But what had become of the money the doctor must have saved?
Minoret began to have gnawing anxieties. La Bougival and Savinien, who
persisted in believing, as did the justice of peace, in the existence
of a will, came every day at the close of each session to find out
from Bongrand the results of the day's search. The latter would
sometimes exclaim, before the agents and the heirs were fairly out of
hearing, "I can't understand the thing!" Bongrand, Savinien, and the
abbe often declared to each other that the doctor, who received no
interest from the Portenduere loan, could not have kept his house as
he did on fifteen thousand francs a year. This opinion, openly
expressed, made the post master turn livid more than once.
"Yet they and I have rummaged everywhere," said Bongrand,--"they to
find money, and I to find a will in favor of Monsieur de Portenduere.
They have sifted the ashes, lifted the marbles, felt of the slippers,
bored into the wood-work of the beds, emptied the mattresses, ripped
up the quilts, turned his eider-down inside-out, examined every inch
of paper piece by piece, searched the drawers, dug up the cellar floor
--and I have urged on their devastations.
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