"
"What do you think about it?" said the abbe.
"The will has been suppressed by one of the heirs."
"But where's the property?"
"We may whistle for it!"
"Perhaps the will is hidden in the library," said Savinien.
"Yes, and for that reason I don't dissuade Ursula from buying it. If
it were not for that, it would be absurd to let her put every penny of
her ready money into books she will never open."
At first the whole town believed the doctor's niece had got possession
of the unfound capital; but when it was known positively that fourteen
hundred francs a year and her gifts constituted her whole fortune the
search of the doctor's house and furniture excited a more wide-spread
curiosity than before. Some said the money would be found in bank
bills hidden away in the furniture, others that the old man had
slipped them into his books. The sale of the effects exhibited a
spectacle of the most extraordinary precautions on the part of the
heirs. Dionis, who was doing duty as auctioneeer, declared, as each
lot was cried out, that the heirs only sold the article (whatever it
was) and not what it might contain; then, before allowing it to be
taken away it was subjected to a final investigation, being thumped
and sounded; and when at last it left the house the sellers followed
with the looks a father might cast upon a son who was starting for
India.
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