"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.




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