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g, theories of free thought, audacious ideas of independent love; but as she was so timid that she never ventured to speak aloud, it was all driven back, condensed and expressed in her heart, which never opened itself. "My two brothers were very hard towards her, like their father was, and never gave her a caress, and, used to seeing her count for nothing in the house, they treated her rather like a servant, and so I was the only one of her sons who really loved her, and whom she loved. "When she died, I was seventeen, and I must add, in order that you may understand what follows, that there had been a law suit between my father and my mother, and that their property had been separated, to my mother's advantage, as, thanks to the tricks of the law, and the intelligent devotion of a lawyer to her interests, she had preserved the right of making her will in favor of anyone she pleased. "We were told that there was a will lying at the lawyer's, and were invited to be present at the reading of it. I can remember it, as if it were yesterday. It was a grand, dramatic, burlesque, surprising scene, brought about by the posthumous revolt of that dead woman, by that cry for liberty, that claim from the depths of her tomb, of that martyred woman who had been crushed by our habits during her life, and, who, from her closed tomb, uttered a despairing appeal for independence. "The man who thought that he was my father, a stout, ruddy-faced man, who gave everyone the idea of a butcher, and my brothers, two great fellows of twenty and twenty-two, were waiting quietly in their chairs. Monsieur de Bourneval, who had been invited to be present, came in and stood behind me. He was very pale, and bit his moustache, which was turning gray. No doubt he was prepared for what was going to happen, and the lawyer double-locked the door and began to read the will, after having opened the envelope, which was sealed with red wax, and whose contents he was ignorant of, in our presence." My friend stopped suddenly and got up, and from his writing-table he took an old paper, unfolded it, kissed it, and then continued: "This is the will of my beloved mother: "'I, the undersigned, Anne Catherine-Genevieve-Mathilde de Croixlure, the legitimate wife of Leopold-Joseph Goutran de Courcils, sound in body and mind, here express my last wishes. "'I first of all ask God, and then my dear son Rene, to pardon me for the act I
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