One day Audiberte received an invitation to call upon the Commissary of Police in her quarter. She ran thither quickly, quite certain that it referred to her cousin Puyfourcat, and entered smiling with her head-dress tossing; but after a quarter of an hour she crept out, overwhelmed by a very peasant-like horror of the policeman, who, at his very first word, had forced her to deliver up the photograph and sign a receipt for ten thousand francs in which she absolutely renounced all and any suits at law. All the same she obstinately refused to leave, insisted upon believing in the genius of her brother and kept always alive in the depths of her memory the delicious astonishment caused one winter evening by that long file of carriages passing through the courtyard of the Ministry, where all the windows were alight.
When she came back she notified her two men, who were much more frightened than she was, that not another word was to be spoken about that business; but she never piped a word about the money. Guilloche, who suspected that there was some money, employed every means in his power to get a portion of it, and having obtained only the slenderest commission, felt a frightful rancor in regard to the Valmajours.
“Well,” said he one morning to Audiberte while she was brushing on the staircase the finest clothes belonging to the musician, who was still in bed, “well, I hope you are satisfied at last. He is dead!”
“Who is dead?”
“Why, Puyfourcat, your cousin; it is in the paper.”
She gave a screech, rushed into the apartment, calling aloud and almost in tears:
“Father! Brother! Hurry quick, the inheritance!”
As all of them clustered terribly moved and panting in a circle about that infernal fellow Guilloche, the latter slowly unfolded the Journal Officiel and in a very leisurely manner read to them as follows:
“‘On this first day of October 1876, the Court at Mostaganem has ordered the publication and advertisement of the following inheritances at the order of the Ministry of the Interior.—Popelino (Louis), day-laborer—’ No, it isn’t that one—‘Puyfourcat (Dosithée)—’”
“Yes, that’s him,” said Audiberte.