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."
"Why?" asked Cyrillon quietly.
"My dear young man! Can you ask? Why emphasise the fact of your illegitimacy to the public!"
"Why disguise it?" returned Cyrillon. "You must remember that I have another public than the merely social,—the people! They all know what I am, and who I am. They have honoured me. They shall not despise me. And they would despise me if I sought to hold back from them what my father bade me tell. Moreover, this will gives my mother the honour of wifehood in the sight of God,—and I must tell you, monsieur l'avocat, that I am one of those who care nothing what the world says so long as I stand more or less clear with the world's Creator!"
His great dark eyes were brilliant,—his face warm with the fire of his inward feeling. Monsieur Petitot folded up his document and looked at him with an amiable tolerance.
"Wonderful—wonderful!" he said—"But of course eccentricities WILL appear in the world occasionally!—and you must pardon me if I venture to think that you are certainly one of them. But I imagine you have nograsped the whole position. The money—I should saythe fortune—which your father has left to you, will make you a gentleman—"