noon
Thanks to the culpable , but secure connivance of his friend , the house has been walled up , and is only to be opened in a century and a half , according to the last will of Rennepont . As for the fifty thousand gold crowns , they have been placed in hands which , unfortunately , are hitherto unknown to us , in order to be invested and put out to use for one hundred and fifty years , at the expiration of which time they are to be divided between the then existing descendants of the said Rennepont ; and it is calculated that this sum , increased by so many accumulations , will by then have become enormous , and will amount to at least forty or fifty millions of livres tournois . From motives which are not known , but which are duly stated in a testamentary document , the said Rennepont has concealed from his family , whom the edicts against the Protestants have driven out of France , the investment of these fifty thousand crowns ; and has only desired his relations to preserve in their line from generation to generation , the charge to the last survivors , to meet in Paris , Rue Saint-Francois , a hundred and fifty years hence , on February the 13th , 1832 . And that this charge might not be forgotten , he employed a person , whose description is known , but not his real occupation , to cause to be manufactured sundry bronze medals , on which the request and date are engraved , and to deliver one to each member of the family -- a measure the more necessary , as , from some other motive equally unknown , but probably explained in the testament , the heirs are to present themselves on the day in question , before noon , in person , and not by any attorney , or representative , or to forfeit all claim to the inheritance . The stranger who undertook to distribute the medals to the different members of the family of Rennepont is a man of thirty to thirty-six years of age , of tall stature , and with a proud and sad expression of countenance . He has black eyebrows , very thick , and singularly joined together . He is known as JOSEPH , and is much suspected of being an active and dangerous emissary of the wretched republicans and heretics of the Seven United Provinces .