He tried them all before he found one that would fit. Then he turned the bolt with a sharp click, and lowered the lid. I began to feel excited, and I could see that the others were and did not conceal it.
"Ah, no one has been here, that's evident!" exclaimed the doctor.
Plain to view in a neat pile were some French coins, a shining little tower of gold. The lawyer opened one of the drawers on the left. It was empty. Then another, with the same result. In the bottom one, on the right hand, however, was a paper and a miniature on ivory. I remembered the last—the side face of a large, heavy man in a white wig. His nose was very prominent, and despite the massive jowl he had an air that suggested the effect of a noble presence. His costume was magnificent. From beneath a broad sash that crossed his breast peeped a great diamond star, and lace and jewels decked him.
"An excellent likeness, I judge," said the doctor, looking at the portrait with one eye shut.
"I should know it across the room," replied the lawyer.
"Who is it?" I asked, for I had seen it once in my mother's hands.
"It is the French King who lost his head by the guillotine," answered the doctor—"Louis the Sixteenth."
"Did your mother never speak to you about this portrait?" asked the lawyer, who was untying the ribbon with which the paper had been fastened.
"Once I saw her looking at it," I replied, "and I asked her. But I never did so again, because she began to talk so fast and in such strange words that I could not follow. Then she began to weep, and her hair fell down all about her. Aunt Sheba came running in and held her in her arms. It was a long time before she grew calm again. She never told me who it was."
By this the lawyer had spread the document on his knee. He gave a grunt of vexation.