FullReads

“What is your name?”

The words of the man in the bed were an inaudible gasp. But Attalie bent her ear quickly, caught them, and turning repeated:

“More brandy.”

The black girl brought a decanter from the floor behind the bureau, and a wine-glass from the washstand. Attalie poured, the patient drank, and the maid replaced glass and decanter. The eyes of the butcher and the baker followed the sparkling vessel till it disappeared, and the maker of candlesticks made a dry swallow and faintly licked his lips. The notary remarked that there must be no intervention of speakers between himself and the person making the will, nor any turning aside to other matters; but that merely stopping a moment to satisfy thirst without leaving the room was not a vitiative turning aside and would not be, even if done by others besides the party making the will. But here the patient moaned and said audibly, “Let us go on.” And they went on. The notary asked the patient’s name, the place and date of his birth, etc., and the patient’s answers were in every case whatever the Englishman’s would have been. Presently the point was reached where the patient should express his wishes unprompted by suggestion or inquiry. He said faintly, “I will and bequeath”–

The servant girl, seeing her mistress bury her face in her handkerchief, did the same. The patient gasped audibly and said again, but more faintly:

“I will and bequeath–some more brandy.”

The decanter was brought. He drank again. He let Attalie hand it back to the maid and the maid get nearly to the bureau when he said in a low tone of distinct reproof:

“Pass it ’round.” The four visitors drank.

Then the patient resumed with stronger voice. “I will and bequeath to my friend Camille Ducour”–

Attalie started from her chair with a half-uttered cry of amazement and protest, but dropped back again at the notary’s gesture for silence, and the patient spoke straight on without hesitation–“to my friend Camille Ducour, the sum of fifteen hundred dollars in cash.”

Attalie and her handmaiden looked at each other with a dumb show of lamentation; but her butcher and her baker turned slowly upon her candlestick-maker, and he upon them, a look of quiet but profound approval. The notary wrote, and the patient spoke again:

“I will everything else which I may leave at my death, both real and personal property, to Madame Attalie Brouillard.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Attalie, in the manner of one largely, but not entirely, propitiated. The maid suited her silent movement to the utterance, and the three witnesses exchanged slow looks of grave satisfaction. Mistress and maid, since the will seemed to them so manifestly and entirely finished, began to whisper together, although the patient and the notary were still perfecting some concluding formalities. But presently the notary began to read aloud the instrument he had prepared, keeping his face buried in the paper and running his nose and purblind eyes about it nervously, like a new-born thing hunting the warm fountain of life. All gave close heed. We need not give the document in its full length, nor its Creole accent in its entire breadth. This is only something like it:

“Dthee State of Louisiana,” etc. “Be h-it known dthat on dthees h-eighth day of dthee month of May, One thousan’ h-eight hawndred and fifty-five, dthat I, Eugene Favre, a not-arie pewblic een and for dthe State of Louisiana, parrish of Orleans, duly commission-ed and qualeefi-ed, was sue-mon-ed to dthe domee-ceel of Mr. [the Englishman’s name], Number [so-and-so] Bienville street; …dthat I found sayed Mr. [Englishman] lyingue in heez bade in dthee rear room of dthee second floor h-of dthee sayed house … at about two o’clawk in dthee h-afternoon, and beingue informed by dthee sayed Mr. [Englishman] dthat he diz-i-red too make heez weel, I, sayed not-arie, sue-mon-ed into sayed bedchamber of dthe sayed Mr. [Englishman] dthe following nam-ed witnesses of lawfool h-age and residents of dthe sayed cittie, parrish, and State, to wit: Mr. Jean d’Eau, Mr. Richard Reau, and Mr. V. Deblieux Ecswyzee. That there up-on sayed Mr. [Englishman] being seek in bodie but of soun’ mine, which was happarent to me not-arie and dthe sayed witnesses by heez lang-uage and h-actions then and there in dthe presence of sayed witnesses dictated to me not-arie dthe following as heez laz weel and testament, wheech was written by me sayed not-arie as dictated by the sayed Mr. [Englishman], to wit: