pleased.

"We were told that there was a will at the lawyer's office and were
invited to be present at the reading of it. I can remember it, as if it
were yesterday. It was an imposing scene, dramatic, burlesque and
surprising, occasioned by the posthumous revolt of that dead woman, by
the cry for liberty, by the demands of that martyred one who had been
crushed by our oppression during her lifetime and who, from her closed
tomb, uttered a despairing appeal for independence.

"The man who believed he was my father, a stout, ruddy-faced man, who
looked like 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 mustache, which was turning gray. No doubt he was
prepared for what was going to happen. The lawyer double-locked the door
and began to read the will, after having opened, in our presence, the
envelope, sealed with red wax, of the contents of which he was ignorant."

My friend stopped talking abruptly, and rising, took from his
writing-table 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
Croixluce, the legitimate wife of Leopold-Joseph Gontran de Councils
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 am about to commit. I believe that my child's heart is
great enough to understand me, and to forgive me. I have suffered