"Non, je ne comprends pas de plus charmant plaisir
Que de voir d'heritiers une troupe affligee
Le maintien interdit, et la mine allongee,
Lire un long testament ou pales, etonnes
On leur laisse un bonsoir avec un pied de nez.
Pour voir au naturel leur tristesse profonde
Je reviendrais, je crois, expres de l'autre monde."
--REGNARD: Le Legataire Universel.
When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied
species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to
think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were
eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations. (I fear the
part played by the vultures on that occasion would be too painful for
art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously naked about the
gullet, and apparently without rites and ceremonies.)
The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed
Peter Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their
minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the
most of. The long-recognized blood-relations and connections by
marriage made already a goodly number, which, multiplied by
possibilities, presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and
pathetic hopefulness. Jealousy of the Vincys had created a fellowship
in hostility among all persons of the Featherstone blood, so that in
the absence of any decided indication that one of themselves was to
have more than the rest, the dread lest that long-legged Fred Vincy
should have the land was necessarily dominant, though it left abundant
feeling and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were entertained
towards Mary Garth. Solomon found time to reflect that Jonah was
undeserving, and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder
sister, held that Martha's children ought not to expect so much as the
young Waules; and Martha, more lax on the subject of primogeniture, was
sorry to think that Jane was so "having." These nearest of kin were
naturally impressed with the unreasonableness of expectations in
cousins and second cousins, and used their arithmetic in reckoning the
large sums that small legacies might mount to, if there were too many
of them. Two cousins were present to hear the will, and a second
cousin besides Mr. Trumbull. This second cousin was a Middlemarch
mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates. The two cousins
were elderly men from Brassing, one of them conscious of claims on the
score of inconvenient expense sustained by him in presents of oysters
and other eatables to his rich cousin Peter; the other entirely
saturnine, leaning his hands and chin on a stick, and conscious of
claims based on no narrow performance but on merit generally: both
blameless citizens of Brassing, who wished that Jonah Featherstone did
not live there. The wit of a family is usually best received among
strangers.