had died on their way to Soulanges), all the rodents of the
department, mice and field-mice and dormice, rats, muskrats, and
moles, etc.; all the interesting birds ever shot in Burgundy, and an
Alpine eagle caught in the Jura. Gourdon also possessed a collection
of lepidoptera,--a word which led society to hope for monstrosities,
and to say, when it saw them, "Why, they are only butterflies!"
Besides these things he had a fine array of fossil shells, mostly the
collections of his friends which they bequeathed to him, and all the
minerals of Burgundy and the Jura.

These treasures, laid out on shelves with glass doors (the drawers
beneath containing the insects), occupied the whole of the first floor
of the doctor's house, and produced a certain effect through the
oddity of the names on the tickets, the magic effect of the colors,
and the gathering together of so many things which no one pays the
slightest attention to when seen in nature, though much admired under
glass. Society took a regular day to go and look at Monsieur Gourdon's
collection.

"I have," he said to all inquirers, "five hundred ornithological
objects, two hundred mammifers, five thousand insects, three thousand
shells, and seven thousand specimens of minerals."

"What patience you have had!" said the ladies.

"One must do something for one's country," replied the collector.

He drew an enormous profit from his carcasses by the mere repetition
of the words, "I have bequeathed everything to the town by my will."
Visitors lauded his philanthropy; the authorities talked of devoting