VAN DER KABEL’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
EVER since Haslan was a duke’s residence there was no record of anything having been looked forward to with such curiosity—excepting the birth of a hereditary prince—as the opening of Van der Kabel’s last will and testament. Van der Kabel might have been called the Crœsus of Haslan, and his life a comedy of coins. Seven distant relatives of seven deceased distant relatives of Kabel’s indulged in some little hope of a place in the testament, the Crœsus having sworn to remember them there; but the hope was a faint one, as he seemed not greatly to be trusted, not only because he was in the habit of managing his affairs in a grimly moral and unselfish manner—in matters of morality the seven relatives were but beginners—but also because he handled things in so cynical a spirit, and with a heart so full of traps and snares that there was no depending upon him. The continuous smile about his temples and thick lips, and his shrill sneering voice, impaired the good impression which his nobly-formed features and a pair of large hands, dropping New Year’s gifts and benefits every day, might have made; therefore the swarms of birds declared this man, this living fruit-tree, which furnished them with food and nests, to be a secret snare, and would not see the visible berries for invisible nooses.
Between two strokes of paralysis he had dictated his testament, and entrusted it to the magistrate. When in a half-dying state he handed the receipt of deposit to the seven heirs-presumptive, he said, in his old tone, that he should greatly deplore it if this sign of his approaching decease would strike down sensible men, whom he liked to picture as laughing heirs rather than as weeping ones.
In due time the seven heirs put in an appearance at the Rathhaus with their receipt of deposit. There was the Right Reverend Glanz, the Police-inspector, the Court-agent Neupeter, the Court-attorney Knoll, the Bookseller Pasvogel, the Preacher Flachs, and Flitte from Elsass. They urged the magistrate to produce the charte of the deceased Kabel, and open the will with all the formalities of the law. The high executor of the same was the ruling burgomaster in person; the low executors were the town councillors. Without delay the charte and testament were fetched out of the private closet and deposited in the court-room, passed around to the senators and heirs, that they might gaze upon the printed town-seal. The directions written upon the outside of the charte were read in a loud voice by the town-scribent to the seven heirs, who were therewith informed that the deceased had in truth deposited the said charte with the magistrate, and entrusted it to the same scrinio rei publicae, and that on the day when he had thus deposited it he had been in his right mind; last, the seven seals which he himself had placed thereon were examined and found intact. After the town-scribent had entered a registry of all these proceedings, the testament was opened in God’s name, and read aloud by the ruling burgomaster as follows:—
“I, Van der Kabel, herewith declare my last will and testament this 7th day of May 179—, here in my house in Haslan in the Hundgasse, without many millions of words, though I was once a German Notary Public and a Dutch dominé. But I believe I am still sufficiently conversant with the art of a notary to be enabled to act the part of a testator and bequeather in a proper and becoming manner.
“As for charitable legacies, so far as they are any concern of the lawyer’s, I declare that the poor of this town, 3000 in number, shall receive as many light florins, for which they may celebrate the anniversary day of my death next year by pitching a camp upon the public common; make a merry day of it, and then take the tents to make clothes out of them. To all schoolmasters of our dukedom I bequeath a Louis d’or apiece; and to the Jews of the place I bequeath my pew in church. As I desire to have my testament sub-divided into paragraphs, this may be considered as the first.
“Paragraph 2.—Declarations of inheritance and disinheritance are universally counted among the essentials of a testament. I therefore bequeath to the Right Reverend Glanz, the Court-attorney Knoll, the Court-agent Peter Neupeter, the Police-inspector Harprecht, the Preacher Flachs, the Bookseller Pasvogel, and Herr Flitte, nothing for the present, not so much because the most distant relatives can lay no claim to a Trebellianica, nor because most of them have enough to pass on to future generations as it is, but mainly because I know from their own assurance that they esteem my humble person more than my large fortune, of which I must therefore dispose otherwise.”
“SEVEN ELONGATED FACES HERE STARTED UP.”
Seven elongated faces here started up. Especially did the Right Reverend Glanz, a young man noted throughout Germany for his spoken and printed sermons, feel himself keenly injured by such sneers. Flitte, from Elsass, permitted a whispered oath to escape his lips; and as for Flachs, the preacher, his chin grew longer and longer, and threatened to grow into a beard. Many a whispered ejaculation was overheard by the magistrate addressing the late Herr Kabel by such appellatives as scoundrel, fool, antichrist. But the ruling burgomaster waved his hand, the court-attorney and the bookseller set all the elastic springs in their faces as in a trap once more, and the former continued reading albeit with affected seriousness.