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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1715-0.txt b/1715-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e0a4b7a --- /dev/null +++ b/1715-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7911 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Eugenie Grandet + +Author: Honore de Balzac + +Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley + +Release Date: April, 1999 [Etext #1715] +Posting Date: March 1, 2010 +Last Updated: November 22, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENIE GRANDET *** + + + + +Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny + + + + + +EUGENIE GRANDET + + +By Honore De Balzac + + + +Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley + + + + DEDICATION + + To Maria. + + May your name, that of one whose portrait is the noblest ornament + of this work, lie on its opening pages like a branch of sacred + box, taken from an unknown tree, but sanctified by religion, and + kept ever fresh and green by pious hands to bless the house. + + De Balzac. + + + + +EUGENIE GRANDET + + + + +I + +There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires +melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary +moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, +perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the +skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a +stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters +suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose +half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an +unaccustomed step. + +Such elements of sadness formed the physiognomy, as it were, of a +dwelling-house in Saumur which stands at the end of the steep street +leading to the chateau in the upper part of the town. This street--now +little frequented, hot in summer, cold in winter, dark in certain +sections--is remarkable for the resonance of its little pebbly pavement, +always clean and dry, for the narrowness of its tortuous road-way, for +the peaceful stillness of its houses, which belong to the Old town and +are over-topped by the ramparts. Houses three centuries old are still +solid, though built of wood, and their divers aspects add to the +originality which commends this portion of Saumur to the attention of +artists and antiquaries. + +It is difficult to pass these houses without admiring the enormous oaken +beams, their ends carved into fantastic figures, which crown with a +black bas-relief the lower floor of most of them. In one place these +transverse timbers are covered with slate and mark a bluish line along +the frail wall of a dwelling covered by a roof _en colombage_ which +bends beneath the weight of years, and whose rotting shingles are +twisted by the alternate action of sun and rain. In another place +blackened, worn-out window-sills, with delicate sculptures now scarcely +discernible, seem too weak to bear the brown clay pots from which +springs the heart’s-ease or the rose-bush of some poor working-woman. +Farther on are doors studded with enormous nails, where the genius of +our forefathers has traced domestic hieroglyphics, of which the meaning +is now lost forever. Here a Protestant attested his belief; there +a Leaguer cursed Henry IV.; elsewhere some bourgeois has carved the +insignia of his _noblesse de cloches_, symbols of his long-forgotten +magisterial glory. The whole history of France is there. + +Next to a tottering house with roughly plastered walls, where an artisan +enshrines his tools, rises the mansion of a country gentleman, on the +stone arch of which above the door vestiges of armorial bearings may +still be seen, battered by the many revolutions that have shaken France +since 1789. In this hilly street the ground-floors of the merchants are +neither shops nor warehouses; lovers of the Middle Ages will here find +the _ouvrouere_ of our forefathers in all its naive simplicity. These +low rooms, which have no shop-frontage, no show-windows, in fact +no glass at all, are deep and dark and without interior or exterior +decoration. Their doors open in two parts, each roughly iron-bound; the +upper half is fastened back within the room, the lower half, fitted with +a spring-bell, swings continually to and fro. Air and light reach the +damp den within, either through the upper half of the door, or through +an open space between the ceiling and a low front wall, breast-high, +which is closed by solid shutters that are taken down every morning, put +up every evening, and held in place by heavy iron bars. + +This wall serves as a counter for the merchandise. No delusive display +is there; only samples of the business, whatever it may chance to +be,--such, for instance, as three or four tubs full of codfish and +salt, a few bundles of sail-cloth, cordage, copper wire hanging from +the joists above, iron hoops for casks ranged along the wall, or a +few pieces of cloth upon the shelves. Enter. A neat girl, glowing +with youth, wearing a white kerchief, her arms red and bare, drops her +knitting and calls her father or her mother, one of whom comes forward +and sells you what you want, phlegmatically, civilly, or arrogantly, +according to his or her individual character, whether it be a matter of +two sous’ or twenty thousand francs’ worth of merchandise. You may see a +cooper, for instance, sitting in his doorway and twirling his thumbs as +he talks with a neighbor. To all appearance he owns nothing more than a +few miserable boat-ribs and two or three bundles of laths; but below +in the port his teeming wood-yard supplies all the cooperage trade of +Anjou. He knows to a plank how many casks are needed if the vintage is +good. A hot season makes him rich, a rainy season ruins him; in a single +morning puncheons worth eleven francs have been known to drop to six. +In this country, as in Touraine, atmospheric vicissitudes control +commercial life. Wine-growers, proprietors, wood-merchants, coopers, +inn-keepers, mariners, all keep watch of the sun. They tremble when they +go to bed lest they should hear in the morning of a frost in the night; +they dread rain, wind, drought, and want water, heat, and clouds to +suit their fancy. A perpetual duel goes on between the heavens and their +terrestrial interests. The barometer smooths, saddens, or makes merry +their countenances, turn and turn about. From end to end of this street, +formerly the Grand’Rue de Saumur, the words: “Here’s golden weather,” + are passed from door to door; or each man calls to his neighbor: “It +rains louis,” knowing well what a sunbeam or the opportune rainfall is +bringing him. + +On Saturdays after midday, in the fine season, not one sou’s worth +of merchandise can be bought from these worthy traders. Each has +his vineyard, his enclosure of fields, and all spend two days in the +country. This being foreseen, and purchases, sales, and profits provided +for, the merchants have ten or twelve hours to spend in parties of +pleasure, in making observations, in criticisms, and in continual +spying. A housewife cannot buy a partridge without the neighbors asking +the husband if it were cooked to a turn. A young girl never puts her +head near a window that she is not seen by idling groups in the street. +Consciences are held in the light; and the houses, dark, silent, +impenetrable as they seem, hide no mysteries. Life is almost wholly in +the open air; every household sits at its own threshold, breakfasts, +dines, and quarrels there. No one can pass along the street without +being examined; in fact formerly, when a stranger entered a provincial +town he was bantered and made game of from door to door. From this came +many good stories, and the nickname _copieux_, which was applied to the +inhabitants of Angers, who excelled in such urban sarcasms. + +The ancient mansions of the old town of Saumur are at the top of +this hilly street, and were formerly occupied by the nobility of the +neighborhood. The melancholy dwelling where the events of the following +history took place is one of these mansions,--venerable relics of a +century in which men and things bore the characteristics of simplicity +which French manners and customs are losing day by day. Follow the +windings of the picturesque thoroughfare, whose irregularities awaken +recollections that plunge the mind mechanically into reverie, and you +will see a somewhat dark recess, in the centre of which is hidden the +door of the house of Monsieur Grandet. It is impossible to understand +the force of this provincial expression--the house of Monsieur +Grandet--without giving the biography of Monsieur Grandet himself. + +Monsieur Grandet enjoyed a reputation in Saumur whose causes and effects +can never be fully understood by those who have not, at one time or +another, lived in the provinces. In 1789 Monsieur Grandet--still called +by certain persons le Pere Grandet, though the number of such old +persons has perceptibly diminished--was a master-cooper, able to read, +write, and cipher. At the period when the French Republic offered for +sale the church property in the arrondissement of Saumur, the cooper, +then forty years of age, had just married the daughter of a rich +wood-merchant. Supplied with the ready money of his own fortune and his +wife’s _dot_, in all about two thousand louis-d’or, Grandet went to the +newly established “district,” where, with the help of two hundred double +louis given by his father-in-law to the surly republican who presided +over the sales of the national domain, he obtained for a song, legally +if not legitimately, one of the finest vineyards in the arrondissement, +an old abbey, and several farms. The inhabitants of Saumur were so +little revolutionary that they thought Pere Grandet a bold man, a +republican, and a patriot with a mind open to all the new ideas; though +in point of fact it was open only to vineyards. He was appointed a +member of the administration of Saumur, and his pacific influence made +itself felt politically and commercially. Politically, he protected the +ci-devant nobles, and prevented, to the extent of his power, the sale of +the lands and property of the _emigres_; commercially, he furnished the +Republican armies with two or three thousand puncheons of white wine, +and took his pay in splendid fields belonging to a community of women +whose lands had been reserved for the last lot. + +Under the Consulate Grandet became mayor, governed wisely, and harvested +still better pickings. Under the Empire he was called Monsieur Grandet. +Napoleon, however, did not like republicans, and superseded Monsieur +Grandet (who was supposed to have worn the Phrygian cap) by a man of his +own surroundings, a future baron of the Empire. Monsieur Grandet quitted +office without regret. He had constructed in the interests of the town +certain fine roads which led to his own property; his house and lands, +very advantageously assessed, paid moderate taxes; and since the +registration of his various estates, the vineyards, thanks to his +constant care, had become the “head of the country,”--a local term used +to denote those that produced the finest quality of wine. He might have +asked for the cross of the Legion of honor. + +This event occurred in 1806. Monsieur Grandet was then fifty-seven years +of age, his wife thirty-six, and an only daughter, the fruit of their +legitimate love, was ten years old. Monsieur Grandet, whom Providence +no doubt desired to compensate for the loss of his municipal honors, +inherited three fortunes in the course of this year,--that of Madame +de la Gaudiniere, born de la Bertelliere, the mother of Madame Grandet; +that of old Monsieur de la Bertelliere, her grandfather; and, lastly, +that of Madame Gentillet, her grandmother on the mother’s side: three +inheritances, whose amount was not known to any one. The avarice of the +deceased persons was so keen that for a long time they had hoarded their +money for the pleasure of secretly looking at it. Old Monsieur de la +Bertelliere called an investment an extravagance, and thought he got +better interest from the sight of his gold than from the profits of +usury. The inhabitants of Saumur consequently estimated his savings +according to “the revenues of the sun’s wealth,” as they said. + +Monsieur Grandet thus obtained that modern title of nobility which +our mania for equality can never rub out. He became the most imposing +personage in the arrondissement. He worked a hundred acres of vineyard, +which in fruitful years yielded seven or eight hundred hogsheads of +wine. He owned thirteen farms, an old abbey, whose windows and arches +he had walled up for the sake of economy,--a measure which preserved +them,--also a hundred and twenty-seven acres of meadow-land, where three +thousand poplars, planted in 1793, grew and flourished; and finally, the +house in which he lived. Such was his visible estate; as to his other +property, only two persons could give even a vague guess at its value: +one was Monsieur Cruchot, a notary employed in the usurious investments +of Monsieur Grandet; the other was Monsieur des Grassins, the richest +banker in Saumur, in whose profits Grandet had a certain covenanted and +secret share. + +Although old Cruchot and Monsieur des Grassins were both gifted with +the deep discretion which wealth and trust beget in the provinces, they +publicly testified so much respect to Monsieur Grandet that observers +estimated the amount of his property by the obsequious attention which +they bestowed upon him. In all Saumur there was no one not persuaded +that Monsieur Grandet had a private treasure, some hiding-place full +of louis, where he nightly took ineffable delight in gazing upon great +masses of gold. Avaricious people gathered proof of this when they +looked at the eyes of the good man, to which the yellow metal seemed to +have conveyed its tints. The glance of a man accustomed to draw enormous +interest from his capital acquires, like that of the libertine, the +gambler, or the sycophant, certain indefinable habits,--furtive, +eager, mysterious movements, which never escape the notice of +his co-religionists. This secret language is in a certain way the +freemasonry of the passions. Monsieur Grandet inspired the respectful +esteem due to one who owed no man anything, who, skilful cooper and +experienced wine-grower that he was, guessed with the precision of an +astronomer whether he ought to manufacture a thousand puncheons for his +vintage, or only five hundred, who never failed in any speculation, and +always had casks for sale when casks were worth more than the commodity +that filled them, who could store his whole vintage in his cellars and +bide his time to put the puncheons on the market at two hundred francs, +when the little proprietors had been forced to sell theirs for five +louis. His famous vintage of 1811, judiciously stored and slowly +disposed of, brought him in more than two hundred and forty thousand +francs. + +Financially speaking, Monsieur Grandet was something between a tiger and +a boa-constrictor. He could crouch and lie low, watch his prey a long +while, spring upon it, open his jaws, swallow a mass of louis, and +then rest tranquilly like a snake in process of digestion, impassible, +methodical, and cold. No one saw him pass without a feeling of +admiration mingled with respect and fear; had not every man in Saumur +felt the rending of those polished steel claws? For this one, Maitre +Cruchot had procured the money required for the purchase of a domain, +but at eleven per cent. For that one, Monsieur des Grassins discounted +bills of exchange, but at a frightful deduction of interest. Few days +ever passed that Monsieur Grandet’s name was not mentioned either in the +markets or in social conversations at the evening gatherings. To some +the fortune of the old wine-grower was an object of patriotic pride. +More than one merchant, more than one innkeeper, said to strangers +with a certain complacency: “Monsieur, we have two or three millionaire +establishments; but as for Monsieur Grandet, he does not himself know +how much he is worth.” + +In 1816 the best reckoners in Saumur estimated the landed property of +the worthy man at nearly four millions; but as, on an average, he had +made yearly, from 1793 to 1817, a hundred thousand francs out of that +property, it was fair to presume that he possessed in actual money a sum +nearly equal to the value of his estate. So that when, after a game of +boston or an evening discussion on the matter of vines, the talk fell +upon Monsieur Grandet, knowing people said: “Le Pere Grandet? le Pere +Grandet must have at least five or six millions.” + +“You are cleverer than I am; I have never been able to find out the +amount,” answered Monsieur Cruchot or Monsieur des Grassins, when either +chanced to overhear the remark. + +If some Parisian mentioned Rothschild or Monsieur Lafitte, the people of +Saumur asked if he were as rich as Monsieur Grandet. When the Parisian, +with a smile, tossed them a disdainful affirmative, they looked at each +other and shook their heads with an incredulous air. So large a fortune +covered with a golden mantle all the actions of this man. If in early +days some peculiarities of his life gave occasion for laughter or +ridicule, laughter and ridicule had long since died away. His least +important actions had the authority of results repeatedly shown. His +speech, his clothing, his gestures, the blinking of his eyes, were law +to the country-side, where every one, after studying him as a naturalist +studies the result of instinct in the lower animals, had come to +understand the deep mute wisdom of his slightest actions. + +“It will be a hard winter,” said one; “Pere Grandet has put on his fur +gloves.” + +“Pere Grandet is buying quantities of staves; there will be plenty of +wine this year.” + +Monsieur Grandet never bought either bread or meat. His farmers supplied +him weekly with a sufficiency of capons, chickens, eggs, butter, and +his tithe of wheat. He owned a mill; and the tenant was bound, over and +above his rent, to take a certain quantity of grain and return him the +flour and bran. La Grande Nanon, his only servant, though she was no +longer young, baked the bread of the household herself every Saturday. +Monsieur Grandet arranged with kitchen-gardeners who were his tenants +to supply him with vegetables. As to fruits, he gathered such quantities +that he sold the greater part in the market. His fire-wood was cut from +his own hedgerows or taken from the half-rotten old sheds which he built +at the corners of his fields, and whose planks the farmers carted into +town for him, all cut up, and obligingly stacked in his wood-house, +receiving in return his thanks. His only known expenditures were for the +consecrated bread, the clothing of his wife and daughter, the hire of +their chairs in church, the wages of la Grand Nanon, the tinning of the +saucepans, lights, taxes, repairs on his buildings, and the costs of +his various industries. He had six hundred acres of woodland, lately +purchased, which he induced a neighbor’s keeper to watch, under the +promise of an indemnity. After the acquisition of this property he ate +game for the first time. + +Monsieur Grandet’s manners were very simple. He spoke little. He usually +expressed his meaning by short sententious phrases uttered in a soft +voice. After the Revolution, the epoch at which he first came into +notice, the good man stuttered in a wearisome way as soon as he was +required to speak at length or to maintain an argument. This stammering, +the incoherence of his language, the flux of words in which he drowned +his thought, his apparent lack of logic, attributed to defects of +education, were in reality assumed, and will be sufficiently explained +by certain events in the following history. Four sentences, precise +as algebraic formulas, sufficed him usually to grasp and solve all +difficulties of life and commerce: “I don’t know; I cannot; I will not; +I will see about it.” He never said yes, or no, and never committed +himself to writing. If people talked to him he listened coldly, holding +his chin in his right hand and resting his right elbow in the back of +his left hand, forming in his own mind opinions on all matters, from +which he never receded. He reflected long before making any business +agreement. When his opponent, after careful conversation, avowed the +secret of his own purposes, confident that he had secured his listener’s +assent, Grandet answered: “I can decide nothing without consulting my +wife.” His wife, whom he had reduced to a state of helpless slavery, was +a useful screen to him in business. He went nowhere among friends; he +neither gave nor accepted dinners; he made no stir or noise, seeming +to economize in everything, even movement. He never disturbed or +disarranged the things of other people, out of respect for the rights +of property. Nevertheless, in spite of his soft voice, in spite of his +circumspect bearing, the language and habits of a coarse nature came +to the surface, especially in his own home, where he controlled himself +less than elsewhere. + +Physically, Grandet was a man five feet high, thick-set, square-built, +with calves twelve inches in circumference, knotted knee-joints, +and broad shoulders; his face was round, tanned, and pitted by the +small-pox; his chin was straight, his lips had no curves, his teeth +were white; his eyes had that calm, devouring expression which people +attribute to the basilisk; his forehead, full of transverse wrinkles, +was not