of the peace, with his highly
respectable clerk; third was Fraisier, neither sweeter nor milder for
the disappointing discovery of a valid will canceling the formidable
instrument so audaciously stolen by him.

"We have come to affix seals on the property," the justice of the peace
said gently, addressing Schmucke. But the remark was Greek to Schmucke;
he gazed in dismay at his three visitors.

"We have come at the request of M. Fraisier, legal representative of M.
Camusot de Marville, heir of the late Pons--" added the clerk.

"The collection is here in this great room, and in the bedroom of the
deceased," remarked Fraisier.

"Very well, let us go into the next room.--Pardon us, sir; do not let us
interrupt with your breakfast."

The invasion struck an icy chill of terror into poor Schmucke.
Fraisier's venomous glances seemed to possess some magnetic influence
over his victims, like the power of a spider over a fly.

"M. Schmucke understood how to turn a will, made in the presence of
a notary, to his own advantage," he said, "and he surely must have
expected some opposition from the family. A family does not allow itself
to be plundered by a stranger without some protest; and we shall
see, sir, which carries the day--fraud and corruption or the rightful
heirs.... We have a right as next of kin to affix seals, and seals shall
be affixed. I mean to see that the precaution is taken with the utmost
strictness."

"Ach, mein Gott! how haf I offended against Hefn?" cried the innocent
Schmucke.

"There is a good deal of talk about you in the house," said La Sauvage.
"While y