ason I don't dissuade Ursula from buying it. If it
were not for that, it would be absurd to let her put every penny of her
ready money into books she will never open."

At first the whole town believed the doctor's niece had got possession
of the unfound capital; but when it was known positively that fourteen
hundred francs a year and her gifts constituted her whole fortune the
search of the doctor's house and furniture excited a more wide-spread
curiosity than before. Some said the money would be found in bank bills
hidden away in the furniture, others that the old man had slipped them
into his books. The sale of the effects exhibited a spectacle of the
most extraordinary precautions on the part of the heirs. Dionis, who was
doing duty as auctioneeer, declared, as each lot was cried out, that
the heirs only sold the article (whatever it was) and not what it might
contain; then, before allowing it to be taken away it was subjected to a
final investigation, being thumped and sounded; and when at last it left
the house the sellers followed with the looks a father might cast upon a
son who was starting for India.

"Ah, mademoiselle," cried La Bougival, returning from the first session
in despair, "I shall not go again. Monsieur Bongrand is right, you could
never bear the sight. Everything is ticketed. All the town is coming
and going just as in the street; the handsome furniture is being ruined,
they even stand upon it; the whole place is such a muddle that a hen
couldn't find her chicks. You'd think there had been a fire. Lots of
things are in the courtyard; the closets are all open, and nothing in
them. Oh! the poor dear man, it's well he died, the sight would have
killed him."

Bongrand, who bought for Ursula certain articles which her uncle
cherished, and which were suitable for her little house, did not appear
at the sale of the library. Shrewder than the heirs, whose cupidity
might have run up the price of the books had they known he was buying
them for Ursula, he commissioned a dealer in old books living in Melun
to buy them for him. As a result of the heir's anxiety the whole library
was sold book by book. Three thousand volumes were examined, one by one,
held by the two sides of the binding and shaken so that loose papers
would infallibly fall out. The whole amount of the purchases on Ursula's
account amounted to six thousand five hundred francs or thereabouts.
The book-cases were not allowed to leave the premis