without certain significant protuberances; his yellow-grayish +hair was said to be silver and gold by certain young people who did not +realize the impropriety of making a jest about Monsieur Grandet. His +nose, thick at the end, bore a veined wen, which the common people said, +not without reason, was full of malice. The whole countenance showed +a dangerous cunning, an integrity without warmth, the egotism of a man +long used to concentrate every feeling upon the enjoyments of avarice +and upon the only human being who was anything whatever to him,--his +daughter and sole heiress, Eugenie. Attitude, manners, bearing, +everything about him, in short, testified to that belief in himself +which the habit of succeeding in all enterprises never fails to give to +a man. + +Thus, though his manners were unctuous and soft outwardly, Monsieur +Grandet’s nature was of iron. His dress never varied; and those who saw +him to-day saw him such as he had been since 1791. His stout shoes +were tied with leathern thongs; he wore, in all weathers, thick woollen +stockings, short breeches of coarse maroon cloth with silver buckles, +a velvet waistcoat, in alternate stripes of yellow and puce, buttoned +squarely, a large maroon coat with wide flaps, a black cravat, and +a quaker’s hat. His gloves, thick as those of a gendarme, lasted him +twenty months; to preserve them, he always laid them methodically on +the brim of his hat in one particular spot. Saumur knew nothing further +about this personage. + +Only six individuals had a right of entrance to Monsieur Grandet’s +house. The most important of the first three was a nephew of Monsieur +Cruchot. Since his appointment as president of the Civil courts of +Saumur this young man had added the name of Bonfons to that of Cruchot. +He now signed himself C. de Bonfons. Any litigant so ill-advised as to +call him Monsieur Cruchot would soon be made to feel his folly in court. +The magistrate protected those who called him Monsieur le president, but +he favored with gracious smiles those who addressed him as Monsieur de +Bonfons. Monsieur le president was thirty-three years old, and possessed +the estate of Bonfons (Boni Fontis), worth seven thousand francs a year; +he expected to inherit the property of his uncle the notary and that +of another uncle, the Abbe Cruchot, a dignitary of the chapter of +Saint-Martin de Tours, both of whom were thought to be very rich. These +three Cruchots, backed by a goodly number of cousins, and allied +to twenty families in the town, formed a party, like the Medici in +Florence; like the Medici, the Cruchots had their Pazzi. + +Madame des Grassins, mother of a son twenty-three years of age, came +assiduously to play cards with Madame Grandet, hoping to marry her dear +Adolphe to Mademoiselle Eugenie. Monsieur des Grassins, the banker, +vigorously promoted the schemes of his wife by means of secret services +constantly rendered to the old miser, and always arrived in time +upon the field of battle. The three des Grassins likewise had their +adherents, their cousins, their faithful allies. On the Cruchot side the +abbe, the Talleyrand of the family, well backed-up by his brother +the notary, sharply contested every inch of ground with his female +adversary, and tried to obtain the rich heiress for his nephew the +president. + +This secret warfare between the Cruchots and des Grassins, the prize +thereof being the hand in marriage of Eugenie Grandet, kept the various +social circles of Saumur in violent agitation. Would Mademoiselle +Grandet marry Monsieur le president or Monsieur Adolphe des Grassins? +To this problem some replied that Monsieur Grandet would never give +his daughter to the one or to the other. The old cooper, eaten up with +ambition, was looking, they said, for a peer of France, to whom an +income of three hundred thousand francs would make all the past, +present, and future casks of the Grandets acceptable. Others replied +that Monsieur and Madame des Grassins were nobles, and exceedingly rich; +that Adolphe was a personable young fellow; and that unless the old man +had a nephew of the pope at his beck and call, such a suitable alliance +ought to satisfy a man who came from nothing,--a man whom Saumur +remembered with an adze in his hand, and who had, moreover, worn the +_bonnet rouge_. Certain wise heads called attention to the fact that +Monsieur Cruchot de Bonfons had the right of entry to the house at all +times, whereas his rival was received only on Sundays. Others, however, +maintained that Madame des Grassins was more intimate with the women of +the house of Grandet than the Cruchots were, and could put into their +minds certain ideas which would lead, sooner or later, to success. To +this the former retorted that the Abbe Cruchot was the most insinuating +man in the world: pit a woman against a monk, and the struggle was even. +“It is diamond cut diamond,” said a Saumur wit. + +The oldest inhabitants, wiser than their fellows, declared that the +Grandets knew better than to let the property go out of the family, and +that Mademoiselle Eugenie Grandet of Saumur would be married to the son +of Monsieur Grandet of Paris, a wealthy wholesale wine-merchant. To this +the Cruchotines and the Grassinists replied: “In the first place, the +two brothers have seen each other only twice in thirty years; and next, +Monsieur Grandet of Paris has ambitious designs for his son. He is mayor +of an arrondissement, a deputy, colonel of the National Guard, judge in +the commercial courts; he disowns the Grandets of Saumur, and means to +ally himself with some ducal family,--ducal under favor of Napoleon.” + In short, was there anything not said of an heiress who was talked +of through a circumference of fifty miles, and even in the public +conveyances from Angers to Blois, inclusively! + +At the beginning of 1811, the Cruchotines won a signal advantage over +the Grassinists. The estate of Froidfond, remarkable for its park, +its mansion, its farms, streams, ponds, forests, and worth about three +millions, was put up for sale by the young Marquis de Froidfond, who was +obliged to liquidate his possessions. Maitre Cruchot, the president, and +the abbe, aided by their adherents, were able to prevent the sale of the +estate in little lots. The notary concluded a bargain with the young +man for the whole property, payable in gold, persuading him that suits +without number would have to be brought against the purchasers of small +lots before he could get the money for them; it was better, therefore, +to sell the whole to Monsieur Grandet, who was solvent and able to pay +for the estate in ready money. The fine marquisate of Froidfond was +accordingly conveyed down the gullet of Monsieur Grandet, who, to the +great astonishment of Saumur, paid for it, under proper discount, with +the usual formalities. + +This affair echoed from Nantes to Orleans. Monsieur Grandet took +advantage of a cart returning by way of Froidfond to go and see his +chateau. Having cast a master’s eye over the whole property, he returned +to Saumur, satisfied that he had invested his money at five per cent, +and seized by the stupendous thought of extending and increasing the +marquisate of Froidfond by concentrating all his property there. Then, +to fill up his coffers, now nearly empty, he resolved to thin out his +woods and his forests, and to sell off the poplars in the meadows. + + + + +II + +It is now easy to understand the full meaning of the term, “the house of +Monsieur Grandet,”--that cold, silent, pallid dwelling, standing above +the town and sheltered by the ruins of the ramparts. The two pillars and +the arch, which made the porte-cochere on which the door opened, were +built, like the house itself, of tufa,--a white stone peculiar to the +shores of the Loire, and so soft that it lasts hardly more than two +centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously bored or eaten out +by the inclemency of the weather, gave an appearance of the vermiculated +stonework of French architecture to the arch and the side walls of this +entrance, which bore some resemblance to the gateway of a jail. Above +the arch was a long bas-relief, in hard stone, representing the four +seasons, the faces already crumbling away and blackened. This bas-relief +was surmounted by a projecting plinth, upon which a variety of chance +growths had sprung up,--yellow pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, +plantain, and even a little cherry-tree, already grown to some height. + +The door of the archway was made of solid oak, brown, shrunken, and +split in many places; though frail in appearance, it was firmly held +in place by a system of iron bolts arranged in symmetrical patterns. +A small square grating, with close bars red with rust, filled up the +middle panel and made, as it were, a motive for the knocker, fastened to +it by a ring, which struck upon the grinning head of a huge nail. +This knocker, of the oblong shape and kind which our ancestors called +_jaquemart_, looked like a huge note of exclamation; an antiquary who +examined it attentively might have found indications of the figure, +essentially burlesque, which it once represented, and which long usage +had now effaced. Through this little grating--intended in olden times +for the recognition of friends in times of civil war--inquisitive +persons could perceive, at the farther end of the dark and slimy vault, +a few broken steps which led to a garden, picturesquely shut in by +walls that were thick and damp, and through which oozed a moisture that +nourished tufts of sickly herbage. These walls were the ruins of the +ramparts, under which ranged the gardens of several neighboring houses. + +The most important room on the ground-floor of the house was a large +hall, entered directly from beneath the vault of the porte-cochere. +Few people know the importance of a hall in the little towns of Anjou, +Touraine, and Berry. The hall is at one and the same time antechamber, +salon, office, boudoir, and dining-room; it is the theatre of domestic +life, the common living-room. There the barber of the neighborhood came, +twice a year, to cut Monsieur Grandet’s hair; there the farmers, the +cure, the under-prefect, and the miller’s boy came on business. This +room, with two windows looking on the street, was entirely of wood. Gray +panels with ancient mouldings covered the walls from top to bottom; the +ceiling showed all its beams, which were likewise painted gray, while +the space between them had been washed over in white, now yellow with +age. An old brass clock, inlaid with arabesques, adorned the mantel +of the ill-cut white stone chimney-piece, above which was a greenish +mirror, whose edges, bevelled to show the thickness of the glass, +reflected a thread of light the whole length of a gothic frame in +damascened steel-work. The two copper-gilt candelabra which decorated +the corners of the chimney-piece served a double purpose: by taking off +the side-branches, each of which held a socket, the main stem--which +was fastened to a pedestal of bluish marble tipped with copper--made a +candlestick for one candle, which was sufficient for ordinary occasions. +The chairs, antique in shape, were covered with tapestry representing +the fables of La Fontaine; it was necessary, however, to know that +writer well to guess at the subjects, for the faded colors and the +figures, blurred by much darning, were difficult to distinguish. + +At the four corners of the hall were closets, or rather buffets, +surmounted by dirty shelves. An old card-table in marquetry, of which +the upper part was a chess-board, stood in the space between the two +windows. Above this table was an oval barometer with a black border +enlivened with gilt bands, on which the flies had so licentiously +disported themselves that the gilding had become problematical. On +the panel opposite to the chimney-piece were two portraits in pastel, +supposed to represent the grandfather of Madame Grandet, old Monsieur +de la Bertelliere, as a lieutenant in the French guard, and the deceased +Madame Gentillet in the guise of a shepherdess. The windows were draped +with curtains of red _gros de Tours_ held back by silken cords with +ecclesiastical tassels. This luxurious decoration, little in keeping +with the habits of Monsieur Grandet, had been, together with the steel +pier-glass, the tapestries, and the buffets, which were of rose-wood, +included in the purchase of the house. + +By the window nearest to the door stood a straw chair, whose legs were +raised on castors to lift its occupant, Madame Grandet, to a height from +which she could see the passers-by. A work-table of stained cherry-wood +filled up the embrasure, and the little armchair of Eugenie Grandet +stood beside it. In this spot the lives had flowed peacefully onward for +fifteen years, in a round of constant work from the month of April to +the month of November. On the first day of the latter month they took +their winter station by the chimney. Not until that day did Grandet +permit a fire to be lighted; and on the thirty-first of March it was +extinguished, without regard either to the chills of the early spring or +to those of a wintry autumn. A foot-warmer, filled with embers from the +kitchen fire, which la Grande Nanon contrived to save for them, enabled +Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet to bear the chilly mornings and evenings +of April and October. Mother and daughter took charge of the family +linen, and spent their days so conscientiously upon a labor properly +that of working-women, that if Eugenie wished to embroider a collar for +her mother she was forced to take the time from sleep, and deceive her +father to obtain the necessary light. For a long time the miser had +given out the tallow candle to his daughter and la Grande Nanon just as +he gave out every morning the bread and other necessaries for the daily +consumption. + +La Grande Nanon was perhaps the only human being capable of accepting +willingly the despotism of her master. The whole town envied Monsieur +and Madame Grandet the possession of her. La Grande Nanon, so called on +account of her height, which was five feet eight inches, had lived with +Monsieur Grandet for thirty-five years. Though she received only sixty +francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the richest +serving-women in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating through +thirty-five years, had recently enabled her to invest four thousand +francs in an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her long and +persistent economy seemed gigantic. Every servant in the town, seeing +that the poor sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old age, was +jealous of her, and never thought of the hard slavery through which it +had been won. + +At twenty-two years of age the poor girl had been unable to find a +situation, so repulsive was her face to almost every one. Yet the +feeling was certainly unjust: the face would have been much admired on +the shoulders of a grenadier of the guard; but all things, so they say, +should be in keeping. Forced to leave a farm where she kept the cows, +because the dwelling-house was burned down, she came to Saumur to find +a place, full of the robust courage that shrinks from no labor. Le Pere +Grandet was at that time thinking of marriage and about to set up his +household. He espied the girl, rejected as she was from door to door. +A good judge of corporeal strength in his trade as a cooper, he guessed +the work that might be got out of a female creature shaped like a +Hercules, as firm on her feet as an oak sixty years old on its roots, +strong in the hips, square in the back, with the hands of a cartman and +an honesty as sound as her unblemished virtue. Neither the warts which +adorned her martial visage, nor the red-brick tints of her skin, nor the +sinewy arms, nor the ragged garments of la Grande Nanon, dismayed the +cooper, who was at that time still of an age when the heart shudders. +He fed, shod, and clothed the poor girl, gave her wages, and put her to +work without treating her too roughly. Seeing herself thus welcomed, +la Grande Nanon wept secretly tears of joy, and attached herself in all +sincerity to her master, who from that day ruled her and worked her with +feudal authority. Nanon did everything. She cooked, she made the lye, +she washed the linen in the Loire and brought it home on her shoulders; +she got up early, she went to bed late; she prepared the food of the +vine-dressers during the harvest, kept watch upon the market-people, +protected the property of her master like a faithful dog, and even, full +of blind confidence, obeyed without a murmur his most absurd exactions. + +In the famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with +unheard-of difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old +watch,--the first present he had made her during twenty years of +service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), +it is impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the +shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl +so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and +Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes +no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much +parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic benefits +derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no one was +ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed when +Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled as he +did. What pleasant compensations there were in such equality! Never did +the master have occasion to find fault with the servant for pilfering +the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines eaten under the trees. +“Come, fall-to, Nanon!” he would say in years when the branches bent +under the fruit and the farmers were obliged to give it to the pigs. + +To the poor peasant who in her youth had earned nothing but harsh +treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, Grandet’s ambiguous +laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon’s simple heart and narrow head +could hold only one feeling and one idea. For thirty-five years she had +never ceased to see herself standing before the wood-yard of Monsieur +Grandet, ragged and barefooted, and to hear him say: “What do you want, +young one?” Her gratitude was ever new. Sometimes Grandet, reflecting +that the poor creature had never heard a flattering word, that she was +ignorant of all the tender sentiments inspired by women, that she might +some day appear before the throne of God even more chaste than the +Virgin Mary herself,--Grandet, struck with pity, would say as he +looked at her, “Poor Nanon!” The exclamation was always followed by an +undefinable look cast upon him in return by the old servant. The words, +uttered from time to time, formed a chain of friendship that nothing +ever parted, and to which each exclamation added a link. Such compassion +arising in the heart of the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old +spinster, had something inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel +pity, recalling, as it did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old +cooper, was for Nanon the sum total of happiness. Who does not likewise +say, “Poor Nanon!” God will recognize his angels by the inflexions of +their voices and by their secret sighs. + +There were very many households in Saumur where the servants were better +treated, but where the masters received far less satisfaction in return. +Thus it was often said: “What have the Grandets ever done to make their +Grande Nanon so attached to them? She would go through fire and water +for their sake!” Her kitchen, whose barred windows looked into the +court, was always clean, neat, cold,--a true miser’s kitchen, where +nothing went to waste. When Nanon had washed her dishes, locked up the +remains of the dinner, and put out her fire, she left the kitchen, which +was separated by a passage from the living-room, and went to spin +hemp beside her masters. One tallow candle sufficed the family for the +evening. The servant slept at the end of the passage in a species of +closet lighted only by a fan-light. Her robust health enabled her to +live in this hole with impunity; there she could hear the slightest +noise through the deep silence which reigned night and day in that +dreary house. Like a watch-dog, she slept with one ear open, and took +her rest with a mind alert. + +A description of the other parts of the dwelling will be found connected +with the events of this history, though the foregoing sketch of the +hall, where the whole luxury of the household appears, may enable the +reader to surmise the nakedness of the upper floors. + +In 1819, at the beginning of an evening in the middle of November, la +Grande Nanon lighted the fire for the first time. The autumn had +been very fine. This particular day was a fete-day well known to the +Cruchotines and the Grassinists. The six antagonists, armed at all +points, were making ready to meet at the Grandets and surpass each other +in testimonials of friendship. That morning all Saumur had seen Madame +and Mademoiselle Grandet, accompanied by Nanon, on their way to hear +Mass at the parish church, and every one remembered that the day was +the anniversary of Mademoiselle Eugenie’s birth. Calculating the hour at +which the family dinner would be over, Maitre Cruchot, the Abbe Cruchot, +and Monsieur C. de Bonfons hastened to