“When I entered Gobseck’s room, I found the dying man kneeling before the grate. If there was no fire on the hearth, there was at any rate a monstrous heap of ashes. He had dragged himself out of bed, but his strength had failed him, and he could neither go back nor find the voice to complain.
“‘You felt cold, old friend,’ I said, as I helped him back to his bed; ‘how can you do without a fire?’
“‘I am not cold at all,’ he said. ‘No fire here! no fire! I am going, I know not where, lad,’ he went on, glancing at me with blank, lightless eyes, ‘but I am going away from this.--I have _carpology_,’ said he (the use of the technical term showing how clear and accurate his mental processes were even now). ‘I thought the room was full of live gold, and I got up to catch some of it.--To whom will all mine go, I wonder? Not to the crown; I have left a will, look for it, Grotius. _La belle Hollandaise_ had a daughter; I once saw the girl somewhere or other, in the Rue Vivienne, one evening. They call her “_La Torpille_,” I believe; she is as pretty as pretty can be; look her up, Grotius. You are my executor; take what you like; help yourself. There are Strasburg pies, there, and bags of coffee, and sugar, and gold spoons. Give the Odiot service to your wife. But who is to have the diamonds? Are you going to take them, lad? There is snuff too--sell it at Hamburg, tobaccos are worth half as much again at Hamburg. All sorts of things I have in fact, and now I must go and leave them all.--Come, Papa Gobseck, no weakness, be yourself!’
“He raised himself in bed, the lines of his face standing out as sharply against the pillow as if the profile had been cast in bronze; he stretched out a lean arm and bony hand along the coverlet and clutched it, as if so he would fain keep his hold on life, then he gazed hard at the grate, cold as his own metallic eyes, and died in full consciousness of death. To us--the portress, the old pensioner, and myself--he looked like one of the old Romans standing behind the Consuls in Lethiere’s picture of the _Death of the Sons of Brutus_.
“‘He was a good-plucked one, the old Lascar!’ said the pensioner in his soldierly fashion.
“But as for me, the dying man’s fantastical enumeration of his riches still sounding in my ears, and my eyes, following the direction of his, rested on that heap of ashes. It struck me that it was very large. I took the tongs, and as soon as I stirred the cinders, I felt the metal underneath, a mass of gold and silver coins, receipts taken during his illness, doubtless, after he grew too feeble to lock the money up, and could trust no one to take it to the bank for him.