g, theories
of free thought, audacious ideas of independent love; but as she was so
timid that she never ventured to speak aloud, it was all driven back,
condensed and expressed in her heart, which never opened itself.

"My two brothers were very hard towards her, like their father was, and
never gave her a caress, and, used to seeing her count for nothing in
the house, they treated her rather like a servant, and so I was the only
one of her sons who really loved her, and whom she loved.

"When she died, I was seventeen, and I must add, in order that you may
understand what follows, that there had been a law suit between my
father and my mother, and that their property had been separated, to my
mother's advantage, as, thanks to the tricks of the law, and the
intelligent devotion of a lawyer to her interests, she had preserved the
right of making her will in favor of anyone she pleased.

"We were told that there was a will lying at the lawyer's, and were
invited to be present at the reading of it. I can remember it, as if it
were yesterday. It was a grand, dramatic, burlesque, surprising scene,
brought about by the posthumous revolt of that dead woman, by that cry
for liberty, that claim from the depths of her tomb, of that martyred
woman who had been crushed by our habits during her life, and, who, from
her closed tomb, uttered a despairing appeal for independence.

"The man who thought that he was my father, a stout, ruddy-faced man,
who gave everyone the idea of a butcher, and my brothers, two great
fellows of twenty and twenty-two, were waiting quietly in their chairs.
Monsieur de Bourneval, who had been invited to be present, came in and
stood behind me. He was very pale, and bit his moustache, which was
turning gray. No doubt he was prepared for what was going to happen, and
the lawyer double-locked the door and began to read the will, after
having opened the envelope, which was sealed with red wax, and whose
contents he was ignorant of, in our presence."

My friend stopped suddenly and got up, and from his writing-table he
took an old paper, unfolded it, kissed it, and then continued: "This is
the will of my beloved mother:

"'I, the undersigned, Anne Catherine-Genevieve-Mathilde de
Croixlure, the legitimate wife of Leopold-Joseph Goutran de
Courcils, sound in body and mind, here express my last wishes.

"'I first of all ask God, and then my dear son Rene, to pardon me
for the act I