“We were told that there was a will lying at the lawyer’s, and were invited to be present at the reading of it.  I can remember it, as if it were yesterday.  It was a grand, dramatic, burlesque, surprising scene, brought about by the posthumous revolt of that dead woman, by that cry for liberty, that claim from the depths of her tomb, of that martyred woman who had been crushed by our habits during her life, and, who, from her closed tomb, uttered a despairing appeal for independence.

“The man who thought that he was my father, a stout, ruddy-faced man, who gave everyone the idea of 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 moustache, which was turning gray.  No doubt he was prepared for what was going to happen, and the lawyer double-locked the door and began to read the will, after having opened the envelope, which was sealed with red wax, and whose contents he was ignorant of, in our presence.”

My friend stopped suddenly and got up, and from his writing-table he took 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
     Croixlure, the legitimate wife of Leopold-Joseph Goutran de
     Courcils, 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 my whole life long.  I was married out of calculation, then despised, misunderstood, oppressed and constantly deceived by my husband.

     “’I forgive him, but I owe him nothing.

“’My eldest sons never loved me, never spoilt me, scarcely treated me as a mother, but during my whole life I was everything that I ought to have been, and I owe them nothing more after my death.  The ties of blood cannot exist without daily and constant affection.  An ungrateful son is less than a stranger; he is a culprit, for he has no right to be indifferent towards his mother.

“’I have always trembled before men, before their unjust laws, their inhuman customs, their shameful prejudices.  Before God, I have no longer any fear.  Dead, I fling aside disgraceful hypocrisy; I dare to speak my thoughts, and to avow and to sign the secret of my heart.

     “’I therefore leave that part of my fortune of which the law allows
     me to dispose, as a deposit with my dear lover Pierre-Gennes-Simon
     de Bourneval, to revert afterwards to our dear son, Rene.

     “’(This wish is, moreover, formulated more precisely in a notarial
     deed).