Auguste's hand.

"Remain here, madame," said the sheriff; "we shall make you legal
guardian of the property. The law gives you forty sous a day, and that's
not to be sneezed at."

"Ha! now I shall see the inside of that fine bedroom!" cried the
Vauthier.

"You shall not go into my mother's room!" said the young lad, in a
threatening voice, springing between the door and the three men in
black.

At a sign from the sheriff, two of the men seized Auguste.

"No resistance, young man; you are not master here," said the sheriff.
"We shall draw up the proces-verbal, and you will sleep in jail."

Hearing that dreadful word, Auguste burst into tears.

"Ah, how fortunate," he cried, "that mamma has gone! It would have
killed her."

A conference now took place between the sheriff, the other men, and
Vauthier, by which Auguste discovered, although they spoke in a low
voice, that his grandfather's manuscripts were what they chiefly wanted.
On that, he opened the door of his mother's bedroom.

"Go in," he said, "but take care to do no injury. You will be paid
to-morrow morning."

Then he went off weeping into the lair, seized his grandfather's notes
and stuck them into the stove, in which, as he knew very well, there was
not a spark of fire.

The thing was done so rapidly that the sheriff--a sly, keen fellow,
worthy of his clients Barbet and Metivier--found the lad weeping in his
chair when he entered the wretched room, after assuring himself that the
manuscripts were not in the antechamber.

Though it is not permissible to seize books or manuscripts for debt, the
bill of sale which Monsieur Bernard had made of his work justified
this proceeding. It was, however, easy to oppose various delays to this
seizure, and Monsieur Bernard, had he been there, would not have failed
to do so. For that reason the whole affair had been conducted slyly.
Madame Vauthier had not attempted to give the writs to Monsieur Bernard;
she meant to have flung them into the room on entering behind the
sheriff's men, so to give the appearance of their being in the old man's
possession.

The proces-verbal of the seizure took an hour to write down; the sheriff
omitted nothing, and declared that the value of the property seized
was sufficient to pay the debt. As soon as he and his men had
departed, Auguste took the writs and rushed to the hospital to find his
grandfather. The sheriff having told him that Madame Vauthier was now
responsible, unde