“Because if I can go no other way, I will persuade the guard to let me ride in the van, or travel in company with a horse or dog—­quite as good animals as myself in their way,” he thought.

With a characteristic indifference to all worldly matters he had entirely forgotten that the father whom he had just buried had died wealthy, and that his entire fortune had been left to the son whom he had so lately and strangely acknowledged.  And when,—­while he was still engaged in counting up his small stock of money,—­a knock came at the door, and a well-dressed man of business-like appearance entered with a smiling and propitiatory air, addressing him as “Monsieur Vergniaud,” Cyrillon did not know at all what to make of his visitor.  Sweeping his coins together with one hand, he stood up, his flashing eyes glancing the stranger over carelessly.

“Your name, sir?” he demanded—­“I am not acquainted with you.”

The smiling man unabashed, sought about for a place to put down his shiny hat, and smiled still more broadly.

“No!” he said—­“No!  You would not be likely to know me.  I have not the celebrity of Gys Grandit!  I am only Andre Petitot—­a lawyer, residing in the Boulevard Malesherbes.  I have just come from your father’s funeral.”

Cyrillon bowed gravely, and remained silent.

“I have followed you,” pursued Monsieur Petitot affably, “as soon as I could, according to the instructions I received, to ask when it will be convenient for you to hear me read your father’s will?”

The young man started.

“His will!” he ejaculated.  He had never given it a thought.  “Yes.  May I take a chair?  There are only two in the room, I perceive!  Thanks!” And the lawyer sat down and began drawing off his gloves,—­ “Your father had considerable means,—­though he parted with much that he might have kept, through his extraordinary liberality to the poor—­”

“God bless him!” murmured Cyrillon.

“Yes—­yes—­no doubt God will bless him!” said Monsieur Petitot amicably—­“According to your way of thinking, He ought to do so.  But personally, I always find the poor extremely ungrateful, and God certainly does not bless me whenever I encourage them in their habits of idleness and vice!  However, that is not a question for discussion at present.  The immediate point is this—­your father made his will about eighteen months ago, leaving everything to you.  The wording of the will is unusual, but he insisted obstinately on having it thus set down—­”

Here the lawyer drew a paper out of his pocket, fixed a pair of spectacles on his nose, and studied the document intently—­“Yes!—­it reads in this way:—­’ Everything of which I die possessed to my son, Cyrillon Vergniaud, born out of wedlock, but as truly my son in the sight of God, as Ninette Bernadin was his mother, and my wife, though never so legalised before the world, but fully acknowledged by me before God, and before the Church which I have served and disobeyed.’  A curious wording!” said Petitot, nodding his head a great many times—­“Very curious!  I told him so—­but he would have it his own way,—­moreover, I am instructed to publish his will in any Paris paper that will give it a place.  Now this clause is to my mind exceedingly disagreeable, and I wish I could set it aside.”