n
live without all mankind except perhaps the barber and the apothecary;
but when it comes to dying, they seem physically unable to die without
an heir. You can apply this principle for yourself. Viscount Alain,
though he scarce guesses it, is no longer in the field. Remains,
Viscount Anne."

"I see," said I, "you give a very unfavourable impression of my uncle,
the Count."

"I had not meant it," said he. "He has led a loose life--sadly
loose--but he is a man it is impossible to know and not to admire; his
courtesy is exquisite."

"And so you think there is actually a chance for me?" I asked.

"Understand," said he: "in saying as much as I have done, I travel quite
beyond my brief. I have been clothed with no capacity to talk of wills,
or heritages, or your cousin. I was sent here to make but the one
communication: that M. de Keroual desires to meet his great-nephew."

"Well," said I, looking about me on the battlements by which we sat
surrounded, "this is a case in which Mahomet must certainly come to the
mountain."

"Pardon me," said Mr. Romaine; "you know already your uncle is an aged
man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up, and his
death shortly looked for. No, no, there is no doubt about it--it is the
mountain that must come to Mahomet."

"From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant," said I; "but
you are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men's secrets, and I see
you keep that of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a truculent
patriotism, to say the least."

"I am first of all the lawyer of your family!" says he.

"That being so," said I, "I can perhaps stretch a point myself. This
rock is very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a devil of
a fall from almost any part of it, and yet I believe I have a pair of
wings that might carry me just so far as to the bottom. Once at the
bottom I am helpless."

"And perhaps it is just then that I could step in," returned the lawyer.
"Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess, and on which I
offer no opinion----"

But here I interrupted him. "One word ere you go further. I am under no
parole," said I.

"I understood so much," he replied, "although some of you French gentry
find their word sit lightly on them."

"Sir, I am not one of those," said I.

"To do you plain justice, I do not think you one," said he. "Suppose
yourself, then, set free and at the bottom of the rock," he continued,
"although