arrive before the des Grassins, +and be the first to pay their compliments to Mademoiselle Eugenie. All +three brought enormous bouquets, gathered in their little green-houses. +The stalks of the flowers which the president intended to present were +ingeniously wound round with a white satin ribbon adorned with gold +fringe. In the morning Monsieur Grandet, following his usual custom on +the days that commemorated the birth and the fete of Eugenie, went to +her bedside and solemnly presented her with his paternal gift,--which +for the last thirteen years had consisted regularly of a curious +gold-piece. Madame Grandet gave her daughter a winter dress or a summer +dress, as the case might be. These two dresses and the gold-pieces, +of which she received two others on New Year’s day and on her father’s +fete-day, gave Eugenie a little revenue of a hundred crowns or +thereabouts, which Grandet loved to see her amass. Was it not putting +his money from one strong-box to another, and, as it were, training the +parsimony of his heiress? from whom he sometimes demanded an account +of her treasure (formerly increased by the gifts of the Bertellieres), +saying: “It is to be your marriage dozen.” + +The “marriage dozen” is an old custom sacredly preserved and still in +force in many parts of central France. In Berry and in Anjou, when a +young girl marries, her family, or that of the husband, must give her a +purse, in which they place, according to their means, twelve pieces, +or twelve dozen pieces, or twelve hundred pieces of gold. The poorest +shepherd-girl never marries without her dozen, be it only a dozen +coppers. They still tell in Issoudun of a certain “dozen” presented to +a rich heiress, which contained a hundred and forty-four _portugaises +d’or_. Pope Clement VII., uncle of Catherine de’ Medici, gave her when +he married her to Henri II. a dozen antique gold medals of priceless +value. + +During dinner the father, delighted to see his Eugenie looking well in a +new gown, exclaimed: “As it is Eugenie’s birthday let us have a fire; it +will be a good omen.” + +“Mademoiselle will be married this year, that’s certain,” said la +Grande Nanon, carrying away the remains of the goose,--the pheasant of +tradesmen. + +“I don’t see any one suitable for her in Saumur,” said Madame Grandet, +glancing at her husband with a timid look which, considering her years, +revealed the conjugal slavery under which the poor woman languished. + +Grandet looked at his daughter and exclaimed gaily,-- + +“She is twenty-three years old to-day, the child; we must soon begin to +think of it.” + +Eugenie and her mother silently exchanged a glance of intelligence. + +Madame Grandet was a dry, thin woman, as yellow as a quince, awkward, +slow, one of those women who are born to be down-trodden. She had big +bones, a big nose, a big forehead, big eyes, and presented at first +sight a vague resemblance to those mealy fruits that have neither savor +nor succulence. Her teeth were black and few in number, her mouth was +wrinkled, her chin long and pointed. She was an excellent woman, a true +la Bertelliere. L’abbe Cruchot found occasional opportunity to tell her +that she had not done ill; and she believed him. Angelic sweetness, +the resignation of an insect tortured by children, a rare piety, a good +heart, an unalterable equanimity of soul, made her universally pitied +and respected. Her husband never gave her more than six francs at a time +for her personal expenses. Ridiculous as it may seem, this woman, who by +her own fortune and her various inheritances brought Pere Grandet +more than three hundred thousand francs, had always felt so profoundly +humiliated by her dependence and the slavery in which she lived, against +which the gentleness of her spirit prevented her from revolting, that +she had never asked for one penny or made a single remark on the deeds +which Maitre Cruchot brought for her signature. This foolish secret +pride, this nobility of soul perpetually misunderstood and wounded by +Grandet, ruled the whole conduct of the wife. + +Madame Grandet was attired habitually in a gown of greenish levantine +silk, endeavoring to make it last nearly a year; with it she wore a +large kerchief of white cotton cloth, a bonnet made of plaited straws +sewn together, and almost always a black-silk apron. As she seldom left +the house she wore out very few shoes. She never asked anything for +herself. Grandet, seized with occasional remorse when he remembered how +long a time had elapsed since he gave her the last six francs, always +stipulated for the “wife’s pin-money” when he sold his yearly vintage. +The four or five louis presented by the Belgian or the Dutchman who +purchased the wine were the chief visible signs of Madame Grandet’s +annual revenues. But after she had received the five louis, her husband +would often say to her, as though their purse were held in common: +“Can you lend me a few sous?” and the poor woman, glad to be able to do +something for a man whom her confessor held up to her as her lord and +master, returned him in the course of the winter several crowns out of +the “pin-money.” When Grandet drew from his pocket the five-franc piece +which he allowed monthly for the minor expenses,--thread, needles, and +toilet,--of his daughter, he never failed to say as he buttoned his +breeches’ pocket: “And you, mother, do you want anything?” + +“My friend,” Madame Grandet would answer, moved by a sense of maternal +dignity, “we will see about that later.” + +Wasted dignity! Grandet thought himself very generous to his wife. +Philosophers who meet the like of Nanon, of Madame Grandet, of Eugenie, +have surely a right to say that irony is at the bottom of the ways of +Providence. + +After the dinner at which for the first time allusion had been made +to Eugenie’s marriage, Nanon went to fetch a bottle of black-currant +ratafia from Monsieur Grandet’s bed-chamber, and nearly fell as she came +down the stairs. + +“You great stupid!” said her master; “are you going to tumble about like +other people, hey?” + +“Monsieur, it was that step on your staircase which has given way.” + +“She is right,” said Madame Grandet; “it ought to have been mended long +ago. Yesterday Eugenie nearly twisted her ankle.” + +“Here,” said Grandet to Nanon, seeing that she looked quite pale, “as it +is Eugenie’s birthday, and you came near falling, take a little glass of +ratafia to set you right.” + +“Faith! I’ve earned it,” said Nanon; “most people would have broken the +bottle; but I’d sooner have broken my elbow holding it up high.” + +“Poor Nanon!” said Grandet, filling a glass. + +“Did you hurt yourself?” asked Eugenie, looking kindly at her. + +“No, I didn’t fall; I threw myself back on my haunches.” + +“Well! as it is Eugenie’s birthday,” said Grandet, “I’ll have the step +mended. You people don’t know how to set your foot in the corner where +the wood is still firm.” + +Grandet took the candle, leaving his wife, daughter, and servant without +any other light than that from the hearth, where the flames were lively, +and went into the bakehouse to fetch planks, nails, and tools. + +“Can I help you?” cried Nanon, hearing him hammer on the stairs. + +“No, no! I’m an old hand at it,” answered the former cooper. + +At the moment when Grandet was mending his worm-eaten staircase and +whistling with all his might, in remembrance of the days of his youth, +the three Cruchots knocked at the door. + +“Is it you, Monsieur Cruchot?” asked Nanon, peeping through the little +grating. + +“Yes,” answered the president. + +Nanon opened the door, and the light from the hearth, reflected on the +ceiling, enabled the three Cruchots to find their way into the room. + +“Ha! you’ve come a-greeting,” said Nanon, smelling the flowers. + +“Excuse me, messieurs,” cried Grandet, recognizing their voices; “I’ll +be with you in a moment. I’m not proud; I am patching up a step on my +staircase.” + +“Go on, go on, Monsieur Grandet; a man’s house is his castle,” said the +president sententiously. + +Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet rose. The president, profiting by the +darkness, said to Eugenie: + +“Will you permit me, mademoiselle, to wish you, on this the day of your +birth, a series of happy years and the continuance of the health which +you now enjoy?” + +He offered her a huge bouquet of choice flowers which were rare in +Saumur; then, taking the heiress by the elbows, he kissed her on each +side of her neck with a complacency that made her blush. The president, +who looked like a rusty iron nail, felt that his courtship was +progressing. + +“Don’t stand on ceremony,” said Grandet, entering. “How well you do +things on fete-days, Monsieur le president!” + +“When it concerns mademoiselle,” said the abbe, armed with his own +bouquet, “every day is a fete-day for my nephew.” + +The abbe kissed Eugenie’s hand. As for Maitre Cruchot, he boldly kissed +her on both cheeks, remarking: “How we sprout up, to be sure! Every year +is twelve months.” + +As he replaced the candlestick beside the clock, Grandet, who never +forgot his own jokes, and repeated them to satiety when he thought them +funny, said,-- + +“As this is Eugenie’s birthday let us illuminate.” + +He carefully took off the branches of the candelabra, put a socket on +each pedestal, took from Nanon a new tallow candle with paper twisted +round the end of it, put it into the hollow, made it firm, lit it, and +then sat down beside his wife, looking alternately at his friends, his +daughter, and the two candles. The Abbe Cruchot, a plump, puffy little +man, with a red wig plastered down and a face like an old female +gambler, said as he stretched out his feet, well shod in stout shoes +with silver buckles: “The des Grassins have not come?” + +“Not yet,” said Grandet. + +“But are they coming?” asked the old notary, twisting his face, which +had as many holes as a collander, into a queer grimace. + +“I think so,” answered Madame Grandet. + +“Are your vintages all finished?” said Monsieur de Bonfons to Grandet. + +“Yes, all of them,” said the old man, rising to walk up and down the +room, his chest swelling with pride as he said the words, “all of them.” + Through the door of the passage which led to the kitchen he saw la +Grande Nanon sitting beside her fire with a candle and preparing to spin +there, so as not to intrude among the guests. + +“Nanon,” he said, going into the passage, “put out that fire and that +candle, and come and sit with us. Pardieu! the hall is big enough for +all.” + +“But monsieur, you are to have the great people.” + +“Are not you as good as they? They are descended from Adam, and so are +you.” + +Grandet came back to the president and said,-- + +“Have you sold your vintage?” + +“No, not I; I shall keep it. If the wine is good this year, it will +be better two years hence. The proprietors, you know, have made an +agreement to keep up the price; and this year the Belgians won’t get the +better of us. Suppose they are sent off empty-handed for once, faith! +they’ll come back.” + +“Yes, but let us mind what we are about,” said Grandet in a tone which +made the president tremble. + +“Is he driving some bargain?” thought Cruchot. + +At this moment the knocker announced the des Grassins family, and +their arrival interrupted a conversation which had begun between Madame +Grandet and the abbe. + +Madame des Grassins was one of those lively, plump little women, with +pink-and-white skins, who, thanks to the claustral calm of the provinces +and the habits of a virtuous life, keep their youth until they are +past forty. She was like the last rose of autumn,--pleasant to the +eye, though the petals have a certain frostiness, and their perfume is +slight. She dressed well, got her fashions from Paris, set the tone to +Saumur, and gave parties. Her husband, formerly a quartermaster in the +Imperial guard, who had been desperately wounded at Austerlitz, and had +since retired, still retained, in spite of his respect for Grandet, the +seeming frankness of an old soldier. + +“Good evening, Grandet,” he said, holding out his hand and affecting +a sort of superiority, with which he always crushed the Cruchots. +“Mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Eugenie, after bowing to Madame +Grandet, “you are always beautiful and good, and truly I do not know +what to wish you.” So saying, he offered her a little box which his +servant had brought and which contained a Cape heather,--a flower lately +imported into Europe and very rare. + +Madame des Grassins kissed Eugenie very affectionately, pressed her +hand, and said: “Adolphe wishes to make you my little offering.” + +A tall, blond young man, pale and slight, with tolerable manners and +seemingly rather shy, although he had just spent eight or ten thousand +francs over his allowance in Paris, where he had been sent to study +law, now came forward and kissed Eugenie on both cheeks, offering her a +workbox with utensils in silver-gilt,--mere show-case trumpery, in +spite of the monogram E.G. in gothic letters rather well engraved, +which belonged properly to something in better taste. As she opened it, +Eugenie experienced one of those unexpected and perfect delights which +make a young girl blush and quiver and tremble with pleasure. She +turned her eyes to her father as if to ask permission to accept it, and +Monsieur Grandet replied: “Take it, my daughter,” in a tone which would +have made an actor illustrious. + +The three Cruchots felt crushed as they saw the joyous, animated look +cast upon Adolphe des Grassins by the heiress, to whom such riches were +unheard-of. Monsieur des Grassins offered Grandet a pinch of snuff, +took one himself, shook off the grains as they fell on the ribbon of +the Legion of honor which was attached to the button-hole of his blue +surtout; then he looked at the Cruchots with an air that seemed to say, +“Parry that thrust if you can!” Madame des Grassins cast her eyes on the +blue vases which held the Cruchot bouquets, looking at the enemy’s +gifts with the pretended interest of a satirical woman. At this delicate +juncture the Abbe Cruchot left the company seated in a circle round the +fire and joined Grandet at the lower end of the hall. As the two men +reached the embrasure of the farthest window the priest said in the +miser’s ear: “Those people throw money out of the windows.” + +“What does that matter if it gets into my cellar?” retorted the old +wine-grower. + +“If you want to give gilt scissors to your daughter, you have the +means,” said the abbe. + +“I give her something better than scissors,” answered Grandet. + +“My nephew is a blockhead,” thought the abbe as he looked at the +president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his brown +countenance. “Couldn’t he have found some little trifle which cost +money?” + +“We will join you at cards, Madame Grandet,” said Madame des Grassins. + +“We might have two tables, as we are all here.” + +“As it is Eugenie’s birthday you had better play loto all together,” + said Pere Grandet: “the two young ones can join”; and the old cooper, +who never played any game, motioned to his daughter and Adolphe. “Come, +Nanon, set the tables.” + +“We will help you, Mademoiselle Nanon,” said Madame des Grassins gaily, +quite joyous at the joy she had given Eugenie. + +“I have never in my life been so pleased,” the heiress said to her; “I +have never seen anything so pretty.” + +“Adolphe brought it from Paris, and he chose it,” Madame des Grassins +whispered in her ear. + +“Go on! go on! damned intriguing thing!” thought the president. “If you +ever have a suit in court, you or your husband, it shall go hard with +you.” + +The notary, sitting in his corner, looked calmly at the abbe, saying +to himself: “The des Grassins may do what they like; my property and my +brother’s and that of my nephew amount in all to eleven hundred thousand +francs. The des Grassins, at the most, have not half that; besides, +they have a daughter. They may give what presents they like; heiress and +presents too will be ours one of these days.” + +At half-past eight in the evening the two card-tables were set out. +Madame des Grassins succeeded in putting her son beside Eugenie. The +actors in this scene, so full of interest, commonplace as it seems, were +provided with bits of pasteboard striped in many colors and numbered, +and with counters of blue glass, and they appeared to be listening +to the jokes of the notary, who never drew a number without making +a remark, while in fact they were all thinking of Monsieur Grandet’s +millions. The old cooper, with inward self-conceit, was contemplating +the pink feathers and the fresh toilet of Madame des Grassins, the +martial head of the banker, the faces of Adolphe, the president, the +abbe, and the notary, saying to himself:-- + +“They are all after my money. Hey! neither the one nor the other shall +have my daughter; but they are useful--useful as harpoons to fish with.” + +This family gaiety in the old gray room dimly lighted by two +tallow candles; this laughter, accompanied by the whirr of Nanon’s +spinning-wheel, sincere only upon the lips of Eugenie or her mother; +this triviality mingled with important interests; this young girl, who, +like certain birds made victims of the price put upon them, was +now lured and trapped by proofs of friendship of which she was the +dupe,--all these things contributed to make the scene a melancholy +comedy. Is it not, moreover, a drama of all times and all places, though +here brought down to its simplest expression? The figure of Grandet, +playing his own game with the false friendship of the two families and +getting enormous profits from it, dominates the scene and throws +light upon it. The modern god,--the only god in whom faith is +preserved,--money, is here, in all its power, manifested in a single +countenance. The tender sentiments of life hold here but a secondary +place; only the three pure, simple hearts of Nanon, of Eugenie, and of +her mother were inspired by them. And how much of ignorance there was in +the simplicity of these poor women! Eugenie and her mother knew nothing +of Grandet’s wealth; they could only estimate the things of life by the +glimmer of their pale ideas, and they neither valued nor despised money, +because they were accustomed to do without it. Their feelings, bruised, +though they did not know it, but ever-living, were the secret spring of +their existence, and made them curious exceptions in the midst of these +other people whose lives were purely material. Frightful condition of +the human race! there is no one of its joys that does not come from some +species of ignorance. + +At the moment when Madame Grandet had won a loto of sixteen sous,--the +largest ever pooled in that house,--and while la Grande Nanon was +laughing with delight as she watched madame pocketing her riches, the +knocker resounded on the house-door with such a noise that the women all +jumped in their chairs. + +“There is no man in Saumur who would knock like that,” said the notary. + +“How can they bang in that way!” exclaimed Nanon; “do they want to break +in the door?” + +“Who the devil is it?” cried Grandet. + + + + +III + +Nanon took one of the candles and went to open the door, followed by her +master. + +“Grandet! Grandet!” cried his wife, moved by a sudden impulse of fear, +and running to the door of the room. + +All the players looked at each other. + +“Suppose we all go?” said Monsieur des Grassins; “that knock strikes me +as evil-intentioned.” + +Hardly was Monsieur des Grassins allowed to see the figure of a young +man, accompanied by a porter from the coach-office carrying two large +trunks and dragging a carpet-bag after him, than Monsieur Grandet turned +roughly on his wife and said,-- + +“Madame Grandet, go back to your loto; leave me to speak with monsieur.” + +Then he pulled the door quickly to, and the excited players returned to +their seats, but did not continue the game. + +“Is it any one belonging to Saumur, Monsieur des Grassins?” asked his +wife. + +“No, it is a traveller.” + +“He must have come from Paris.” + +“Just so,” said the notary, pulling out his watch, which was two inches +thick and looked like a Dutch man-of-war; “it’s nine o’clock; the +diligence of the Grand Bureau is never late.” + +“Is the gentleman young?” inquired the Abbe Cruchot. + +“Yes,” answered Monsieur des Grassins, “and he has brought luggage which +must weigh nearly three tons.” + +“Nanon does not come back,” said Eugenie. + +“It must be one of your relations,” remarked the president. + +“Let us go on with our game,” said Madame Grandet gently. “I know from +Monsieur Grandet’s tone of voice that he is annoyed; perhaps he would +not like to find us talking of his affairs.” + +“Mademoiselle,” said Adolphe to his neighbor, “it is no doubt your +cousin Grandet,--a very good-looking young man; I met him at the ball of +Monsieur de Nucingen.” Adolphe did not go on, for his mother trod on his +toes; and then, asking him aloud for two sous to put on her stake, she +whispered: “Will you hold your tongue, you great goose!” + +At this moment Grandet returned, without la Grande Nanon, whose steps, +together with those of the porter, echoed up the staircase; and he was +followed by the traveller who had excited such curiosity and so filled +the lively imaginations of those present that his arrival at this +dwelling, and his sudden fall into the midst of this assembly, can only +be likened to that of a snail into a beehive, or the introduction of a +peacock into some village poultry-yard. + +“Sit down