, and who fed and built their nests on him, as on any wild
service-tree, he was, notwithstanding, reputed a secret magazine of
springes; and they were scarce able to find eyes for the visible berries
which fed them, in their scrutiny after the supposed gossamer snares.

In the interval between two apoplectic fits he had drawn up his will,
and had deposited it with the magistrate. When he was just at the point
of death he transferred to the seven presumptive heirs the certificate
of this deposit; and even then said, in his old tone--how far it was
from his expectation, that by any such anticipation of his approaching
decease, he could at all depress the spirits of men so steady and
sedate, whom, for his own part, he would much rather regard in the light
of laughing than of weeping heirs; to which remark one only of the whole
number, namely, Mr. Harprecht, inspector of police, replied as a cool
ironist to a bitter one--'that the total amount of concern and of
_interest_, which might severally belong to them in such a loss, was
not (they were sincerely sorry it was not) in their power to determine.'

At length the time is come when the seven heirs have made their
appearance at the town-hall, with their certificate--of deposit;
_videlicet_, the ecclesiastical councillor Glantz; Harprecht, the
inspector of police; Neupeter, the court-agent; the court-fiscal, Knoll;
Pasvogel, the bookseller; the reader of the morning lecture, Flacks; and
Monsieur Flitte, from Alsace. Solemnly, and in due form, they demanded
of the magistrate the schedule of effects consigned to him by the late
Kabel, and the opening of his will. The principal executor of this will
was Mr Mayor himself; the sub-executors were the rest of the
town-council. Thereupon, without delay, the schedule and the will were
fetched from the register office of the council to the council chamber:
both were exhibited in rotation to the members of the council and the
heirs, in order that they might see the privy seal of the town impressed
upon them: the registry of consignment, indorsed upon the schedule, was
read aloud to the seven heirs by the town-clerk: and by that registry it
was notified to them, that the deceased had actually consigned the
schedule to the magistrate, and entrusted it to the corporation-chest;
and that on the day of consignment he was still of sound mind: finally,
the seven seals, which he had himself affixed to the instrument, were
found unbroken. These