“’The amount thus accumulated may become enormous, and constitute a royal fortune, if no unfavorable event should occur.  May my descendants attend to my wishes, as to the division and employment of this immense sum!

“’In a century and a half, there happen so many changes, so many varieties of fortunes, such a rise and fall in the condition of the successive generations of a family, that probably, a hundred and fifty years hence, my descendants will belong to various classes of society, and thus represent the divers social elements of their time.

“’There may, perhaps, be among them men of great intelligence great courage, or great virtue—­learned men, or names illustrious in arts and arms.  There may, perhaps, also be obscure workmen, or humble citizens—­perhaps, also, alas! great criminals.

“’However, this may be, my most earnest desire is that my descendants should combine together, and, reconstituting one family, by a close and sincere union, put into practice the divine words of Christ, “Love ye one another.”

“’This union would have a salutary tendency; for it seems to me that upon union, upon the association of men together, must depend the future happiness of mankind.

“’The Company, which so long persecuted my family, is one of the most striking examples of the power of association, even when applied to evil.

“’There is something so fruitful and divine in this principle, that it sometimes forces to good the worst and most dangerous combinations.

“’Thus, the missions have thrown a scanty but pure and generous light on the darkness of this Company of Jesus—­founded with the detestable and impious aim of destroying, by a homicidal education, all will, thought, liberty, and intelligence, in the people, so as to deliver them, trembling, superstitious, brutal, and helpless, to the despotism of kings, governed in their turn by confessors belonging to the Society.’”

At this passage of the will, there was another strange look exchanged between Gabriel and Father d’Aigrigny.  The notary continued: 

“’If a perverse association, based upon the degradation of humanity, upon fear and despotism, and followed by the maledictions of the people, has survived for centuries, and often governed the world by craft and terror—­how would it be with an association, which, taking fraternity and evangelic love for its means, had for its end to deliver man and woman from all degrading slavery, to invite to the enjoyment of terrestrial happiness those who have hitherto known nothing of life but its sorrows and miseries, and to glorify and enrich the labor that feeds the state?—­to enlighten those whom ignorance has depraved?—­to favor the free expansion of all the passions, which God, in His infinite wisdom, and inexhaustible goodness, gave to man as so many powerful levers?—­to sanctify all the gifts of Heaven:  love, maternity, strength, intelligence, beauty, genius?—­to make men truly religious, and deeply grateful to their Creator, by making them understand the splendors of Nature, and bestowing on them their rightful share in the treasures which have been poured upon us?