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 would have been prettily trapped. I had a bitter pill in store for her. My word for it!"

His lip curls in a smile that ends in an atrocious grimace. He continues, chopping each of his words with moist little puffs of laughter:

"You know that I made a will, in which I gave her everything,—house, money, dividends, everything. She must have told you; she told everybody. Yes, but what she did not tell you, because she did not know it, is that, two months later, I made a second will, cancelling the first, in which I did not leave her anything,—not a sou."

Unable to contain himself longer, he bursts out laughing, a strident laugh that scatters through the garden like a flight of scolding sparrows. And he cries:

"Ah! that's an idea, hey? Oh! her head,—you can see it from here,—on learning that I had left my little fortune to the French Academy. For, my little Célestine, it is true; I had left my fortune to the French Academy. Ah! that's an idea!"

I allow his laughter to become quieter, and then I gravely ask him:

"And now, Captain, what are you going to do?"

The captain gives me a long, sly, amorous look, and says:

"Well, that depends on you."

"On me?"