ried a Massin-Massin--"

"Yes, I know, the bailiff of Saint-Lange."

"She died a widow leaving an only daughter, who has lately married a
Cremiere-Cremiere, a fine young fellow, still without a place."

"Ah! she is my own niece. Now, as my brother, the sailor, died a
bachelor, and Captain Minoret was killed at Monte-Legino, and here I am,
that ends the paternal line. Have I any relations on the maternal side?
My mother was a Jean-Massin-Levrault."

"Of the Jean-Massin-Levrault's there's only one left," answered
Minoret-Levrault, "namely, Jean-Massin, who married Monsieur
Cremiere-Levrault-Dionis, a purveyor of forage, who perished on the
scaffold. His wife died of despair and without a penny, leaving one
daughter, married to a Levrault-Minoret, a farmer at Montereau, who is
doing well; their daughter has just married a Massin-Levrault, notary's
clerk at Montargis, where his father is a locksmith."

"So I've plenty of heirs," said the doctor gayly, immediately proposing
to take a walk through Nemours accompanied by his nephew.

The Loing runs through the town in a waving line, banked by terraced
gardens and neat houses, the aspect of which makes one fancy that
happiness must abide there sooner than elsewhere. When the doctor turned
into the Rue des Bourgeois, Minoret-Levrault pointed out the property of
Levrault-Levrault, a rich iron merchant in Paris who, he said, had just
died.

"The place is for sale, uncle, and a very pretty house it is; there's a
charming garden running down to the river."

"Let us go in," said the doctor, seeing, at the farther end of a
small paved courtyard, a house standing between the walls of the
two neighbouring houses which were masked by clumps of trees and
climbing-plants.

"It is built over a cellar," said the doctor, going up the steps of
a high portico adorned with vases of blue and white pottery in which
geraniums were growing.

Cut in two, like the majority of provincial houses, by a long passage
which led from the courtyard to the garden, the house had only one room
to the right, a salon lighted by four windows, two on the courtyard and
two on the garden; but Levrault-Levrault had used one of these windows
to make an entrance to a long greenhouse built of brick which extended
from the salon towards the river, ending in a horrible Chinese pagoda.

"Good! by building a roof to that greenhouse and laying a floor," said
old Minoret, "I could put my book there and make a very