of furniture in the room."

"His nearest relation was a cousin, the Marquis de Territet, a skeptic,
who lived in Burgundy, and whom all this disturbance had upset in his
habits, and whose only desire was to get it all over, the legal
formalities, the funeral, and all the rest of it, as soon as possible.

"Without reflecting on the strange suggestiveness of that death-bed, and
without looking to see whether there might not be, somehow or other, a
will in which Lantosque expressed his last wishes, he wanted to spare
his corpse the contact of mercenary hands, and to lay him out himself.

"You may judge of his surprise when, on throwing back the bed-clothes,
he first of all saw that Lantosque was dressed from head to foot in
tights, which accentuated, rather than otherwise, his female form.

"Much alarmed, feeling that he must have been violating some supreme
order, and comprehending it all, he went to his cousin's writing-table,
opened it, and successively searched every drawer, and soon found an
envelope fastened with five seals, and addressed to him. He broke them
and read as follows, written on a sheet of black-edged paper:

"'This is my only will. I leave all that I possess to my cousin, Roland
de Territet, on condition that he will undertake my funeral; that in his
own presence, he will have me wrapped up in the sheets of the bed on
which I die, and have me put into the coffin so, without any further
preparations. I wish to be cremated at _Pere-Lachaise_, and not to be
subjected to any examination, or _post-mortem_, whatever may happen.'"

"And how came the marquis to betray the secret?" Bob Shelley asked.

"The marquis is married to a charming Parisian woman, and was any
married man, who loved his wife, ever known to keep a secret from her?"

MARROCA

You ask me, my dear friend, to send you my impressions of Africa, my
adventures, and especially an account of my love affairs in this country
which has attracted me for so long. You laughed a great deal beforehand
at my dusky sweethearts, as you called them, and declared that you could
see me returning to France, followed by a tall, ebony-colored woman,
with a yellow silk handkerchief round her head, and wearing voluminous
bright-colored trousers.

No doubt the Moorish women will have their turn, for I have seen several
of them who have made me feel very much inclined to have to fall in love
with them; but by way of making a beginning, I came across som