near the fire,” said Grandet. + +Before seating himself, the young stranger saluted the assembled company +very gracefully. The men rose to answer by a courteous inclination, and +the women made a ceremonious bow. + +“You are cold, no doubt, monsieur,” said Madame Grandet; “you have, +perhaps, travelled from--” + +“Just like all women!” said the old wine-grower, looking up from a +letter he was reading. “Do let monsieur rest himself!” + +“But, father, perhaps monsieur would like to take something,” said +Eugenie. + +“He has got a tongue,” said the old man sternly. + +The stranger was the only person surprised by this scene; all the others +were well-used to the despotic ways of the master. However, after the +two questions and the two replies had been exchanged, the newcomer rose, +turned his back towards the fire, lifted one foot so as to warm the sole +of its boot, and said to Eugenie,-- + +“Thank you, my cousin, but I dined at Tours. And,” he added, looking at +Grandet, “I need nothing; I am not even tired.” + +“Monsieur has come from the capital?” asked Madame des Grassins. + +Monsieur Charles,--such was the name of the son of Monsieur Grandet of +Paris,--hearing himself addressed, took a little eye-glass, suspended by +a chain from his neck, applied it to his right eye to examine what was +on the table, and also the persons sitting round it. He ogled Madame des +Grassins with much impertinence, and said to her, after he had observed +all he wished,-- + +“Yes, madame. You are playing at loto, aunt,” he added. “Do not let me +interrupt you, I beg; go on with your game: it is too amusing to leave.” + +“I was certain it was the cousin,” thought Madame des Grassins, casting +repeated glances at him. + +“Forty-seven!” cried the old abbe. “Mark it down, Madame des Grassins. +Isn’t that your number?” + +Monsieur des Grassins put a counter on his wife’s card, who sat watching +first the cousin from Paris and then Eugenie, without thinking of her +loto, a prey to mournful presentiments. From time to time the young +heiress glanced furtively at her cousin, and the banker’s wife easily +detected a _crescendo_ of surprise and curiosity in her mind. + +Monsieur Charles Grandet, a handsome young man of twenty-two, presented +at this moment a singular contrast to the worthy provincials, who, +considerably disgusted by his aristocratic manners, were all studying +him with sarcastic intent. This needs an explanation. At twenty-two, +young people are still so near childhood that they often conduct +themselves childishly. In all probability, out of every hundred of +them fully ninety-nine would have behaved precisely as Monsieur Charles +Grandet was now behaving. + +Some days earlier than this his father had told him to go and spend +several months with his uncle at Saumur. Perhaps Monsieur Grandet was +thinking of Eugenie. Charles, sent for the first time in his life into +the provinces, took a fancy to make his appearance with the superiority +of a man of fashion, to reduce the whole arrondissement to despair by +his luxury, and to make his visit an epoch, importing into those country +regions all the refinements of Parisian life. In short, to explain it in +one word, he mean to pass more time at Saumur in brushing his nails than +he ever thought of doing in Paris, and to assume the extra nicety and +elegance of dress which a young man of fashion often lays aside for +a certain negligence which in itself is not devoid of grace. Charles +therefore brought with him a complete hunting-costume, the finest gun, +the best hunting-knife in the prettiest sheath to be found in all +Paris. He brought his whole collection of waistcoats. They were of all +kinds,--gray, black, white, scarabaeus-colored: some were shot with +gold, some spangled, some _chined_; some were double-breasted and +crossed like a shawl, others were straight in the collar; some had +turned-over collars, some buttoned up to the top with gilt buttons. He +brought every variety of collar and cravat in fashion at that epoch. He +brought two of Buisson’s coats and all his finest linen He brought his +pretty gold toilet-set,--a present from his mother. He brought all his +dandy knick-knacks, not forgetting a ravishing little desk presented to +him by the most amiable of women,--amiable for him, at least,--a fine +lady whom he called Annette and who at this moment was travelling, +matrimonially and wearily, in Scotland, a victim to certain suspicions +which required a passing sacrifice of happiness; in the desk was much +pretty note-paper on which to write to her once a fortnight. + +In short, it was as complete a cargo of Parisian frivolities as it was +possible for him to get together,--a collection of all the implements +of husbandry with which the youth of leisure tills his life, from +the little whip which helps to begin a duel, to the handsomely chased +pistols which end it. His father having told him to travel alone and +modestly, he had taken the coupe of the diligence all to himself, rather +pleased at not having to damage a delightful travelling-carriage ordered +for a journey on which he was to meet his Annette, the great lady +who, etc.,--whom he intended to rejoin at Baden in the following June. +Charles expected to meet scores of people at his uncle’s house, to hunt +in his uncle’s forests,--to live, in short, the usual chateau life; he +did not know that his uncle was in Saumur, and had only inquired about +him incidentally when asking the way to Froidfond. Hearing that he was +in town, he supposed that he should find him in a suitable mansion. + +In order that he might make a becoming first appearance before his +uncle either at Saumur or at Froidfond, he had put on his most elegant +travelling attire, simple yet exquisite,--“adorable,” to use the word +which in those days summed up the special perfections of a man or a +thing. At Tours a hairdresser had re-curled his beautiful chestnut +locks; there he changed his linen and put on a black satin cravat, +which, combined with a round shirt-collar, framed his fair and smiling +countenance agreeably. A travelling great-coat, only half buttoned up, +nipped in his waist and disclosed a cashmere waistcoat crossed in +front, beneath which was another waistcoat of white material. His watch, +negligently slipped into a pocket, was fastened by a short gold chain to +a buttonhole. His gray trousers, buttoned up at the sides, were set +off at the seams with patterns of black silk embroidery. He gracefully +twirled a cane, whose chased gold knob did not mar the freshness of his +gray gloves. And to complete all, his cap was in excellent taste. None +but a Parisian, and a Parisian of the upper spheres, could thus array +himself without appearing ridiculous; none other could give the harmony +of self-conceit to all these fopperies, which were carried off, however, +with a dashing air,--the air of a young man who has fine pistols, a sure +aim, and Annette. + +Now if you wish to understand the mutual amazement of the provincial +party and the young Parisian; if you would clearly see the brilliance +which the traveller’s elegance cast among the gray shadows of the room +and upon the faces of this family group,--endeavor to picture to your +minds the Cruchots. All three took snuff, and had long ceased to repress +the habit of snivelling or to remove the brown blotches which strewed +the frills of their dingy shirts and the yellowing creases of their +crumpled collars. Their flabby cravats were twisted into ropes as soon +as they wound them about their throats. The enormous quantity of linen +which allowed these people to have their clothing washed only once +in six months, and to keep it during that time in the depths of their +closets, also enabled time to lay its grimy and decaying stains upon +it. There was perfect unison of ill-grace and senility about them; their +faces, as faded as their threadbare coats, as creased as their trousers, +were worn-out, shrivelled-up, and puckered. As for the others, the +general negligence of their dress, which was incomplete and wanting +in freshness,--like the toilet of all country places, where insensibly +people cease to dress for others and come to think seriously of the +price of a pair of gloves,--was in keeping with the negligence of +the Cruchots. A horror of fashion was the only point on which the +Grassinists and the Cruchotines agreed. + +When the Parisian took up his eye-glass to examine the strange +accessories of this dwelling,--the joists of the ceiling, the color +of the woodwork, and the specks which the flies had left there in +sufficient number to punctuate the “Moniteur” and the “Encyclopaedia of +Sciences,”--the loto-players lifted their noses and looked at him with +as much curiosity as they might have felt about a giraffe. Monsieur des +Grassins and his son, to whom the appearance of a man of fashion was not +wholly unknown, were nevertheless as much astonished as their neighbors, +whether it was that they fell under the indefinable influence of the +general feeling, or that they really shared it as with satirical glances +they seemed to say to their compatriots,-- + +“That is what you see in Paris!” + +They were able to examine Charles at their leisure without fearing to +displease the master of the house. Grandet was absorbed in the long +letter which he held in his hand; and to read it he had taken the +only candle upon the card-table, paying no heed to his guests or their +pleasure. Eugenie, to whom such a type of perfection, whether of dress +or of person, was absolutely unknown, thought she beheld in her cousin +a being descended from seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the +fragrance wafted from the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She +would have liked to touch the soft kid of the delicate gloves. She +envied Charles his small hands, his complexion, the freshness and +refinement of his features. In short,--if it is possible to sum up +the effect this elegant being produced upon an ignorant young girl +perpetually employed in darning stockings or in mending her father’s +clothes, and whose life flowed on beneath these unclean rafters, seeing +none but occasional passers along the silent street,--this vision of +her cousin roused in her soul an emotion of delicate desire like that +inspired in a young man by the fanciful pictures of women drawn by +Westall for the English “Keepsakes,” and that engraved by the Findens +with so clever a tool that we fear, as we breathe upon the paper, that +the celestial apparitions may be wafted away. Charles drew from his +pocket a handkerchief embroidered by the great lady now travelling in +Scotland. As Eugenie saw this pretty piece of work, done in the vacant +hours which were lost to love, she looked at her cousin to see if it +were possible that he meant to make use of it. The manners of the +young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up his eye-glass, his +affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance at the coffer which +had just given so much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he +evidently regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,--all these +things, which shocked the Cruchots and the des Grassins, pleased Eugenie +so deeply that before she slept she dreamed long dreams of her phoenix +cousin. + +The loto-numbers were drawn very slowly, and presently the game came +suddenly to an end. La Grand Nanon entered and said aloud: “Madame, I +want the sheets for monsieur’s bed.” + +Madame Grandet followed her out. Madame des Grassins said in a low +voice: “Let us keep our sous and stop playing.” Each took his or her two +sous from the chipped saucer in which they had been put; then the party +moved in a body toward the fire. + +“Have you finished your game?” said Grandet, without looking up from his +letter. + +“Yes, yes!” replied Madame des Grassins, taking a seat near Charles. + +Eugenie, prompted by a thought often born in the heart of a young girl +when sentiment enters it for the first time, left the room to go and +help her mother and Nanon. Had an able confessor then questioned her +she would, no doubt, have avowed to him that she thought neither of her +mother nor of Nanon, but was pricked by a poignant desire to look after +her cousin’s room and concern herself with her cousin; to supply what +might be needed, to remedy any forgetfulness, to see that all was done +to make it, as far as possible, suitable and elegant; and, in fact, she +arrived in time to prove to her mother and Nanon that everything still +remained to be done. She put into Nanon’s head the notion of passing a +warming-pan between the sheets. She herself covered the old table with a +cloth and requested Nanon to change it every morning; she convinced her +mother that it was necessary to light a good fire, and persuaded Nanon +to bring up a great pile of wood into the corridor without saying +anything to her father. She ran to get, from one of the corner-shelves +of the hall, a tray of old lacquer which was part of the inheritance +of the late Monsieur de la Bertelliere, catching up at the same time +a six-sided crystal goblet, a little tarnished gilt spoon, an antique +flask engraved with cupids, all of which she put triumphantly on the +corner of her cousin’s chimney-piece. More ideas surged through her head +in one quarter of an hour than she had ever had since she came into the +world. + +“Mamma,” she said, “my cousin will never bear the smell of a tallow +candle; suppose we buy a wax one?” And she darted, swift as a bird, to +get the five-franc piece which she had just received for her monthly +expenses. “Here, Nanon,” she cried, “quick!” + +“What will your father say?” This terrible remonstrance was uttered +by Madame Grandet as she beheld her daughter armed with an old +Sevres sugar-basin which Grandet had brought home from the chateau of +Froidfond. “And where will you get the sugar? Are you crazy?” + +“Mamma, Nanon can buy some sugar as well as the candle.” + +“But your father?” + +“Surely his nephew ought not to go without a glass of _eau sucree_? +Besides, he will not notice it.” + +“Your father sees everything,” said Madame Grandet, shaking her head. + +Nanon hesitated; she knew her master. + +“Come, Nanon, go,--because it is my birthday.” + +Nanon gave a loud laugh as she heard the first little jest her young +mistress had ever made, and then obeyed her. + +While Eugenie and her mother were trying to embellish the bedroom +assigned by Monsieur Grandet for his nephew, Charles himself was the +object of Madame des Grassins’ attentions; to all appearances she was +setting her cap at him. + +“You are very courageous, monsieur,” she said to the young dandy, “to +leave the pleasures of the capital at this season and take up your abode +in Saumur. But if we do not frighten you away, you will find there are +some amusements even here.” + +She threw him the ogling glance of the provinces, where women put so +much prudence and reserve into their eyes that they impart to them the +prudish concupiscence peculiar to certain ecclesiastics to whom all +pleasure is either a theft or an error. Charles was so completely out +of his element in this abode, and so far from the vast chateau and the +sumptuous life with which his fancy had endowed his uncle, that as he +looked at Madame des Grassins he perceived a dim likeness to Parisian +faces. He gracefully responded to the species of invitation addressed +to him, and began very naturally a conversation, in which Madame des +Grassins gradually lowered her voice so as to bring it into harmony with +the nature of the confidences she was making. With her, as with Charles, +there was the need of conference; so after a few moments spent in +coquettish phrases and a little serious jesting, the clever provincial +said, thinking herself unheard by the others, who were discussing the +sale of wines which at that season filled the heads of every one in +Saumur,-- + +“Monsieur if you will do us the honor to come and see us, you will give +as much pleasure to my husband as to myself. Our salon is the only one +in Saumur where you will find the higher business circles mingling with +the nobility. We belong to both societies, who meet at our house simply +because they find it amusing. My husband--I say it with pride--is as +much valued by the one class as by the other. We will try to relieve +the monotony of your visit here. If you stay all the time with Monsieur +Grandet, good heavens! what will become of you? Your uncle is a sordid +miser who thinks of nothing but his vines; your aunt is a pious soul who +can’t put two ideas together; and your cousin is a little fool, without +education, perfectly common, no fortune, who will spend her life in +darning towels.” + +“She is really very nice, this woman,” thought Charles Grandet as he +duly responded to Madame des Grassins’ coquetries. + +“It seems to me, wife, that you are taking possession of monsieur,” said +the stout banker, laughing. + +On this remark the notary and the president said a few words that were +more or less significant; but the abbe, looking at them slyly, brought +their thoughts to a focus by taking a pinch of snuff and saying as +he handed round his snuff-box: “Who can do the honors of Saumur for +monsieur so well as madame?” + +“Ah! what do you mean by that, monsieur l’abbe?” demanded Monsieur des +Grassins. + +“I mean it in the best possible sense for you, for madame, for the town +of Saumur, and for monsieur,” said the wily old man, turning to Charles. + +The Abbe Cruchot had guessed the conversation between Charles and Madame +des Grassins without seeming to pay attention to it. + +“Monsieur,” said Adolphe to Charles with an air which he tried to make +free and easy, “I don’t know whether you remember me, but I had the +honor of dancing as your _vis-a-vis_ at a ball given by the Baron de +Nucingen, and--” + +“Perfectly; I remember perfectly, monsieur,” answered Charles, pleased +to find himself the object of general attention. + +“Monsieur is your son?” he said to Madame des Grassins. + +The abbe looked at her maliciously. + +“Yes, monsieur,” she answered. + +“Then you were very young when you were in Paris?” said Charles, +addressing Adolphe. + +“You must know, monsieur,” said the abbe, “that we send them to Babylon +as soon as they are weaned.” + +Madame des Grassins examined the abbe with a glance of extreme +penetration. + +“It is only in the provinces,” he continued, “that you will find women +of thirty and more years as fresh as madame, here, with a son about to +take his degree. I almost fancy myself back in the days when the young +men stood on chairs in the ball-room to see you dance, madame,” said the +abbe, turning to his female adversary. “To me, your triumphs are but of +yesterday--” + +“The old rogue!” thought Madame Grassins; “can he have guessed my +intentions?” + +“It seems that I shall have a good deal of success in Saumur,” thought +Charles as he unbuttoned his great-coat, put a hand into his waistcoat, +and cast a glance into the far distance, to imitate the attitude which +Chantrey has given to Lord Byron. + +The inattention of Pere Grandet, or, to speak more truly, the +preoccupation of mind into which the reading of the letter had plunged +him, did not escape the vigilance of the notary and the president, who +tried to guess the contents of the letter by the almost imperceptible +motions of the miser’s face, which was then under the full light of the +candle. He maintained the habitual calm of his features with evident +difficulty; we may, in fact, picture to ourselves the countenance such +a man endeavored to preserve as he read the fatal letter which here +follows:-- + + My Brother,--It is almost twenty-three years since we have seen + each other. My marriage was the occasion of our last interview, + after which we parted, and both of us were happy. Assuredly I + could not then foresee that you would one day be the prop of the + family whose prosperity you then predicted. + + When you hold this letter within your hands I shall be no longer + living. In the position I now hold I cannot survive the disgrace + of bankruptcy. I have waited on the edge of the gulf until the + last moment, hoping to save myself. The end has come, I must sink + into it. The double bankruptcies of my broker and of Roguin, my + notary, have carried off my last resources and left me nothing. I + have the bitterness of owing nearly four millions, with assets not + more than twenty-five per cent in value to pay them. The wines in + my warehouses suffer from the fall in prices caused by the + abundance and quality of your vintage. In three days Paris will + cry out: “Monsieur Grandet was a knave!” and I, an honest man, + shall be lying in my winding-sheet of infamy. I deprive my son of + a good name, which I have stained, and the fortune of his mother, + which I have lost. He knows nothing of all this,--my unfortunate + child whom I idolize! We parted tenderly. He was ignorant, + happily, that the last beatings of my heart were spent in that + farewell. Will he not some day curse me? My brother, my brother! + the curses of our children are horrible; they can appeal against + ours, but theirs are irrevocable. Grandet, you are my elder + brother, you owe me your protection; act for me so that Charles + may cast no bitter words upon my grave! My brother, if I were + writing with my blood, with my tears, no greater anguish could I + put into this letter,--nor as great, for then I should weep, I + should bleed, I should die, I should suffer no more, but now I + suffer and look at death with dry eyes. + + From henceforth you are my son’s father; he has no relations, as + you well know, on his mother’s side. Why did I not consider social + prejudices? Why did I yield to love? Why did I marry the natural + daughter of a great lord? Charles has no family. Oh, my unhappy + son! my son! Listen, Grandet! I implore nothing for myself, + --besides, your property may not be large enough to carry a mortgage + of three millions,--but for my son! Brother, my suppliant hands + are clasped as I think of you; behold them! Grandet, I confide my + son to you in dying, and I look at the means of death with less + pain as I think that you will be to him a father. He loved me + well, my Charles; I was good to him, I never thwarted him; he will + not curse me. Ah, you see! he is gentle, he is like his mother, he + will cause you no grief. Poor boy! accustomed to all the + enjoyments of luxury, he knows nothing of the privations to which + you and I were condemned by the poverty of our youth. And I leave + him ruined! alone! Yes, all my friends will avoid him, and it is I + who have brought this humiliation upon him! Would that I had the + force to send him with one thrust into the heavens to his mother’s + side! Madness! I come back to my disaster--to his. I send him to + you that you may tell him in some fitting way of my death, of his + future fate. Be a father to him, but a good father. Do not tear + him all at once from his idle life, it would kill him. I beg him + on my knees to renounce all rights that, as his mother’s heir, he + may have on my estate. But the prayer is superfluous; he is + honorable, and he will feel that he must not appear among my + creditors. Bring him to see this at the right time; reveal to him + the hard conditions of the life I have made for him: and if he + still has tender thoughts of me, tell him in my name that all is + not lost for him. Yes, work, labor, which saved us both, may give + him back the fortune of which I have deprived him; and if he + listens to his father’s voice as it reaches him from the grave, he + will go the Indies. My brother, Charles is an upright and + courageous young man; give him the wherewithal to make his + venture; he will die sooner than not repay you the funds which you + may lend him. Grandet! if you will not do this, you will lay up + for yourself remorse. Ah, should my child find neither tenderness + nor succor in you, I would call down the vengeance of God upon + your cruelty! + + If I had been able to save something from the wreck, I might have + had the right to leave him at least a portion of his mother’s + property; but my last monthly payments have absorbed everything. I + did not wish to die uncertain of my child’s fate; I hoped to feel + a sacred promise in a clasp of your hand which might have warmed + my heart: but time fails me. While Charles is journeying to you I + shall be preparing my assignment. I shall endeavor to show by the + order and good faith of my accounts that my disaster comes neither + from a faulty life nor from dishonesty. It is for my son’s sake + that I strive to do this. + + Farewell, my brother! May the blessing of God be yours for the + generous guardianship I lay upon you, and which, I doubt not, you + will accept. A voice will henceforth and forever pray for you in + that world where we must all go, and where I am now as you read + these lines. + +Victor-Ange-Guillaume Grandet. + + +“So you are talking?” said Pere Grandet as he carefully folded the +letter in its original creases and put it into his waistcoat-pocket. He +looked at his nephew with a humble, timid air, beneath which he hid his +feelings and his calculations. “Have you warmed yourself?” he said to +him. + +“Thoroughly, my dear uncle.” + +“Well, where are the women?” said his uncle, already forgetting that +his nephew was to sleep at the house. At this moment Eugenie and Madame +Grandet returned. + +“Is the room all ready?” said Grandet, recovering his composure. + +“Yes, father.” + +“Well then, my nephew, if you are tired, Nanon shall show you your room. +It isn’t a dandy’s room; but you will excuse a poor wine-grower who +never has a penny to spare. Taxes swallow up everything.” + +“We do not wish to intrude, Grandet,” said the banker; “you may want to +talk to your nephew, and therefore we will bid you good-night.” + +At these words the assembly rose, and each made a parting bow in keeping +with his or her own character. The old notary went to the door to fetch +his lantern and came back to light it, offering to accompany the des +Grassins on their way. Madame des Grassins had not foreseen the incident +which brought the evening prematurely to an end, her servant therefore +had not arrived. + +“Will you do me the honor to take my arm, madame?” said the abbe. + +“Thank you, monsieur l’abbe, but I have my son,” she answered dryly. + +“Ladies cannot compromise themselves with me,” said the abbe. + +“Take Monsieur Cruchot’s arm,” said her husband. + +The abbe walked off with the pretty lady so quickly that they were soon +some distance in advance of the caravan. + +“That is a good-looking young man, madame,” he said, pressing her arm. +“Good-by to the grapes, the vintage is done. It is all over with us. We +may as well say adieu to Mademoiselle Grandet. Eugenie will belong to +the dandy. Unless this cousin is enamoured of some Parisian woman, your +son Adolphe will find another rival in--” + +“Not at all, monsieur l’abbe. This young man cannot fail to see that +Eugenie is a little fool,--a girl without the least freshness. Did you +notice her to-night? She was as yellow as a quince.” + +“Perhaps you made the cousin notice it?” + +“I did not take the trouble--” + +“Place yourself always beside Eugenie, madame, and you need never take +the trouble to say anything to the young man against his cousin; he will +make his own comparisons, which--” + +“Well, he has promised to dine with me the day after to-morrow.” + +“Ah! if you only _would_, madame--” said the abbe. + +“What is it that you wish me to do, monsieur l’abbe? Do you mean to +offer me bad advice? I have not reached the age of thirty-nine, without +a stain upon my reputation, thank God! to compromise myself now, even +for the empire of the Great Mogul. You and I are of an age when we both +know the meaning of words. For an ecclesiastic, you certainly have ideas +that are very incongruous. Fie! it is worthy of Faublas!” + +“You have read Faublas?” + +“No, monsieur l’abbe; I meant to say the _Liaisons dangereuses_.” + +“Ah! that book is infinitely more moral,” said the abbe, laughing. “But +you make me out as wicked as a young man of the present day; I only +meant--” + +“Do you dare to tell me you were not thinking of putting wicked things +into my head? Isn’t it perfectly clear? If this young man--who I admit +is very good-looking--were to make love to me, he would not think of his +cousin. In Paris, I know, good mothers do devote themselves in this +way to the happiness and welfare of their children; but we live in the +provinces, monsieur l’abbe.” + +“Yes, madame.” + +“And,” she continued, “I do not want, and Adolphe himself would not +want, a hundred millions brought at such a price.” + +“Madame, I said nothing about a hundred millions; that temptation might +be too great for either of us to withstand. Only, I do think that an +honest woman may permit herself, in all honor, certain harmless little +coquetries, which are, in fact, part of her social duty and which--” + +“Do you think so?” + +“Are we not bound, madame, to make ourselves agreeable to each +other?--Permit me to blow my nose.--I assure you, madame,” he resumed, +“that the young gentleman ogled you through his glass in a more +flattering manner than he put on when he looked at me; but I forgive him +for doing homage to beauty in preference to old age--” + +“It is quite apparent,” said the president in his loud voice, “that +Monsieur Grandet of Paris has sent his son to Saumur with extremely +matrimonial intentions.” + +“But in that case the cousin wouldn’t have fallen among us like a +cannon-ball,” answered the notary. + +“That doesn’t prove anything,” said Monsieur des Grassins; “the old +miser is always making mysteries.” + +“Des Grassins, my friend, I have invited the young man to dinner. You +must go and ask Monsieur and Madame de Larsonniere and the du Hautoys, +with the beautiful demoiselle du Hautoy, of course. I hope she will be +properly dressed; that jealous mother of hers does make such a fright of +her! Gentlemen, I trust that you will all do us the honor to come,” she +added, stopping the procession to address the two Cruchots. + +“Here you are at home, madame,” said the notary. + +After bowing to the three des Grassins, the three Cruchots returned +home, applying their provincial genius for analysis to studying, under +all its aspects, the great event of the evening, which undoubtedly +changed the respective positions of Grassinists and Cruchotines. The +admirable common-sense which guided all the actions of these great +machinators made each side feel the necessity of a momentary alliance +against a common enemy. Must they not mutually hinder Eugenie from +loving her cousin, and the cousin from thinking of Eugenie? Could the +Parisian resist the influence of treacherous insinuations, soft-spoken +calumnies, slanders full of faint praise and artless denials, which +should be made to circle incessantly about him and deceive him? + + + + +IV + +When the four relations were left alone, Monsieur Grandet said to his +nephew,-- + +“We must go to bed. It is too late to talk about the matters which have +brought you here; to-morrow we will take a suitable moment. We breakfast +at eight o’clock; at midday we eat a little fruit or a bit of bread, and +drink a glass of white wine; and we dine, like the Parisians, at five +o’clock. That’s the order of the day. If you like to go and see the +town and the environs you are free to do so. You will excuse me if my +occupations do not permit me to accompany you. You may perhaps hear +people say that I am rich,--Monsieur Grandet this, Monsieur Grandet +that. I let them talk; their gossip does not hurt my credit. But I have +not a penny; I work in my old age like an apprentice whose worldly goods +are a bad plane and two good arms. Perhaps you’ll soon know yourself +what a franc costs when you have got to sweat for it. Nanon, where are +the candles?” + +“I trust, my nephew, that you will find all you want,” said Madame +Grandet; “but if you should need anything else, you can call Nanon.” + +“My dear aunt, I shall need nothing; I have, I believe, brought +everything with me. Permit me to bid you good-night, and my young cousin +also.” + +Charles took a lighted wax candle from Nanon’s hand,--an Anjou candle, +very yellow in color, and so shopworn that it looked like tallow and +deceived Monsieur Grandet, who, incapable of suspecting its presence +under his roof, did not perceive this magnificence. + +“I will show you the way,” he said. + +Instead of leaving the hall by the door which opened under the archway, +Grandet ceremoniously went through the passage which divided the hall +from the kitchen. A swing-door, furnished with a large oval pane of +glass, shut this passage from the staircase, so as to fend off the cold +air which rushed through it. But the north wind whistled none the less +keenly in winter, and, in spite of the sand-bags at the bottom of the +doors of the living-room, the temperature within could scarcely be kept +at a proper height. Nanon went to bolt the outer door; then she closed +the hall and let loose a wolf-dog, whose bark was so strangled that +he seemed to have laryngitis. This animal, noted for his ferocity, +recognized no one but Nanon; the two untutored children of the fields +understood each other. + +When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the +staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall +of his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He fancied +himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned an +inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not guess +the cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an expression of +friendliness, which they answered by a smile that made him desperate. + +“Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?” he said to +himself. + +When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted in +Etruscan red and without casings,--doors sunk in the dusty walls and +provided with iron bars, which in fact were bolts, each ending with the +pattern of a flame, as did both ends of the long sheath of the lock. +The first door at the top of the staircase, which opened into a room +directly above the kitchen, was evidently walled up. In fact, the only +entrance to that room was through Grandet’s bedchamber; the room itself +was his office. The single window which lighted it, on the side of the +court, was protected by a lattice of strong iron bars. No one, not even +Madame Grandet, had permission to enter it. The old man chose to be +alone, like an alchemist in his laboratory. There, no doubt, some +hiding-place had been ingeniously constructed; there the title-deeds of +property were stored; there hung the scales on which to weigh the louis; +there were devised, by night and secretly, the estimates, the profits, +the receipts, so that business men, finding Grandet prepared at all +points, imagined that he got his cue from fairies or demons; there, no +doubt, while Nanon’s loud snoring shook the rafters, while the wolf-dog +watched and yawned in the courtyard, while Madame and Mademoiselle +Grandet were quietly sleeping, came the old cooper to cuddle, to con +over, to caress and clutch and clasp his gold. The walls were thick, the +screens sure. He alone had the key of this laboratory, where--so people +declared--he studied the maps on which his fruit-trees were marked, and +calculated his profits to a vine, and almost to a twig. + +The door of Eugenie’s chamber was opposite to the walled-up entrance to +this room. At the other end of the landing were the appartements of +the married pair, which occupied the whole front of the house. Madame +Grandet had a room next to that of Eugenie, which was entered through a +glass door. The master’s chamber was separated from that of his wife by +a partition, and from the mysterious strong-room by a thick wall. Pere +Grandet lodged his nephew on the second floor, in the high mansarde +attic which was above his own bedroom, so that he might hear him if the +young man took it into his head to go and come. When Eugenie and her +mother reached the middle of the landing they kissed each other for +good-night; then with a few words of adieu to Charles, cold upon the +lips, but certainly very warm in the heart of the young girl, they +withdrew into their own chambers. + +“Here you are in your room, my nephew,” said Pere Grandet as he opened +the door. “If you need to go out, call Nanon; without her, beware! the +dog would eat you up without a word. Sleep well. Good-night. Ha! why, +they have made you a fire!” he cried. + +At this moment Nanon appeared with the warming pan. + +“Here’s something more!” said Monsieur Grandet. “Do you take my nephew +for a lying-in woman? Carry off your brazier, Nanon!” + +“But, monsieur, the sheets are damp, and this gentleman is as delicate +as a woman.” + +“Well, go on, as you’ve taken it into your head,” said Grandet, pushing +her by the shoulders; “but don’t set things on fire.” So saying, the +miser went down-stairs, grumbling indistinct sentences. + +Charles stood aghast in the midst of his trunks. After casting his +eyes on the attic-walls covered with that yellow paper sprinkled with +bouquets so well known in dance-houses, on the fireplace of ribbed +stone whose very look was chilling, on the chairs of yellow wood with +varnished cane seats that seemed to have more than the usual four +angles, on the open night-table capacious enough to hold a small +sergeant-at-arms, on the meagre bit of rag-carpet beside the bed, on the +tester whose cloth valance shook as if, devoured by moths, it was about +to fall, he turned gravely to la Grande Nanon and said,-- + +“Look here! my dear woman, just tell me, am I in the house of Monsieur +Grandet, formerly mayor of Saumur, and brother to Monsieur Grandet of +Paris?” + +“Yes, monsieur; and a very good, a very kind, a very perfect gentleman. +Shall I help you to unpack your trunks?” + +“Faith! yes, if you will, my old trooper. Didn’t you serve in the +marines of the Imperial Guard?” + +“Ho, ho, ho!” laughed Nanon. “What’s that,--the marines of the guard? Is +it salt? Does it go in the water?” + +“Here, get me my dressing-gown out of that valise; there’s the key.” + +Nanon was wonder-struck by the sight of a dressing-gown made of green +silk, brocaded with gold flowers of an antique design. + +“Are you going to put that on to go to bed with?” she asked. + +“Yes.” + +“Holy Virgin! what a beautiful altar-cloth it would make for the parish +church! My dear darling monsieur, give it to the church, and you’ll save +your soul; if you don’t, you’ll lose it. Oh, how nice you look in it! I +must call mademoiselle to see you.” + +“Come, Nanon, if Nanon you are, hold your tongue; let me go to bed. I’ll +arrange my things to-morrow. If my dressing-gown pleases you so much, +you shall save your soul. I’m too good a Christian not to give it to you +when I go away, and you can do what you like with it.” + +Nanon stood rooted to the ground, gazing at Charles and unable to put +faith into his words. + +“Good night, Nanon.” + +“What in the world have I come here for?” thought Charles as he went +to sleep. “My father is not a fool; my journey must have some object. +Pshaw! put off serious thought till the morrow, as some Greek idiot +said.” + +“Blessed Virgin! how charming he is, my cousin!” Eugenie was saying, +interrupting her prayers, which that night at least were never finished. + +Madame Grandet had no thoughts at all as she went to bed. She heard the +miser walking up and down his room through the door of communication +which was in the middle of the partition. Like all timid women, she +had studied the character of her lord. Just as the petrel foresees the +storm, she knew by imperceptible signs when an inward tempest shook +her husband; and at such times, to use an expression of her own, she +“feigned dead.” + +Grandet gazed at the door lined with sheet-iron which he lately put to +his sanctum, and said to himself,-- + +“What a crazy idea of my brother to bequeath his son to me! A fine +legacy! I have not fifty francs to give him. What are fifty francs to a +dandy who looked at my barometer as if he meant to make firewood of it!” + +In thinking over the consequences of that legacy of anguish Grandet was +perhaps more agitated than his brother had been at the moment of writing +it. + +“I shall have that golden robe,” thought Nanon, who went to sleep +tricked out in her altar-cloth, dreaming for the first time in her life +of flowers, embroidery, and damask, just as Eugenie was dreaming of +love. + + * * * * * + +In the pure and monotonous life of young girls there comes a delicious +hour when the sun sheds its rays into their soul, when the flowers +express their thoughts, when the throbbings of the heart send upward to +the brain their fertilizing warmth and melt all thoughts into a vague +desire,--day of innocent melancholy and of dulcet joys! When babes begin +to see, they smile; when a young girl first perceives the sentiment of +nature, she smiles as she smiled when an infant. If light is the first +love of life, is not love a light to the heart? The moment to see within +the veil of earthly things had come for Eugenie. + +An early riser, like all provincial girls, she was up betimes and said +her prayers, and then began the business of dressing,--a business which +henceforth was to have a meaning. First she brushed and smoothed her +chestnut hair and twisted its heavy masses to the top of her head with +the utmost care, preventing the loose tresses from straying, and giving +to her head a symmetry which heightened the timid candor of her face; +for the simplicity of these accessories accorded well with the innocent +sincerity of its lines. As she washed her hands again and again in +the cold water which hardened and reddened the skin, she looked at her +handsome round arms and asked herself what her cousin did to make his +hands so softly white, his nails so delicately curved. She put on +new stockings and her prettiest shoes. She laced her corset straight, +without skipping a single eyelet. And then, wishing for the first time +in her life to appear to advantage, she felt the joy of having a new +gown, well made, which rendered her attractive. + +As she finished her toilet the clock of the parish church struck the +hour; to her astonishment, it was only seven. The desire of having +plenty of time for dressing carefully had led her to get up too early. +Ignorant of the art of retouching every curl and studying every effect, +Eugenie simply crossed her arms, sat down by the window, and looked +at the court-yard, the narrow garden, and the high terraced walls that +over-topped it: a dismal, hedged-in prospect, yet not wholly devoid +of those mysterious beauties which belong to solitary or uncultivated +nature. Near the kitchen was a well surrounded by a curb, with a +pulley fastened to a bent iron rod clasped by a vine whose leaves +were withered, reddened, and shrivelled by the season. From thence the +tortuous shoots straggled to the