n his ear. The
worse he grew, the more he smoked and tippled; and the more he smoked
and tippled,--why, as a matter of course, the worse he grew. His wife
alternately stormed, remonstrated, entreated; but all in vain. She made
the house too hot for him,--he retreated to the tavern; she broke his
long-stemmed pipes upon the andirons,--he substituted a short-stemmed
one, which, for safe-keeping, he carried in his waistcoat-pocket.

Thus the unhappy notary ran gradually down at the heel. What with his
bad habits and his domestic grievances, he became completely hipped. He
imagined that he was going to die; and suffered in quick succession all
the diseases that ever beset mortal man. Every shooting pain was an
alarming symptom,--every uneasy feeling after dinner a sure prognostic
of some mortal disease. In vain did his friends endeavor to reason, and
then to laugh him out of his strange whims; for when did ever jest or
reason cure a sick imagination? His only answer was, "Do let me alone; I
know better than you what ails me."

Well, gentlemen, things were in this state, when, one afternoon in
December, as he sat moping in his office, wrapped in an overcoat, with a
cap on his head and his feet thrust into a pair of furred slippers, a
cabriolet stopped at the door, and a loud knocking without aroused him
from his gloomy revery. It was a message from his friend the
wine-dealer, who had been suddenly attacked with a violent fever, and
growing worse and worse, had now sent in the greatest haste for the
notary to draw up his last will and testament. The case was urgent, and
admitted neither excuse nor delay; and the notary, tying a handkerchief
round his face, and buttoning up to the chin, jumped into the cabriolet,
and suffered himself, though not without some dismal presentiments and
misgivings of heart, to be driven to the wine-dealer's house.

When he arrived, he found everything in the greatest confusion. On
entering the house, he ran against the apothecary, who was coming down
stairs, with a face as long as your arm; and a few steps farther he met
the housekeeper--for the wine-dealer was an old bachelor--running up
and down, and wringing her hands, for fear that the good man should die
without making his will. He soon reached the chamber of his sick friend,
and found him tossing about in a paroxysm of fever, and calling aloud
for a draught of cold water. The notary shook his head; he thought this
a fatal symptom; for ten