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Updated: September 15, 2025
"If Monsieur Dionis's advice is good," said Madame Cremiere to Madame Massin, "we had better go and call on our uncle, as we used to do, every Sunday evening, and behave exactly as Monsieur Dionis has told us." "Yes, and be received as he received us!" cried Zelie. "Minoret and I have more than forty thousand francs a year, and yet he refused our invitations! We are quite his equals.
"Isn't he pleased to see his uncle on the road to paradise?" "Who would ever have believed it!" ejaculated Massin. "Ha! one should never say, 'Fountain, I'll not drink of your water," remarked the notary, who, seeing the group from afar, had left his wife to go to church without him.
"If he did that," said Massin, "I should sell my situation in court and buy an estate; I'd try to be judge at Fontainebleau, and get myself elected deputy." "As for me I should buy a brokerage business," said the collector. "Unluckily, that girl he has on his arm and the abbe have got round him. I don't believe we can do anything with him."
Massin, fearing that Zelie and her husband might lay hands on some ornament, joined them in the salon, where all the heirs were presently assembled one by one. "He is too honest a man to steal extreme unction," said Cremiere; "we may be sure of his death now." "Yes, we shall each get about twenty thousand francs a year," replied Madame Massin.
"We must try to find out through Monsieur Bongrand where the influence comes from," said the notary in a low voice, with a sign to Massin to keep quiet. "What are you about, Minoret?" cried a little woman, suddenly descending upon the group in the middle of which stood the post master, as tall and round as a tower.
The heirs, after parting with Dionis and his clerk, met again in the square, with face rather flushed from their breakfast, just as vespers were over. As the notary predicted, the Abbe Chaperon had Madame de Portenduere on his arm. "She dragged him to vespers, see!" cried Madame Massin to Madame Cremiere, pointing to Ursula and the doctor, who were leaving the church.
"He'd be a worm at the core," whispered Zelie to Massin. "How did he get here?" returned the clerk. "That will just suit you!" cried Desire to Goupil. "But do you think you can behave decently enough to satisfy the old man and the girl?" "In these days," whispered Zelie again in Massin's year, "notaries look out for no interests but their own.
The tax-collector, a fat little man, as insignificant as a tax-collector should be, and as much of a cipher as a clever woman could wish, hereupon annihilated his co-heir, Massin, with the words: "Didn't I tell you so?" Tricky people always attribute trickiness to others.
You, Cremiere, go to Dionis at once and tell him to come and certify to the death; I can't draw up the mortuary certificate for an uncle, though I am assistant-mayor. You, Massin, go and ask old Bongrand to attach the seals. As for you, ladies," he added, turning to his wife and Mesdames Cremiere and Massin, "go and look after Ursula; then nothing can be stolen.
"Do you want to be a notary?" answered the justice of peace, looking sternly at Dionis's proposed successor. "Of course I do," cried Goupil. "I've swallowed too many affronts not to succeed now. I beg you to believe, monsieur, that the miserable creature once called Goupil has nothing in common with Maitre Jean-Sebastien-Marie Goupil, notary of Nemours and husband of Mademoiselle Massin.
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