wall, clutched it, and ran the whole +length of the house, ending near the wood-pile, where the logs were +ranged with as much precision as the books in a library. The pavement +of the court-yard showed the black stains produced in time by lichens, +herbage, and the absence of all movement or friction. The thick walls +wore a coating of green moss streaked with waving brown lines, and the +eight stone steps at the bottom of the court-yard which led up to the +gate of the garden were disjointed and hidden beneath tall plants, like +the tomb of a knight buried by his widow in the days of the Crusades. +Above a foundation of moss-grown, crumbling stones was a trellis of +rotten wood, half fallen from decay; over them clambered and intertwined +at will a mass of clustering creepers. On each side of the latticed gate +stretched the crooked arms of two stunted apple-trees. Three parallel +walks, gravelled and separated from each other by square beds, where +the earth was held in by box-borders, made the garden, which terminated, +beneath a terrace of the old walls, in a group of lindens. At the +farther end were raspberry-bushes; at the other, near the house, an +immense walnut-tree drooped its branches almost into the window of the +miser’s sanctum. + +A clear day and the beautiful autumnal sun common to the banks of the +Loire was beginning to melt the hoar-frost which the night had laid on +these picturesque objects, on the walls, and on the plants which swathed +the court-yard. Eugenie found a novel charm in the aspect of things +lately so insignificant to her. A thousand confused thoughts came to +birth in her mind and grew there, as the sunbeams grew without along the +wall. She felt that impulse of delight, vague, inexplicable, which wraps +the moral being as a cloud wraps the physical body. Her thoughts were +all in keeping with the details of this strange landscape, and the +harmonies of her heart blended with the harmonies of nature. When the +sun reached an angle of the wall where the “Venus-hair” of southern +climes drooped its thick leaves, lit with the changing colors of a +pigeon’s breast, celestial rays of hope illumined the future to her +eyes, and thenceforth she loved to gaze upon that piece of wall, on its +pale flowers, its blue harebells, its wilting herbage, with which she +mingled memories as tender as those of childhood. The noise made by each +leaf as it fell from its twig in the void of that echoing court gave +answer to the secret questionings of the young girl, who could have +stayed there the livelong day without perceiving the flight of time. +Then came tumultuous heavings of the soul. She rose often, went to her +glass, and looked at herself, as an author in good faith looks at his +work to criticise it and blame it in his own mind. + +“I am not beautiful enough for him!” Such was Eugenie’s thought,--a +humble thought, fertile in suffering. The poor girl did not do herself +justice; but modesty, or rather fear, is among the first of love’s +virtues. Eugenie belonged to the type of children with sturdy +constitutions, such as we see among the lesser bourgeoisie, whose +beauties always seem a little vulgar; and yet, though she resembled +the Venus of Milo, the lines of her figure were ennobled by the softer +Christian sentiment which purifies womanhood and gives it a distinction +unknown to the sculptors of antiquity. She had an enormous head, with +the masculine yet delicate forehead of the Jupiter of Phidias, and gray +eyes, to which her chaste life, penetrating fully into them, carried a +flood of light. The features of her round face, formerly fresh and rosy, +were at one time swollen by the small-pox, which destroyed the velvet +texture of the skin, though it kindly left no other traces, and her +cheek was still so soft and delicate that her mother’s kiss made a +momentary red mark upon it. Her nose was somewhat too thick, but it +harmonized well with the vermilion mouth, whose lips, creased in many +lines, were full of love and kindness. The throat was exquisitely round. +The bust, well curved and carefully covered, attracted the eye and +inspired reverie. It lacked, no doubt, the grace which a fitting dress +can bestow; but to a connoisseur the non-flexibility of her figure +had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had none of the +prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was beautiful with a beauty +which the spirit recognizes, and none but artists truly love. A painter +seeking here below for a type of Mary’s celestial purity, searching +womankind for those proud modest eyes which Raphael divined, for those +virgin lines, often due to chances of conception, which the modesty of +Christian life alone can bestow or keep unchanged,--such a painter, in +love with his ideal, would have found in the face of Eugenie the innate +nobleness that is ignorant of itself; he would have seen beneath the +calmness of that brow a world of love; he would have felt, in the shape +of the eyes, in the fall of the eyelids, the presence of the nameless +something that we call divine. Her features, the contour of her head, +which no expression of pleasure had ever altered or wearied, were like +the lines of the horizon softly traced in the far distance across the +tranquil lakes. That calm and rosy countenance, margined with light like +a lovely full-blown flower, rested the mind, held the eye, and imparted +the charm of the conscience that was there reflected. Eugenie was +standing on the shore of life where young illusions flower, where +daisies are gathered with delights ere long to be unknown; and thus she +said, looking at her image in the glass, unconscious as yet of love: “I +am too ugly; he will not notice me.” + +Then she opened the door of her chamber which led to the staircase, and +stretched out her neck to listen for the household noises. “He is not +up,” she thought, hearing Nanon’s morning cough as the good soul went +and came, sweeping out the halls, lighting her fire, chaining the dog, +and speaking to the beasts in the stable. Eugenie at once went down and +ran to Nanon, who was milking the cow. + +“Nanon, my good Nanon, make a little cream for my cousin’s breakfast.” + +“Why, mademoiselle, you should have thought of that yesterday,” said +Nanon, bursting into a loud peal of laughter. “I can’t make cream. Your +cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have seen +him in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He wears +linen as fine as the surplice of monsieur le cure.” + +“Nanon, please make us a _galette_.” + +“And who’ll give me wood for the oven, and flour and butter for the +cakes?” said Nanon, who in her function of prime-minister to Grandet +assumed at times enormous importance in the eyes of Eugenie and her +mother. “Mustn’t rob the master to feast the cousin. You ask him for +butter and flour and wood: he’s your father, perhaps he’ll give you +some. See! there he is now, coming to give out the provisions.” + +Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard the +staircase shaking under her father’s step. Already she felt the effects +of that virgin modesty and that special consciousness of happiness which +lead us to fancy, not perhaps without reason, that our thoughts are +graven on our foreheads and are open to the eyes of all. Perceiving for +the first time the cold nakedness of her father’s house, the poor +girl felt a sort of rage that she could not put it in harmony with her +cousin’s elegance. She felt the need of doing something for him,--what, +she did not know. Ingenuous and truthful, she followed her angelic +nature without mistrusting her impressions or her feelings. The mere +sight of her cousin had wakened within her the natural yearnings of a +woman,--yearnings that were the more likely to develop ardently because, +having reached her twenty-third year, she was in the plenitude of her +intelligence and her desires. For the first time in her life her heart +was full of terror at the sight of her father; in him she saw the master +of the fate, and she fancied herself guilty of wrong-doing in hiding +from his knowledge certain thoughts. She walked with hasty steps, +surprised to breathe a purer air, to feel the sun’s rays quickening her +pulses, to absorb from their heat a moral warmth and a new life. As +she turned over in her mind some stratagem by which to get the cake, a +quarrel--an event as rare as the sight of swallows in winter--broke out +between la Grande Nanon and Grandet. Armed with his keys, the master had +come to dole out provisions for the day’s consumption. + +“Is there any bread left from yesterday?” he said to Nanon. + +“Not a crumb, monsieur.” + +Grandet took a large round loaf, well floured and moulded in one of the +flat baskets which they use for baking in Anjou, and was about to cut +it, when Nanon said to him,-- + +“We are five, to-day, monsieur.” + +“That’s true,” said Grandet, “but your loaves weigh six pounds; there’ll +be some left. Besides, these young fellows from Paris don’t eat bread, +you’ll see.” + +“Then they must eat _frippe_?” said Nanon. + +_Frippe_ is a word of the local lexicon of Anjou, and means any +accompaniment of bread, from butter which is spread upon it, the +commonest kind of _frippe_, to peach preserve, the most distinguished of +all the _frippes_; those who in their childhood have licked the _frippe_ +and left the bread, will comprehend the meaning of Nanon’s speech. + +“No,” answered Grandet, “they eat neither bread nor _frippe_; they are +something like marriageable girls.” + +After ordering the meals for the day with his usual parsimony, the +goodman, having locked the closets containing the supplies, was about to +go towards the fruit-garden, when Nanon stopped him to say,-- + +“Monsieur, give me a little flour and some butter, and I’ll make a +_galette_ for the young ones.” + +“Are you going to pillage the house on account of my nephew?” + +“I wasn’t thinking any more of your nephew than I was of your dog,--not +more than you think yourself; for, look here, you’ve only forked out six +bits of sugar. I want eight.” + +“What’s all this, Nanon? I have never seen you like this before. What +have you got in your head? Are you the mistress here? You sha’n’t have +more than six pieces of sugar.” + +“Well, then, how is your nephew to sweeten his coffee?” + +“With two pieces; I’ll go without myself.” + +“Go without sugar at your age! I’d rather buy you some out of my own +pocket.” + +“Mind your own business.” + +In spite of the recent fall in prices, sugar was still in Grandet’s eyes +the most valuable of all the colonial products; to him it was always +six francs a pound. The necessity of economizing it, acquired under the +Empire, had grown to be the most inveterate of his habits. All women, +even the greatest ninnies, know how to dodge and dodge to get their +ends; Nanon abandoned the sugar for the sake of getting the _galette_. + +“Mademoiselle!” she called through the window, “do you want some +_galette_?” + +“No, no,” answered Eugenie. + +“Come, Nanon,” said Grandet, hearing his daughter’s voice. “See here.” + He opened the cupboard where the flour was kept, gave her a cupful, and +added a few ounces of butter to the piece he had already cut off. + +“I shall want wood for the oven,” said the implacable Nanon. + +“Well, take what you want,” he answered sadly; “but in that case you +must make us a fruit-tart, and you’ll cook the whole dinner in the oven. +In that way you won’t need two fires.” + +“Goodness!” cried Nanon, “you needn’t tell me that.” + +Grandet cast a look that was well-nigh paternal upon his faithful +deputy. + +“Mademoiselle,” she cried, when his back was turned, “we shall have the +_galette_.” + +Pere Grandet returned from the garden with the fruit and arranged a +plateful on the kitchen-table. + +“Just see, monsieur,” said Nanon, “what pretty boots your nephew has. +What leather! why it smells good! What does he clean it with, I wonder? +Am I to put your egg-polish on it?” + +“Nanon, I think eggs would injure that kind of leather. Tell him you +don’t know how to black morocco; yes, that’s morocco. He will get you +something himself in Saumur to polish those boots with. I have heard +that they put sugar into the blacking to make it shine.” + +“They look good to eat,” said the cook, putting the boots to her nose. +“Bless me! if they don’t smell like madame’s eau-de-cologne. Ah! how +funny!” + +“Funny!” said her master. “Do you call it funny to put more money into +boots than the man who stands in them is worth?” + +“Monsieur,” she said, when Grandet returned the second time, after +locking the fruit-garden, “won’t you have the _pot-au-feu_ put on once +or twice a week on account of your nephew?” + +“Yes.” + +“Am I to go to the butcher’s?” + +“Certainly not. We will make the broth of fowls; the farmers will bring +them. I shall tell Cornoiller to shoot some crows; they make the best +soup in the world.” + +“Isn’t it true, monsieur, that crows eat the dead?” + +“You are a fool, Nanon. They eat what they can get, like the rest of the +world. Don’t we all live on the dead? What are legacies?” + +Monsieur Grandet, having no further orders to give, drew out his watch, +and seeing that he had half an hour to dispose of before breakfast, he +took his hat, went and kissed his daughter, and said to her: + +“Do you want to come for a walk in the fields, down by the Loire? I have +something to do there.” + +Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the +father and daughter went down the winding street to the shore. + +“Where are you going at this early hour?” said Cruchot, the notary, +meeting them. + +“To see something,” answered Grandet, not duped by the matutinal +appearance of his friend. + +When Pere Grandet went to “see something,” the notary knew by experience +there was something to be got by going with him; so he went. + +“Come, Cruchot,” said Grandet, “you are one of my friends. I’ll show you +what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good ground.” + +“Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for those that +were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?” said Maitre Cruchot, +opening his eyes with amazement. “What luck you have had! To cut down +your trees at the very time they ran short of white-wood at Nantes, and +to sell them at thirty francs!” + +Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most solemn +moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to bring down +upon her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet had now reached +the magnificent fields which he owned on the banks of the Loire, where +thirty workmen were employed in clearing away, filling up, and levelling +the spots formerly occupied by the poplars. + +“Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! Jean,” he +cried to a laborer, “m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, b-both ways.” + +“Four times eight feet,” said the man. + +“Thirty-two feet lost,” said Grandet to Cruchot. “I had three hundred +poplars in this one line, isn’t that so? Well, then, three h-h-hundred +times thir-thirty-two lost m-m-me five hundred in h-h-hay; add twice as +much for the side rows,--fifteen hundred; the middle rows as much more. +So we may c-c-call it a th-thousand b-b-bales of h-h-hay--” + +“Very good,” said Cruchot, to help out his friend; “a thousand bales are +worth about six hundred francs.” + +“Say t-t-twelve hundred, be-c-cause there’s three or four hundred francs +on the second crop. Well, then, c-c-calculate that t-twelve thousand +francs a year for f-f-forty years with interest c-c-comes to--” + +“Say sixty thousand francs,” said the notary. + +“I am willing; c-c-comes t-t-to sixty th-th-thousand. Very good,” + continued Grandet, without stuttering: “two thousand poplars forty years +old will only yield me fifty thousand francs. There’s a loss. I have +found that myself,” said Grandet, getting on his high horse. “Jean, fill +up all the holes except those at the bank of the river; there you are +to plant the poplars I have bought. Plant ‘em there, and they’ll get +nourishment from the government,” he said, turning to Cruchot, and +giving a slight motion to the wen on his nose, which expressed more than +the most ironical of smiles. + +“True enough; poplars should only be planted on poor soil,” said +Cruchot, amazed at Grandet’s calculations. + +“Y-y-yes, monsieur,” answered the old man satirically. + +Eugenie, who was gazing at the sublime scenery of the Loire, and paying +no attention to her father’s reckonings, presently turned an ear to the +remarks of Cruchot when she heard him say,-- + +“So you have brought a son-in-law from Paris. All Saumur is talking +about your nephew. I shall soon have the marriage-contract to draw up, +hey! Pere Grandet?” + +“You g-g-got up very early to t-t-tell me that,” said Grandet, +accompanying the remark with a motion of his wen. “Well, old +c-c-comrade, I’ll be frank, and t-t-tell you what you want t-t-to know. +I would rather, do you see, f-f-fling my daughter into the Loire than +g-g-give her to her c-c-cousin. You may t-t-tell that everywhere,--no, +never mind; let the world t-t-talk.” + +This answer dazzled and blinded the young girl with sudden light. The +distant hopes upspringing in her heart bloomed suddenly, became real, +tangible, like a cluster of flowers, and she saw them cut down and +wilting on the earth. Since the previous evening she had attached +herself to Charles by those links of happiness which bind soul to soul; +from henceforth suffering was to rivet them. Is it not the noble destiny +of women to be more moved by the dark solemnities of grief than by the +splendors of fortune? How was it that fatherly feeling had died out of +her father’s heart? Of what crime had Charles been guilty? Mysterious +questions! Already her dawning love, a mystery so profound, was wrapping +itself in mystery. She walked back trembling in all her limbs; and when +she reached the gloomy street, lately so joyous to her, she felt its +sadness, she breathed the melancholy which time and events had printed +there. None of love’s lessons lacked. A few steps from their own door +she went on before her father and waited at the threshold. But Grandet, +who saw a newspaper in the notary’s hand, stopped short and asked,-- + +“How are the Funds?” + +“You never listen to my advice, Grandet,” answered Cruchot. “Buy soon; +you will still make twenty per cent in two years, besides getting an +excellent rate of interest,--five thousand a year for eighty thousand +francs fifty centimes.” + +“We’ll see about that,” answered Grandet, rubbing his chin. + +“Good God!” exclaimed the notary. + +“Well, what?” cried Grandet; and at the same moment Cruchot put the +newspaper under his eyes and said: + +“Read that!” + + “Monsieur Grandet, one of the most respected merchants in Paris, + blew his brains out yesterday, after making his usual appearance + at the Bourse. He had sent his resignation to the president of the + Chamber of Deputies, and had also resigned his functions as a + judge of the commercial courts. The failures of Monsieur Roguin + and Monsieur Souchet, his broker and his notary, had ruined him. + The esteem felt for Monsieur Grandet and the credit he enjoyed + were nevertheless such that he might have obtained the necessary + assistance from other business houses. It is much to be regretted + that so honorable a man should have yielded to momentary despair,” + etc. + +“I knew it,” said the old wine-grower to the notary. + +The words sent a chill of horror through Maitre Cruchot, who, +notwithstanding his impassibility as a notary, felt the cold running +down his spine as he thought that Grandet of Paris had possibly implored +in vain the millions of Grandet of Saumur. + +“And his son, so joyous yesterday--” + +“He knows nothing as yet,” answered Grandet, with the same composure. + +“Adieu! Monsieur Grandet,” said Cruchot, who now understood the state of +the case, and went off to reassure Monsieur de Bonfons. + +On entering, Grandet found breakfast ready. Madame Grandet, round whose +neck Eugenie had flung her arms, kissing her with the quick effusion of +feeling often caused by secret grief, was already seated in her chair on +castors, knitting sleeves for the coming winter. + +“You can begin to eat,” said Nanon, coming downstairs four steps at a +time; “the young one is sleeping like a cherub. Isn’t he a darling with +his eyes shut? I went in and I called him: no answer.” + +“Let him sleep,” said Grandet; “he’ll wake soon enough to hear +ill-tidings.” + +“What is it?” asked Eugenie, putting into her coffee the two little bits +of sugar weighing less than half an ounce which the old miser amused +himself by cutting up in his leisure hours. Madame Grandet, who did not +dare to put the question, gazed at her husband. + +“His father has blown his brains out.” + +“My uncle?” said Eugenie. + +“Poor young man!” exclaimed Madame Grandet. + +“Poor indeed!” said Grandet; “he isn’t worth a sou!” + +“Eh! poor boy, and he’s sleeping like the king of the world!” said Nanon +in a gentle voice. + +Eugenie stopped eating. Her heart was wrung, as the young heart is wrung +when pity for the suffering of one she loves overflows, for the first +time, the whole being of a woman. The poor girl wept. + +“What are you crying about? You didn’t know your uncle,” said her +father, giving her one of those hungry tigerish looks he doubtless threw +upon his piles of gold. + +“But, monsieur,” said Nanon, “who wouldn’t feel pity for the poor young +man, sleeping there like a wooden shoe, without