While the _procureur-du-roi_, the commissary of police, and the
examining magistrate were gathering all particulars for the basis of
their action, the luckless des Vanneaulx picked up the broken pots and
calculated from their capacity the sum lost. The magistrates admitted
the correctness of their calculations and entered the sum stolen on
their records as, in all probability, a thousand gold coins to each
pot. But were these coins forty-eight or forty, twenty-four or twenty
francs in value? All expectant heirs in Limoges sympathized with the
des Vanneaulx. The Limousin imagination was greatly stirred by the
spectacle of the broken pots. As for old Pingret, who often sold
vegetables himself in the market, lived on bread and onions, never
spent more than three hundred francs a year, obliged and disobliged no
one, and had never done one atom of good in the suburb of Saint-Etienne
where he lived, his death did not excite the slightest regret. Poor
Jeanne Malassis' heroism, which the old miser, had she saved him,
would certainly not have rewarded, was thought rash; the number of
souls who admired it was small in comparison with those who said: "For
my part, I should have stayed in my bed."

The police found neither pen nor ink wherewith to write their report
in the bare, dilapidated, cold, and dismal house. Observing persons
and the heir might then have noticed a curious inconsistency which may
be seen in certain misers. The dread the little old man had of the
slightest outlay showed itself in the non-repaired roof which opened
its sides to the light and the rain and snow; in the cracks of the
walls; in the rotten doors ready to fall at the slightest shock; in
the windows, where the broken glass was replaced by paper not even
oiled. All the windows were without curtains, the fireplaces without
mirrors or andirons; the hearth was garnished with one log of wood and
a few little sticks almost caked with the soot which had fallen down