“Go back,” said Fraisier, when she handed over the will.  “He may wake, and he must find you there.”

Fraisier opened the seal with a dexterity which proved that his was no ’prentice hand, and read the following curious document, headed “My Will,” with ever-deepening astonishment: 

“On this fifteenth day of April, eighteen hundred and forty-five, I, being in my sound mind (as this my Will, drawn up in concert with M. Trognon, will testify), and feeling that I must shortly die of the malady from which I have suffered since the beginning of February last, am anxious to dispose of my property, and have herein recorded my last wishes:—­

“I have always been impressed by the untoward circumstances that injure great pictures, and not unfrequently bring about total destruction.  I have felt sorry for the beautiful paintings condemned to travel from land to land, never finding some fixed abode whither admirers of great masterpieces may travel to see them.  And I have always thought that the truly deathless work of a great master ought to be national property; put where every one of every nation may see it, even as the light, God’s masterpiece, shines for all His children.

“And as I have spent my life in collecting together and choosing a few pictures, some of the greatest masters’ most glorious work, and as these pictures are as the master left them—­genuine examples, neither repainted nor retouched,—­it has been a painful thought to me that the paintings which have been the joy of my life, may be sold by public auction, and go, some to England, some to Russia, till they are all scattered abroad again as if they had never been gathered together.  From this wretched fate I have determined to save both them and the frames in which they are set, all of them the work of skilled craftsmen.

“On these grounds, therefore, I give and bequeath the pictures which compose my collection to the King, for the gallery in the Louvre, subject to the charge (if the legacy is accepted) of a life-annuity of two thousand four hundred francs to my friend Wilhelm Schmucke.

“If the King, as usufructuary of the Louvre collection, should refuse the legacy with the charge upon it, the said pictures shall form a part of the estate which I leave to my friend, Schmucke, on condition that he shall deliver the Monkey’s Head, by Goya, to my cousin, President Camusot; a Flower-piece, the tulips, by Abraham Mignon, to M. Trognon, notary (whom I appoint as my executor):  and allow Mme. Cibot, who has acted as my housekeeper for ten years, the sum of two hundred francs per annum.

“Finally, my friend Schmucke is to give the Descent from the Cross, Ruben’s sketch for his great picture at Antwerp, to adorn a chapel in the parish church, in grateful acknowledgment of M. Duplanty’s kindness to me; for to him I owe it that I can die as a Christian and a Catholic.”—­So ran the will.

“This is ruin!” mused Fraisier, “the ruin of all my hopes.  Ha!  I begin to believe all that the Presidente told me about this old artist and his cunning.”