knowing what’s coming?” + +“I didn’t speak to you, Nanon. Hold your tongue!” + +Eugenie learned at that moment that the woman who loves must be able to +hide her feelings. She did not answer. + +“You will say nothing to him about it, Ma’ame Grandet, till I return,” + said the old man. “I have to go and straighten the line of my hedge +along the high-road. I shall be back at noon, in time for the second +breakfast, and then I will talk with my nephew about his affairs. As +for you, Mademoiselle Eugenie, if it is for that dandy you are crying, +that’s enough, child. He’s going off like a shot to the Indies. You will +never see him again.” + +The father took his gloves from the brim of his hat, put them on with +his usual composure, pushed them in place by shoving the fingers of both +hands together, and went out. + +“Mamma, I am suffocating!” cried Eugenie when she was alone with her +mother; “I have never suffered like this.” + +Madame Grandet, seeing that she turned pale, opened the window and let +her breathe fresh air. + +“I feel better!” said Eugenie after a moment. + +This nervous excitement in a nature hitherto, to all appearance, calm +and cold, reacted on Madame Grandet; she looked at her daughter with the +sympathetic intuition with which mothers are gifted for the objects of +their tenderness, and guessed all. In truth the life of the Hungarian +sisters, bound together by a freak of nature, could scarcely have been +more intimate than that of Eugenie and her mother,--always together +in the embrasure of that window, and sleeping together in the same +atmosphere. + +“My poor child!” said Madame Grandet, taking Eugenie’s head and laying +it upon her bosom. + +At these words the young girl raised her head, questioned her mother by +a look, and seemed to search out her inmost thought. + +“Why send him to the Indies?” she said. “If he is unhappy, ought he not +to stay with us? Is he not our nearest relation?” + +“Yes, my child, it seems natural; but your father has his reasons: we +must respect them.” + +The mother and daughter sat down in silence, the former upon her raised +seat, the latter in her little armchair, and both took up their work. +Swelling with gratitude for the full heart-understanding her mother had +given her, Eugenie kissed the dear hand, saying,-- + +“How good you are, my kind mamma!” + +The words sent a glow of light into the motherly face, worn and blighted +as it was by many sorrows. + +“You like him?” asked Eugenie. + +Madame Grandet only smiled in reply. Then, after a moment’s silence, she +said in a low voice: “Do you love him already? That is wrong.” + +“Wrong?” said Eugenie. “Why is it wrong? You are pleased with him, Nanon +is pleased with him; why should he not please me? Come, mamma, let us +set the table for his breakfast.” + +She threw down her work, and her mother did the same, saying, “Foolish +child!” But she sanctioned the child’s folly by sharing it. Eugenie +called Nanon. + +“What do you want now, mademoiselle?” + +“Nanon, can we have cream by midday?” + +“Ah! midday, to be sure you can,” answered the old servant. + +“Well, let him have his coffee very strong; I heard Monsieur des +Grassins say that they make the coffee very strong in Paris. Put in a +great deal.” + +“Where am I to get it?” + +“Buy some.” + +“Suppose monsieur meets me?” + +“He has gone to his fields.” + +“I’ll run, then. But Monsieur Fessard asked me yesterday if the Magi +had come to stay with us when I bought the wax candle. All the town will +know our goings-on.” + +“If your father finds it out,” said Madame Grandet, “he is capable of +beating us.” + +“Well, let him beat us; we will take his blows on our knees.” + +Madame Grandet for all answer raised her eyes to heaven. Nanon put on +her hood and went off. Eugenie got out some clean table-linen, and went +to fetch a few bunches of grapes which she had amused herself by hanging +on a string across the attic; she walked softly along the corridor, so +as not to waken her cousin, and she could not help listening at the door +to his quiet breathing. + +“Sorrow is watching while he sleeps,” she thought. + +She took the freshest vine-leaves and arranged her dish of grapes as +coquettishly as a practised house-keeper might have done, and placed it +triumphantly on the table. She laid hands on the pears counted out by +her father, and piled them in a pyramid mixed with leaves. She went +and came, and skipped and ran. She would have liked to lay under +contribution everything in her father’s house; but the keys were in his +pocket. Nanon came back with two fresh eggs. At sight of them Eugenie +almost hugged her round the neck. + +“The farmer from Lande had them in his basket. I asked him for them, and +he gave them to me, the darling, for nothing, as an attention!” + + + + +V + +After two hours’ thought and care, during which Eugenie jumped up twenty +times from her work to see if the coffee were boiling, or to go and +listen to the noise her cousin made in dressing, she succeeded in +preparing a simple little breakfast, very inexpensive, but which, +nevertheless, departed alarmingly from the inveterate customs of the +house. The midday breakfast was always taken standing. Each took a slice +of bread, a little fruit or some butter, and a glass of wine. As Eugenie +looked at the table drawn up near the fire with an arm-chair placed +before her cousin’s plate, at the two dishes of fruit, the egg-cup, the +bottle of white wine, the bread, and the sugar heaped up in a saucer, +she trembled in all her limbs at the mere thought of the look her father +would give her if he should come in at that moment. She glanced often +at the clock to see if her cousin could breakfast before the master’s +return. + +“Don’t be troubled, Eugenie; if your father comes in, I will take it all +upon myself,” said Madame Grandet. + +Eugenie could not repress a tear. + +“Oh, my good mother!” she cried, “I have never loved you enough.” + +Charles, who had been tramping about his room for some time, singing to +himself, now came down. Happily, it was only eleven o’clock. The true +Parisian! he had put as much dandyism into his dress as if he were in +the chateau of the noble lady then travelling in Scotland. He came into +the room with the smiling, courteous manner so becoming to youth, +which made Eugenie’s heart beat with mournful joy. He had taken the +destruction of his castles in Anjou as a joke, and came up to his aunt +gaily. + +“Have you slept well, dear aunt? and you, too, my cousin?” + +“Very well, monsieur; did you?” said Madame Grandet. + +“I? perfectly.” + +“You must be hungry, cousin,” said Eugenie; “will you take your seat?” + +“I never breakfast before midday; I never get up till then. However, I +fared so badly on the journey that I am glad to eat something at once. +Besides--” here he pulled out the prettiest watch Breguet ever made. +“Dear me! I am early, it is only eleven o’clock!” + +“Early?” said Madame Grandet. + +“Yes; but I wanted to put my things in order. Well, I shall be glad to +have anything to eat,--anything, it doesn’t matter what, a chicken, a +partridge.” + +“Holy Virgin!” exclaimed Nanon, overhearing the words. + +“A partridge!” whispered Eugenie to herself; she would gladly have given +the whole of her little hoard for a partridge. + +“Come and sit down,” said his aunt. + +The young dandy let himself drop into an easy-chair, just as a pretty +woman falls gracefully upon a sofa. Eugenie and her mother took ordinary +chairs and sat beside him, near the fire. + +“Do you always live here?” said Charles, thinking the room uglier by +daylight than it had seemed the night before. + +“Always,” answered Eugenie, looking at him, “except during the vintage. +Then we go and help Nanon, and live at the Abbaye des Noyers.” + +“Don’t you ever take walks?” + +“Sometimes on Sunday after vespers, when the weather is fine,” + said Madame Grandet, “we walk on the bridge, or we go and watch the +haymakers.” + +“Have you a theatre?” + +“Go to the theatre!” exclaimed Madame Grandet, “see a play! Why, +monsieur, don’t you know it is a mortal sin?” + +“See here, monsieur,” said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, “here are your +chickens,--in the shell.” + +“Oh! fresh eggs,” said Charles, who, like all people accustomed to +luxury, had already forgotten about his partridge, “that is delicious: +now, if you will give me the butter, my good girl.” + +“Butter! then you can’t have the _galette_.” + +“Nanon, bring the butter,” cried Eugenie. + +The young girl watched her cousin as he cut his sippets, with as much +pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where innocence and virtue +triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming mother, improved, and trained +by a woman of fashion, had the elegant, dainty, foppish movements of +a coxcomb. The compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a young girl +possess a power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles, finding +himself the object of the attentions of his aunt and cousin, could not +escape the influence of feelings which flowed towards him, as it were, +and inundated him. He gave Eugenie a bright, caressing look full of +kindness,--a look which seemed itself a smile. He perceived, as his eyes +lingered upon her, the exquisite harmony of features in the pure face, +the grace of her innocent attitude, the magic clearness of the eyes, +where young love sparkled and desire shone unconsciously. + +“Ah! my dear cousin, if you were in full dress at the Opera, I assure +you my aunt’s words would come true,--you would make the men commit the +mortal sin of envy, and the women the sin of jealousy.” + +The compliment went to Eugenie’s heart and set it beating, though she +did not understand its meaning. + +“Oh! cousin,” she said, “you are laughing at a poor little country +girl.” + +“If you knew me, my cousin, you would know that I abhor ridicule; it +withers the heart and jars upon all my feelings.” Here he swallowed his +buttered sippet very gracefully. “No, I really have not enough mind to +make fun of others; and doubtless it is a great defect. In Paris, when +they want to disparage a man, they say: ‘He has a good heart.’ The +phrase means: ‘The poor fellow is as stupid as a rhinoceros.’ But as I +am rich, and known to hit the bull’s-eye at thirty paces with any kind +of pistol, and even in the open fields, ridicule respects me.” + +“My dear nephew, that bespeaks a good heart.” + +“You have a very pretty ring,” said Eugenie; “is there any harm in +asking to see it?” + +Charles held out his hand after loosening the ring, and Eugenie blushed +as she touched the pink nails of her cousin with the tips of her +fingers. + +“See, mamma, what beautiful workmanship.” + +“My! there’s a lot of gold!” said Nanon, bringing in the coffee. + +“What is that?” exclaimed Charles, laughing, as he pointed to an oblong +pot of brown earthenware, glazed on the inside, and edged with a fringe +of ashes, from the bottom of which the coffee-grounds were bubbling up +and falling in the boiling liquid. + +“It is boiled coffee,” said Nanon. + +“Ah! my dear aunt, I shall at least leave one beneficent trace of my +visit here. You are indeed behind the age! I must teach you to make good +coffee in a Chaptal coffee-pot.” + +He tried to explain the process of a Chaptal coffee-pot. + +“Gracious! if there are so many things as all that to do,” said Nanon, +“we may as well give up our lives to it. I shall never make coffee that +way; I know that! Pray, who is to get the fodder for the cow while I +make the coffee?” + +“I will make it,” said Eugenie. + +“Child!” said Madame Grandet, looking at her daughter. + +The word recalled to their minds the sorrow that was about to fall upon +the unfortunate young man; the three women were silent, and looked at +him with an air of commiseration that caught his attention. + +“Is anything the matter, my cousin?” he said. + +“Hush!” said Madame Grandet to Eugenie, who was about to answer; +“you know, my daughter, that your father charged us not to speak to +monsieur--” + +“Say Charles,” said young Grandet. + +“Ah! you are called Charles? What a beautiful name!” cried Eugenie. + +Presentiments of evil are almost always justified. At this moment Nanon, +Madame Grandet, and Eugenie, who had all three been thinking with a +shudder of the old man’s return, heard the knock whose echoes they knew +but too well. + +“There’s papa!” said Eugenie. + +She removed the saucer filled with sugar, leaving a few pieces on the +table-cloth; Nanon carried off the egg-cup; Madame Grandet sat up like a +frightened hare. It was evidently a panic, which amazed Charles, who was +wholly unable to understand it. + +“Why! what is the matter?” he asked. + +“My father has come,” answered Eugenie. + +“Well, what of that?” + +Monsieur Grandet entered the room, threw his keen eye upon the table, +upon Charles, and saw the whole thing. + +“Ha! ha! so you have been making a feast for your nephew; very good, +very good, very good indeed!” he said, without stuttering. “When the +cat’s away, the mice will play.” + +“Feast!” thought Charles, incapable of suspecting or imagining the rules +and customs of the household. + +“Give me my glass, Nanon,” said the master + +Eugenie brought the glass. Grandet drew a horn-handled knife with a big +blade from his breeches’ pocket, cut a slice of bread, took a small bit +of butter, spread it carefully on the bread, and ate it standing. At +this moment Charlie was sweetening his coffee. Pere Grandet saw the +bits of sugar, looked at his wife, who turned pale, and made three steps +forward; he leaned down to the poor woman’s ear and said,-- + +“Where did you get all that sugar?” + +“Nanon fetched it from Fessard’s; there was none.” + +It is impossible to picture the profound interest the three women took +in this mute scene. Nanon had left her kitchen and stood looking into +the room to see what would happen. Charles, having tasted his coffee, +found it bitter and glanced about for the sugar, which Grandet had +already put away. + +“What do you want?” said his uncle. + +“The sugar.” + +“Put in more milk,” answered the master of the house; “your coffee will +taste sweeter.” + +Eugenie took the saucer which Grandet had put away and placed it on the +table, looking calmly at her father as she did so. Most assuredly, +the Parisian woman who held a silken ladder with her feeble arms to +facilitate the flight of her lover, showed no greater courage than +Eugenie displayed when she replaced the sugar upon the table. The lover +rewarded his mistress when she proudly showed him her beautiful bruised +arm, and bathed every swollen vein with tears and kisses till it was +cured with happiness. Charles, on the other hand, never so much as knew +the secret of the cruel agitation that shook and bruised the heart of +his cousin, crushed as it was by the look of the old miser. + +“You are not eating your breakfast, wife.” + +The poor helot came forward with a piteous look, cut herself a piece of +bread, and took a pear. Eugenie boldly offered her father some grapes, +saying,-- + +“Taste my preserves, papa. My cousin, you will eat some, will you not? I +went to get these pretty grapes expressly for you.” + +“If no one stops them, they will pillage Saumur for you, nephew. When +you have finished, we will go into the garden; I have something to tell +you which can’t be sweetened.” + +Eugenie and her mother cast a look on Charles whose meaning the young +man could not mistake. + +“What is it you mean, uncle? Since the death of my poor mother”--at +these words his voice softened--“no other sorrow can touch me.” + +“My nephew, who knows by what afflictions God is pleased to try us?” + said his aunt. + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta,” said Grandet, “there’s your nonsense beginning. I +am sorry to see those white hands of yours, nephew”; and he showed the +shoulder-of-mutton fists which Nature had put at the end of his own +arms. “There’s a pair of hands made to pick up silver pieces. You’ve +been brought up to put your feet in the kid out of which we make the +purses we keep our money in. A bad look-out! Very bad!” + +“What do you mean, uncle? I’ll be hanged if I understand a single word +of what you are saying.” + +“Come!” said Grandet. + +The miser closed the blade of his knife with a snap, drank the last of +his wine, and opened the door. + +“My cousin, take courage!” + +The tone of the young girl struck terror to Charles’s heart, and he +followed his terrible uncle, a prey to disquieting thoughts. Eugenie, +her mother, and Nanon went into the kitchen, moved by irresistible +curiosity to watch the two actors in the scene which was about to take +place in the garden, where at first the uncle walked silently ahead of +the nephew. Grandet was not at all troubled at having to tell Charles of +the death of his father; but he did feel a sort of compassion in knowing +him to be without a penny, and he sought for some phrase or formula by +which to soften the communication of that cruel truth. “You have lost +your father,” seemed to him a mere nothing to say; fathers die before +their children. But “you are absolutely without means,”--all the +misfortunes of life were summed up in those words! Grandet walked round +the garden three times, the gravel crunching under his heavy step. + +In the crucial moments of life our minds fasten upon the locality where +joys or sorrows overwhelm us. Charles noticed with minute attention the +box-borders of the little garden, the yellow leaves as they fluttered +down, the dilapidated walls, the gnarled fruit-trees,--picturesque +details which were destined to remain forever in his memory, blending +eternally, by the mnemonics that belong exclusively to the passions, +with the recollections of this solemn hour. + +“It is very fine weather, very warm,” said Grandet, drawing a long +breath. + +“Yes, uncle; but why--” + +“Well, my lad,” answered his uncle, “I have some bad news to give you. +Your father is ill--” + +“Then why am I here?” said Charles. “Nanon,” he cried, “order +post-horses! I can get a carriage somewhere?” he added, turning to his +uncle, who stood motionless. + +“Horses and carriages are useless,” answered Grandet, looking at +Charles, who remained silent, his eyes growing fixed. “Yes, my poor boy, +you guess the truth,--he is dead. But that’s nothing; there is something +worse: he blew out his brains.” + +“My father!” + +“Yes, but that’s not the worst; the newspapers are all talking about it. +Here, read that.” + +Grandet, who had borrowed the fatal article from Cruchot, thrust the +paper under his nephew’s eyes. The poor young man, still a child, still +at an age when feelings wear no mask, burst into tears. + +“That’s good!” thought Grandet; “his eyes frightened me. He’ll be all +right if he weeps,--That is not the worst, my poor nephew,” he said +aloud, not noticing whether Charles heard him, “that is nothing; you +will get over it: but--” + +“Never, never! My father! Oh, my father!” + +“He has ruined you, you haven’t a penny.” + +“What does that matter? My father! Where is my father?” + +His sobs resounded horribly against those dreary walls and reverberated +in the echoes. The three women, filled with pity, wept also; for tears +are often as contagious as laughter. Charles, without listening further +to his uncle, ran through the court and up the staircase to his chamber, +where he threw himself across the bed and hid his face in the sheets, to +weep in peace for his lost parents. + +“The first burst must have its way,” said Grandet, entering the +living-room, where Eugenie and her mother had hastily resumed their +seats and were sewing with trembling hands, after wiping their eyes. +“But that young man is good for nothing; his head is more taken up with +the dead than with his money.” + +Eugenie shuddered as she heard her father’s comment on the most sacred +of all griefs. From that moment she began to judge him. Charles’s sobs, +though muffled, still sounded through the sepulchral house; and his deep +groans, which seemed to come from the earth beneath, only ceased towards +evening, after growing gradually feebler. + +“Poor young man!” said Madame Grandet. + +Fatal exclamation! Pere Grandet looked at his wife, at Eugenie, and at +the sugar-bowl. He recollected the extraordinary breakfast prepared for +the unfortunate youth, and he took a position in the middle of the room. + +“Listen to me,” he said, with his usual composure. “I hope that you +will not continue this extravagance, Madame Grandet. I don’t give you MY +money to stuff that young fellow with sugar.” + +“My mother had nothing to do with it,” said Eugenie; “it was I who--” + +“Is it because you are of age,” said Grandet, interrupting his daughter, +“that you choose to contradict me? Remember, Eugenie--” + +“Father, the son of your brother ought to receive from us--” + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta!” exclaimed the cooper on four chromatic tones; “the son +of my brother this, my nephew that! Charles is nothing at all to us; he +hasn’t a farthing, his father has failed; and when this dandy has cried +his fill, off he goes from here. I won’t have him revolutionize my +household.” + +“What is ‘failing,’ father?” asked Eugenie. + +“To fail,” answered her father, “is to commit the most dishonorable +action that can disgrace a man.” + +“It must be a great sin,” said Madame Grandet, “and our brother may be +damned.” + +“There, there, don’t begin with your litanies!” said Grandet, shrugging +his shoulders. “To fail, Eugenie,” he resumed, “is