way; the most precious articles in his shop. It was agreed that the riches of the pastor and those of the jeweller should be deposited in the same hole. But, then, who was to dig the said hole? One of the singers in church was the very pearl of honest fellows, father Moiselet, and in him every confidence could be reposed. He would not touch a penny that did not belong to him. For thirty years, in his capacity of cooper, he had the exclusive privilege of bottling off the wine of the presbytery, which was the best that could be procured. Churchwarden, sexton, butler, ringer, factotum of the church, and devoted to his vicegerent, for whom he would have risen at any hour of the night, he had all the qualities of an excellent servant, without including his discretion, intelligence, and piety. In so serious a conjuncture it was plain that they could not fix better than on Moiselet, and he was the chosen man. The hole, made with much skill, was soon ready to receive the treasure which it was intended to preserve, and six feet of earth were cast on the specie of the Curé, to which were united diamonds worth 100,000 crowns, belonging to M. Senard, and enclosed in a small box. The hollow filled up, the ground was so well flattened, that one would have betted with the devil that it had not been stirred since the creation. "This good Moiselet," said M. Senard, rubbing his hands, "has done it all admirably. Now, gentlemen cossacks, you must have fine noses if you find it out!" At the end bf a few days the allied armies made further progress, and clouds of Kirguiz, Kalmucs, and Tartars, of all hordes and all colours, appeared in the environs of Paris. These unpleasant guests are, it is well known, very greedy for plunder: they made, every where, great ravages; they passed no habitation without exacting tribute: but in their ardour for pillage they did not confine themselves to the surface, all belonged to them to the centre of the globe; and that they might not be frustrated in their pretensions, these intrepid geologists made a thousand excavations, which, to the regret of the naturalists of
