" said Madame de Listomere. "Then sign it at once," she
added, turning to Birotteau. "If you positively decide to leave her
house, there can be no harm in declaring that such is your will."

Birotteau's will!

"That is true," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, closing his snuff-box with a
gesture the significance of which it is impossible to render, for it
was a language in itself. "But writing is always dangerous," he added,
putting his snuff-box on the mantelpiece with an air and manner that
alarmed the vicar.

Birotteau was so bewildered by the upsetting of all his ideas, by the
rapidity of events which found him defenceless, by the ease with which
his friends were settling the most cherished matters of his solitary
life, that he remained silent and motionless as if moonstruck, thinking
of nothing, though listening and striving to understand the meaning of
the rapid sentences the assembled company addressed to him. He took the
paper Monsieur Caron had given him and read it, as if he were giving
his mind to the lawyer's document, but the act was merely mechanical.
He signed the paper, by which he declared that he left Mademoiselle
Gamard's house of his own wish and will, and that he had been fed and
lodged while there according to the terms originally agreed upon. When
the vicar had signed the document, Monsieur Caron took it and asked
where his client was to send the things left by the abbe in her house
and belonging to him. Birotteau replied that they could be sent to
Madame de Listomere's,--that lady making him a sign that she would
receive him, never doubting that he would soon be a canon. Monsieur de
Bourbonne asked to see the paper, the deed of relinquishment, which the
abbe had just signed. Monsieur Caron gave it to him.

"How is this?" he said to the vicar after reading it. "It appears that
written documents already exist between you and Mademoiselle Gamard.
Where are they? and what do they stipulate?"

"The deed is in my library," replied Birotteau.

"Do you know the tenor of it?" said Monsieur de Bourbonne to the lawyer.

"No, monsieur," said Caron, stretching out his hand to regain the fatal
document.

"Ha!" thought the old man; "you know, my good friend, what that deed
contains, but you are not paid to tell us," and he returned the paper to
the lawyer.

"Where can I put my things?" cried Birotteau; "my books, my beautiful
book-shelves, and pictures, my red furniture, and all my treasures?"

The helple