Plavitski glanced at him gloomily and solemnly. “To-day,” said he, “a will has been opened.”
“And what? People are saying now throughout Warsaw: ‘She remembered her most distant relatives!’ Nicely did she remember them! Marynia has an inheritance, has she? Knowest thou how much? Four hundred rubles a year for life. And the woman was a millionnaire! An inheritance like that may be left to a servant, not to a relative.”
“But to uncle?”
“Nothing to me. She left fifteen thousand rubles to her manager, but mentioned no syllable about me.”
“What is to be done?”
“Old traditions are perishing. How many people gained estates formerly through wills, and why was it? Because love and solidarity existed in families.”
“Even to-day I know people on whose heads thousands have fallen from wills.”
“True, there are such,—there are many of them; but I am not of the number.”
Plavitski rested his head on his hand, and from his mouth issued something in the style of a monologue.