Here lies a notable personage,
Of family proud, of ancient lineage;
His virtues unnumbered, his knowledge profound,
Remarkably humble, remarkably wise;—
Come, come! for twenty-five pound,
I’ve told enough lies!
Another clause in the Abbé’s will deserves to be recorded, from its pithiness:
To my steward, I leave nothing; because he has been in my service for eighteen years.
This reminds one of an anecdote told of the Cardinal Dubois, whose servants came to him every New Year’s Day to present their congratulations, and to receive a New Year’s box. When the steward came in his turn, the Cardinal said to him:
Monsieur, I present you with all that you have stolen from me.
The pleasure of receiving a legacy must be generally mingled with pain, more or less intense, according to the nearness of relationship of the deceased, or the affection we have had for him: but, when a plump legacy drops into our laps from a totally unexpected quarter, and left by one for whom we did not care, or possibly whom we did not know,—the amount of pain must be very minute. Such a case was that of a lady who came in for a large fortune from an eccentric individual to whom she had never spoken, though she had seen him at the opera, or in the park. The wording of the will was:
I supplicate Miss B—— to accept my whole fortune, too feeble an acknowledgment of the inexpressible sensations which the contemplation of her adorable nose has produced on me.
The following is as curious. A good citizen of Paris, who died about 1779, inserted this clause in his will:
Item: I leave to M. l’Abbé Thirty-thousand-men, 1200 livres a year: I do not know him by any other name, but he is an excellent citizen, who certified me in the Luxembourg, that the English, that ferocious people which dethrones its monarchs, will soon be destroyed.
On opening the testament, the executors were sorely puzzled to know who this Abbé Thirty-thousand-men could possibly be. At last, several people deposed that this citizen, a sworn enemy of the English and a great politician, had been wont every day to march up and down the Allé des Larmes in the Luxembourg; there he used to meet with an Abbé who had as great an abhorrence of the English as himself, and who was perpetually urging:—“Those English rascals aren’t worth a straw. 30,000 men only are wanted,—30,000 men raised,—30,000 embarked,—30,000 landed,—and London would be in the hands of 30,000 men. A mere trifle!”