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"I advise you," said the notary, addressing the heirs collectively, "to go to bed and get up at your usual hour; to eat your soup before it gets cold; to put your feet in your shoes and your hats on your heads; in short, to continue your ways of life precisely as if nothing had happened." "You are not consoling," said Massin.
I wouldn't let myself be humiliated if I were you I'd buy a carriage fit for a prince." "Come, Cabirolle, tell us," said Massin, "is it the girl who drives our uncle into such luxury?" "I don't know," said Cabirolle; "but she is almost mistress of the house. There are masters upon masters down from Paris. They say now she is going to study painting."
"Yes." "If I wanted to show my teeth I could coax Massin to buy the Rouvre estate, park, gardens, preserves, and timber " "You'd better think twice before you do that," said Zelie, suddenly intervening. "If I choose," said Goupil, giving her a viperish look; "Massin would buy the whole for two hundred thousand francs."
I heard Madame Petit mutter a few disagreeable words in Dutch, but the meaning of them was only explained to me later on. We then went to the workshop, and found old Massin at his bench, planing some small planks of white wood. His hunch-back daughter kept coming in and out, humming gaily all the time. The father was glum and harsh, and had an anxious look.
Madame Massin, whose sentences were so many arrows stinging her fat cousin, made him walk as fast as herself, in spite of his obesity and to the great astonishment of the church-goers, who were on their way to mass. She was determined to overtake this uncle and show him to the post master.
"I beg you to come to-morrow and draw up my guardianship account with Ursula, so as not to complicate my property after my death. Thank God! I have not withdrawn one penny from my heirs, I have disposed of nothing but my income. Messieurs Cremiere, Massin, and Minoret my nephew are members of the family council appointed for Ursula, and I wish them to be present at the rendering of my account."
The women, whose hearts were full of vengeance against the minx, as they called her, hailed the idea of turning her out. Bongrand arrived with his assistants to apply the seals, and was indignant when the request was made to him, by Zelie and Madame Massin, as a near friend of the deceased, to tell Ursula to leave the house.
Leontine Massin came running out of the next room. She was a pretty girl, very gentle and calm in demeanour. She threw her arms round me, exclaiming, "How glad I am to see you! And so you are going to make your debut at the Comedie. I saw it in the papers." I blushed up to my ears at the idea of being mentioned in the papers.
Just as the post master fell into the chair he saw at the gate the heated face of the clerk of the court who returned to the house of death with the celerity of a weasel. "Well, what is it now?" asked the post master, unlocking the gate for his co-heir. "Nothing; I have come back to be present at the sealing," answered Massin, giving him a savage look.
"You are going to say, just as Massin does, that a little girl of fifteen can't invent such plans and carry them out, or make an old man of eighty-three, who has never set foot in a church except to be married, change his opinions, now don't tell me he has such a horror of priests that he wouldn't even go with the girl to the parish church when she made her first communion.
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