the town, but has added the condition, that if her nephew choose the girl she has intended for him, he shall enjoy the interest of the fifty thousand crowns; if he does not consent to this arrangement the interest passes at once to the poor’s funds.”
“Well, and this girl?—” eagerly asked several of the auditors.
“Aye, there is the puzzle!” continued Mr Sander, in a low voice. “The old lady has not thought fit to name her in her codicil; but Mrs General Waldmark, who was the intimate friend of the daughter of the testatrix—the mother, you know, of the young man—is said to have in a sealed paper the name of the girl, with the express injunction, that this paper she shall open in the presence of her grandson and two witnesses, who are to be the President of the Chancery, and the Director of the Poor’s funds. It is impossible, I say, to guess at present whom she has designed for her grandson’s bride; but it is generally believed that the choice has fallen on one of her adjutants.”
“Adjutants!” exclaimed several voices.
“Yes,” rejoined the Recorder, “such was the extraordinary title she gave to the seven girls who alternately resided with her. Whether she meant by the number seven to imitate the seven electors of the empire,—or the seven wise men of Greece,—or the seven wonders of the world,—or, as they were women—the seven deadly sins, I cannot tell. Certain it is, that the old lady attached unusual importance to the number seven. Her daughter, the mother of her heir, was called Johanna, a name consisting of seven letters; she died at the age of thirty-five; the old lady had declared she herself would not live beyond the age of eighty-four, and she has kept her word; when she died her grandson was twenty-eight;—all those numbers, you see, are divisible by seven. She used to explain, with great erudition, that every period of seven Sabbatic years contained eighty-four months; and every week of seven days, amounted to eighty-four Chaldean
