eir apparent excepted--that had been awaited
with such curiosity as the opening of the Van der Kabel will. Van der
Kabel might have been called the Haslau Croesus--and his life
described as a pleasure-making mint, or a washing of gold sand under a
golden rain, or in whatever other terms wit could devise. Now, seven
distant living relatives of seven distant deceased relatives of Kabel
were cherishing some hope of a legacy, because the Croesus had sworn
to remember them. These hopes, however, were very faint. No one was
especially inclined to trust him, as he not only conducted himself on
all occasions in a gruffly moral and unselfish manner--in regard to
morality, to be sure, the seven relatives were still beginners--but
likewise treated everything so derisively and possessed a heart so
full of tricks and surprises that there was no dependence to be placed
upon him. The eternal smile hovering around his temples and thick
lips, and the mocking falsetto voice, impaired the good impression
that might otherwise have been made by his nobly cut face and a pair
of large hands, from which New Year's presents, benefit performances,
and gratuities were continually falling. Wherefore the birds of
passage proclaimed the man, this human mountain-ash in which they
nested and of whose berries they ate, to be in reality a dangerous
trap; and they seemed hardly able to see the visible berries for the
invisible snares.

Between two attacks of apoplexy he made his will and deposited it with
the magistrate. Though half dead when, he gave over the certificate
to the seven presumptive heirs he said in his old tone of voice that
he did not wish this token of his decease to cause dejection to mature
men whom he would much rather think of as laughing than as weeping
heirs. And only one of them, the coldly ironical Police-Inspector
Harprecht, answered the smilingly ironical Croesus: "It was not in
their power to determine the extent of their collective sympathy in
such a loss."

At last the seven heirs appeared with their certificate at the city
hall. These were the Consistorial Councilor Glanz, the Police
Inspector, the Court-Agent Neupeter, the Attorney of the Royal
Treasury Knol, the Bookseller Passvogel, the Preacher-at-Early-Service
Flachs, and Herr Flitte from Alsace. They duly and properly requested
of the magistrates the charter consigned to the latter by the late
Kabel, and asked for the opening of the will. The chief executor of
the