“A nauseating mess, no doubt,” carelessly remarked the land baron.
“Oh, sir!” deprecated the lawyer, opening the roll. “‘Item: Religion; pupil of the brilliant Jesuit, Abbé Moneau. Item: Morals; Exhibit A, the affair with Countess ––– in Paris, where he was sent to be educated after the fashion of French families in New Orleans; Exhibit B––’”
“Spare me,” exclaimed Mauville. “Life is wearisome enough, but a biography––” He shrugged his shoulders. “Come to your point.”
“Of course, sir, I was only trying to carry out his instructions. The same, sir, as I would carry out yours!” With an ingratiating smile. Whereupon the attorney told how he had furnished the patroon this roll and fastened it to his bed, so that he might wind and unwind it, perusing it at his pleasure. This the dying man did, sternly noting the damaging facts; thinking doubtlessly how traits will endure for generations––aye, for ages, in spite of the pillory!––the while Little Thunder was roaring petitions to divinity by his bedside, as though to bluster and bully the Almighty into granting his supplications. The patroon glanced from his pensioner to the roll; from the kneeling man to 109 that prodigious list of peccadillos, and then he called for a shilling, a coin still somewhat in use in America. This he flipped thrice.
“Roué or sham,” he said the first time.
“Rake or hypocrite,” he exclaimed the second time.
“Devil or Pharisee,” he cried the third time.
He peered over the coin and sent for his attorney. His soul passed away, mourned by Little Thunder until the will was read, when his lamentations ceased; he soundly berated Mynheer, the Patroon, in his coffin and refused to go to his burying. Then he became an ardent anti-renter, a leader of “bolters,” a thunderer of the people’s cause, the devoted enemy of land barons in general, and one patroon in particular, the foreign heir of the manor.
“But let him thunder away, sir,” said Scroggs, soothingly. “The estate’s yours now, for the old patroon can’t come back to change his mind. He’s buried sure enough in the grove, a dark and sombrous spot as befitted his disposition, but restful withal. Aye, and the marble slab’s above him, which reminds me that only a month before he took to his bed he was smoking his pipe on the porch, when his glance fell upon the lifting-stone. Suddenly he strode towards it, bent his back and raised it a full two inches. ‘So much for age!’ said he, scoffing-like. But age heard him and now he lies with a stone on him he can not lift, while you, sir”––to his listener, deferentially––“are sole heir to the estate and to the feud.”