inoret-Levrault and his wife,
Monsieur and Madame Massin-Levrault, junior, Monsieur and Madame
Cremiere-Cremiere--whom we shall in future call simply Cremiere,
Massin, and Minoret, because these distinctions among homonyms is quite
unnecessary out of the Gatinais--met together as people do in little
towns. The post master gave a grand dinner on his son's birthday, a ball
during the carnival, another on the anniversary of his marriage, to
all of which he invited the whole bourgeoisie of Nemours. The collector
received his relations and friends twice a year. The clerk of the court,
too poor, he said, to fling himself into such extravagance, lived in
a small way in a house standing half-way down the Grand'Rue, the
ground-floor of which was let to his sister, the letter-postmistress
of Nemours, a situation she owed to the doctor's kind offices.
Nevertheless, in the course of the year these three families did meet
together frequently, in the houses of friends, in the public promenades,
at the market, on their doorsteps, or, of a Sunday in the square, as on
this occasion; so that one way and another they met nearly every day.
For the last three years the doctor's age, his economies, and his
probable wealth had led to allusions, or frank remarks, among the
townspeople as to the disposition of his property, a topic which made
the doctor and his heirs of deep interest to the little town. For the
last six months not a day passed that friends and neighbours did not
speak to the heirs, with secret envy, of the day the good man's eyes
would shut and the coffers open.

"Doctor Minoret may be an able physician, on good terms with death, but
none but God is eternal," said one.

"Pooh, he'll bury us all; his health is better than ours," replied an
heir, hypocritically.

"Well, if you don't get the money yourselves, your children will, unless
that little Ursula--"

"He won't leave it all to her."

Ursula, as Madame Massin had predicted, was the bete noire of the
relations, their sword of Damocles; and Madame Cremiere's favorite
saying, "Well, whoever lives will know," shows that they wished at any
rate more harm to her than good.

The collector and the clerk of the court, poor in comparison with the
post master, had often estimated, by way of conversation, the doctor's
property. If they met their uncle walking on the banks of the canal or
along the road they would look at each other piteously.

"He must have got hold of some eli