to commit a theft +which the law, unfortunately, takes under its protection. People have +given their property to Guillaume Grandet trusting to his reputation for +honor and integrity; he has made away with it all, and left them nothing +but their eyes to weep with. A highway robber is better than a bankrupt: +the one attacks you and you can defend yourself, he risks his own life; +but the other--in short, Charles is dishonored.” + +The words rang in the poor girl’s heart and weighed it down with their +heavy meaning. Upright and delicate as a flower born in the depths of +a forest, she knew nothing of the world’s maxims, of its deceitful +arguments and specious sophisms; she therefore believed the atrocious +explanation which her father gave her designedly, concealing the +distinction which exists between an involuntary failure and an +intentional one. + +“Father, could you not have prevented such a misfortune?” + +“My brother did not consult me. Besides, he owes four millions.” + +“What is a ‘million,’ father?” she asked, with the simplicity of a child +which thinks it can find out at once all that it wants to know. + +“A million?” said Grandet, “why, it is a million pieces of twenty sous +each, and it takes five twenty sous pieces to make five francs.” + +“Dear me!” cried Eugenie, “how could my uncle possibly have had +four millions? Is there any one else in France who ever had so many +millions?” Pere Grandet stroked his chin, smiled, and his wen seemed to +dilate. “But what will become of my cousin Charles?” + +“He is going off to the West Indies by his father’s request, and he will +try to make his fortune there.” + +“Has he got the money to go with?” + +“I shall pay for his journey as far as--yes, as far as Nantes.” + +Eugenie sprang into his arms. + +“Oh, father, how good you are!” + +She kissed him with a warmth that almost made Grandet ashamed of +himself, for his conscience galled him a little. + +“Will it take much time to amass a million?” she asked. + +“Look here!” said the old miser, “you know what a napoleon is? Well, it +takes fifty thousand napoleons to make a million.” + +“Mamma, we must say a great many _neuvaines_ for him.” + +“I was thinking so,” said Madame Grandet. + +“That’s the way, always spending my money!” cried the father. “Do you +think there are francs on every bush?” + +At this moment a muffled cry, more distressing than all the others, +echoed through the garrets and struck a chill to the hearts of Eugenie +and her mother. + +“Nanon, go upstairs and see that he does not kill himself,” said +Grandet. “Now, then,” he added, looking at his wife and daughter, who +had turned pale at his words, “no nonsense, you two! I must leave you; I +have got to see about the Dutchmen who are going away to-day. And then I +must find Cruchot, and talk with him about all this.” + +He departed. As soon as he had shut the door Eugenie and her mother +breathed more freely. Until this morning the young girl had never felt +constrained in the presence of her father; but for the last few hours +every moment wrought a change in her feelings and ideas. + +“Mamma, how many louis are there in a cask of wine?” + +“Your father sells his from a hundred to a hundred and fifty francs, +sometimes two hundred,--at least, so I’ve heard say.” + +“Then papa must be rich?” + +“Perhaps he is. But Monsieur Cruchot told me he bought Froidfond two +years ago; that may have pinched him.” + +Eugenie, not being able to understand the question of her father’s +fortune, stopped short in her calculations. + +“He didn’t even see me, the darling!” said Nanon, coming back from her +errand. “He’s stretched out like a calf on his bed and crying like the +Madeleine, and that’s a blessing! What’s the matter with the poor dear +young man!” + +“Let us go and console him, mamma; if any one knocks, we can come down.” + +Madame Grandet was helpless against the sweet persuasive tones of her +daughter’s voice. Eugenie was sublime: she had become a woman. The two, +with beating hearts, went up to Charles’s room. The door was open. +The young man heard and saw nothing; plunged in grief, he only uttered +inarticulate cries. + +“How he loves his father!” said Eugenie in a low voice. + +In the utterance of those words it was impossible to mistake the hopes +of a heart that, unknown to itself, had suddenly become passionate. +Madame Grandet cast a mother’s look upon her daughter, and then +whispered in her ear,-- + +“Take care, you will love him!” + +“Love him!” answered Eugenie. “Ah! if you did but know what my father +said to Monsieur Cruchot.” + +Charles turned over, and saw his aunt and cousin. + +“I have lost my father, my poor father! If he had told me his secret +troubles we might have worked together to repair them. My God! my poor +father! I was so sure I should see him again that I think I kissed him +quite coldly--” + +Sobs cut short the words. + +“We will pray for him,” said Madame Grandet. “Resign yourself to the +will of God.” + +“Cousin,” said Eugenie, “take courage! Your loss is irreparable; +therefore think only of saving your honor.” + +With the delicate instinct of a woman who intuitively puts her mind +into all things, even at the moment when she offers consolation, Eugenie +sought to cheat her cousin’s grief by turning his thoughts inward upon +himself. + +“My honor?” exclaimed the young man, tossing aside his hair with an +impatient gesture as he sat up on his bed and crossed his arms. +“Ah! that is true. My uncle said my father had failed.” He uttered a +heart-rending cry, and hid his face in his hands. “Leave me, leave me, +cousin! My God! my God! forgive my father, for he must have suffered +sorely!” + +There was something terribly attractive in the sight of this young +sorrow, sincere without reasoning or afterthought. It was a virgin +grief which the simple hearts of Eugenie and her mother were fitted to +comprehend, and they obeyed the sign Charles made them to leave him +to himself. They went downstairs in silence and took their accustomed +places by the window and sewed for nearly an hour without exchanging +a word. Eugenie had seen in the furtive glance that she cast about the +young man’s room--that girlish glance which sees all in the twinkling +of an eye--the pretty trifles of his dressing-case, his scissors, his +razors embossed with gold. This gleam of luxury across her cousin’s +grief only made him the more interesting to her, possibly by way of +contrast. Never before had so serious an event, so dramatic a sight, +touched the imaginations of these two passive beings, hitherto sunk in +the stillness and calm of solitude. + +“Mamma,” said Eugenie, “we must wear mourning for my uncle.” + +“Your father will decide that,” answered Madame Grandet. + +They relapsed into silence. Eugenie drew her stitches with a uniform +motion which revealed to an observer the teeming thoughts of her +meditation. The first desire of the girl’s heart was to share her +cousin’s mourning. + + + + +VI + +About four o’clock an abrupt knock at the door struck sharply on the +heart of Madame Grandet. + +“What can have happened to your father?” she said to her daughter. + +Grandet entered joyously. After taking off his gloves, he rubbed his +hands hard enough to take off their skin as well, if his epidermis had +not been tanned and cured like Russia leather,--saving, of course, the +perfume of larch-trees and incense. Presently his secret escaped him. + +“Wife,” he said, without stuttering, “I’ve trapped them all! Our wine +is sold! The Dutch and the Belgians have gone. I walked about the +market-place in front of their inn, pretending to be doing nothing. That +Belgian fellow--you know who I mean--came up to me. The owners of all +the good vineyards have kept back their vintages, intending to wait; +well, I didn’t hinder them. The Belgian was in despair; I saw that. In +a minute the bargain was made. He takes my vintage at two hundred francs +the puncheon, half down. He paid me in gold; the notes are drawn. Here +are six louis for you. In three months wines will have fallen.” + +These words, uttered in a quiet tone of voice, were nevertheless so +bitterly sarcastic that the inhabitants of Saumur, grouped at this +moment in the market-place and overwhelmed by the news of the sale +Grandet had just effected, would have shuddered had they heard them. +Their panic would have brought the price of wines down fifty per cent at +once. + +“Did you have a thousand puncheons this year, father?” + +“Yes, little one.” + +That term applied to his daughter was the superlative expression of the +old miser’s joy. + +“Then that makes two hundred thousand pieces of twenty sous each?” + +“Yes, Mademoiselle Grandet.” + +“Then, father, you can easily help Charles.” + +The amazement, the anger, the stupefaction of Belshazzar when he saw +the _Mene-Tekel-Upharsin_ before his eyes is not to be compared with the +cold rage of Grandet, who, having forgotten his nephew, now found him +enshrined in the heart and calculations of his daughter. + +“What’s this? Ever since that dandy put foot in _my_ house everything +goes wrong! You behave as if you had the right to buy sugar-plums and +make feasts and weddings. I won’t have that sort of thing. I hope I know +my duty at my time of life! I certainly sha’n’t take lessons from my +daughter, or from anybody else. I shall do for my nephew what it is +proper to do, and you have no need to poke your nose into it. As for +you, Eugenie,” he added, facing her, “don’t speak of this again, or I’ll +send you to the Abbaye des Noyers with Nanon, see if I don’t; and no +later than to-morrow either, if you disobey me! Where is that fellow, +has he come down yet?” + +“No, my friend,” answered Madame Grandet. + +“What is he doing then?” + +“He is weeping for his father,” said Eugenie. + +Grandet looked at his daughter without finding a word to say; after all, +he was a father. He made a couple of turns up and down the room, and +then went hurriedly to his secret den to think over an investment he +was meditating in the public Funds. The thinning out of his two thousand +acres of forest land had yielded him six hundred thousand francs: +putting this sum to that derived from the sale of his poplars and to his +other gains for the last year and for the current year, he had amassed a +total of nine hundred thousand francs, without counting the two hundred +thousand he had got by the sale just concluded. The twenty per cent +which Cruchot assured him would gain in a short time from the Funds, +then quoted at seventy, tempted him. He figured out his calculation +on the margin of the newspaper which gave the account of his brother’s +death, all the while hearing the moans of his nephew, but without +listening to them. Nanon came and knocked on the wall to summon him to +dinner. On the last step of the staircase he was saying to himself as he +came down,-- + +“I’ll do it; I shall get eight per cent interest. In two years I shall +have fifteen hundred thousand francs, which I will then draw out in good +gold,--Well, where’s my nephew?” + +“He says he doesn’t want anything to eat,” answered Nanon; “that’s not +good for him.” + +“So much saved,” retorted her master. + +“That’s so,” she said. + +“Bah! he won’t cry long. Hunger drives the wolves out of the woods.” + +The dinner was eaten in silence. + +“My good friend,” said Madame Grandet, when the cloth was removed, “we +must put on mourning.” + +“Upon my word, Madame Grandet! what will you invent next to spend money +on? Mourning is in the heart, and not in the clothes.” + +“But mourning for a brother is indispensable; and the Church commands us +to--” + +“Buy your mourning out of your six louis. Give me a hat-band; that’s +enough for me.” + +Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven without uttering a word. Her generous +instincts, slumbering and long repressed but now suddenly and for the +first time awakened, were galled at every turn. The evening passed to +all appearance like a thousand other evenings of their monotonous life, +yet it was certainly the most horrible. Eugenie sewed without raising +her head, and did not use the workbox which Charles had despised the +night before. Madame Grandet knitted her sleeves. Grandet twirled his +thumbs for four hours, absorbed in calculations whose results were on +the morrow to astonish Saumur. No one came to visit the family that +day. The whole town was ringing with the news of the business trick just +played by Grandet, the failure of his brother, and the arrival of his +nephew. Obeying the desire to gossip over their mutual interests, all +the upper and middle-class wine-growers in Saumur met at Monsieur des +Grassins, where terrible imprecations were being fulminated against the +ex-mayor. Nanon was spinning, and the whirr of her wheel was the only +sound heard beneath the gray rafters of that silent hall. + +“We don’t waste our tongues,” she said, showing her teeth, as large and +white as peeled almonds. + +“Nothing should be wasted,” answered Grandet, rousing himself from his +reverie. He saw a perspective of eight millions in three years, and he +was sailing along that sheet of gold. “Let us go to bed. I will bid +my nephew good-night for the rest of you, and see if he will take +anything.” + +Madame Grandet remained on the landing of the first storey to hear the +conversation that was about to take place between the goodman and his +nephew. Eugenie, bolder than her mother, went up two stairs. + +“Well, nephew, you are in trouble. Yes, weep, that’s natural. A father +is a father; but we must bear our troubles patiently. I am a good uncle +to you, remember that. Come, take courage! Will you have a little glass +of wine?” (Wine costs nothing in Saumur, and they offer it as tea is +offered in China.) “Why!” added Grandet, “you have got no light! That’s +bad, very bad; you ought to see what you are about,” and he walked to +the chimney-piece. “What’s this?” he cried. “A wax candle! How the +devil did they filch a wax candle? The spendthrifts would tear down the +ceilings of my house to boil the fellow’s eggs.” + +Hearing these words, mother and daughter slipped back into their rooms +and burrowed in their beds, with the celerity of frightened mice getting +back to their holes. + +“Madame Grandet, have you found a mine?” said the man, coming into the +chamber of his wife. + +“My friend, wait; I am saying my prayers,” said the poor mother in a +trembling voice. + +“The devil take your good God!” growled Grandet in reply. + +Misers have no belief in a future life; the present is their all in all. +This thought casts a terrible light upon our present epoch, in which, +far more than at any former period, money sways the laws and politics +and morals. Institutions, books, men, and dogmas, all conspire to +undermine belief in a future life,--a belief upon which the social +edifice has rested for eighteen hundred years. The grave, as a means of +transition, is little feared in our day. The future, which once opened +to us beyond the requiems, has now been imported into the present. To +obtain _per fas et nefas_ a terrestrial paradise of luxury and earthly +enjoyment, to harden the heart and macerate the body for the sake of +fleeting possessions, as the martyrs once suffered all things to reach +eternal joys, this is now the universal thought--a thought written +everywhere, even in the very laws which ask of the legislator, “What do +you pay?” instead of asking him, “What do you think?” When this doctrine +has passed down from the bourgeoisie to the populace, where will this +country be? + +“Madame Grandet, have you done?” asked the old man. + +“My friend, I am praying for you.” + +“Very good! Good-night; to-morrow morning we will have a talk.” + +The poor woman went to sleep like a schoolboy who, not having learned +his lessons, knows he will see his master’s angry face on the morrow. At +the moment when, filled with fear, she was drawing the sheet above her +head that she might stifle hearing, Eugenie, in her night-gown and with +naked feet, ran to her side and kissed her brow. + +“Oh! my good mother,” she said, “to-morrow I will tell him it was I.” + +“No; he would send you to Noyers. Leave me to manage it; he cannot eat +me.” + +“Do you hear, mamma?” + +“What?” + +“_He_ is weeping still.” + +“Go to bed, my daughter; you will take cold in your feet: the floor is +damp.” + + * * * * * + +Thus passed the solemn day which was destined to weight upon the whole +life of the rich and poor heiress, whose sleep was never again to be +so calm, nor yet so pure, as it had been up to this moment. It often +happens that certain actions of human life seem, literally speaking, +improbable, though actual. Is not this because we constantly omit +to turn the stream of psychological light upon our impulsive +determinations, and fail to explain the subtile reasons, mysteriously +conceived in our minds, which impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie’s deep +passion should be analyzed in its most delicate fibres; for it became, +scoffers might say, a malady which influenced her whole existence. Many +people prefer to deny results rather than estimate the force of ties and +links and bonds, which secretly join one fact to another in the moral +order. Here, therefore, Eugenie’s past life will offer to observers +of human nature an explanation of her naive want of reflection and the +suddenness of the emotions which overflowed her soul. The more tranquil +her life had been, the more vivid was her womanly pity, the more +simple-minded were the sentiments now developed in her soul. + +Made restless by the events of the day, she woke at intervals to listen +to her cousin, thinking she heard the sighs which still echoed in her +heart. Sometimes she saw him dying of his trouble, sometimes she dreamed +that he fainted from hunger. Towards morning she was certain that she +heard a startling cry. She dressed at once and ran, in the dawning +light, with a swift foot to her cousin’s chamber, the door of which +he had left open. The candle had burned down to the socket. Charles, +overcome by nature, was sleeping, dressed and sitting in an armchair +beside the bed, on which his head rested; he dreamed as men dream on +an empty stomach. Eugenie might weep at her ease; she might admire +the young and handsome face blotted with grief, the eyes swollen with +weeping, that seemed, sleeping as they were, to well forth tears. +Charles felt sympathetically the young girl’s presence; he opened his +eyes and saw her pitying him. + +“Pardon me, my cousin,” he said, evidently not knowing the hour nor the +place in which he found himself. + +“There are hearts who hear you, cousin, and _we_ thought you might need +something. You should go to bed; you tire yourself by sitting thus.” + +“That is true.” + +“Well, then, adieu!” + +She escaped, ashamed and happy at having gone there. Innocence alone can +dare to be so bold. Once enlightened, virtue makes her calculations as +well as vice. Eugenie, who had not trembled beside her cousin, could +scarcely stand upon her legs when she regained her chamber. Her ignorant +life had suddenly come to an end; she reasoned, she rebuked herself with +many reproaches. + +“What will he think of me? He will think that I love him!” + +That was what she most wished him to think. An honest love has its own +prescience, and knows that love begets love. What an event for this poor +solitary girl thus to have entered the chamber of a young man! Are there +not thoughts and actions in the life of love which to certain souls bear +the full meaning of the holiest espousals? An hour later she went to +her mother and dressed her as usual. Then they both came down and sat +in their places before the window waiting for Grandet, with that cruel +anxiety which, according to the individual character, freezes the +heart or warms it, shrivels or dilates it, when a scene is feared, a +punishment expected,--a feeling so natural that even domestic animals +possess it, and whine at the slightest pain of punishment, though they +make no outcry when they inadvertently hurt themselves. The goodman came +down; but he spoke to his wife with an absent manner, kissed Eugenie, +and sat down to table without appearing to remember his threats of the +night before. + +“What has become of my nephew? The lad gives no trouble.” + +“Monsieur, he is asleep,” answered Nanon. + +“So much the better; he won’t want a wax candle,” said Grandet in a +jeering tone. + +This unusual clemency, this bitter gaiety, struck Madame Grandet with +amazement, and she looked at her husband attentively. The goodman--here +it may be well to explain that in Touraine, Anjou, Pitou, and Bretagne +the word “goodman,” already used to designate Grandet, is bestowed as +often upon harsh and cruel men as upon those of kindly temperament, when +either have reached a certain age; the title means nothing on the score +of individual gentleness--the goodman took his hat and gloves, saying as +he went out,-- + +“I am going to loiter about the market-place and find Cruchot.” + +“Eugenie, your father certainly has something on his mind.” + +Grandet, who was a poor sleeper, employed half his nights in the +preliminary calculations which gave such astonishing accuracy to his +views and observations and schemes, and secured to them the unfailing +success at sight of which his townsmen stood amazed. All human power is +a compound of time and patience. Powerful beings will and wait. The life +of a miser is the constant exercise of human power put to the service of +self. It rests on two sentiments only,--self-love and self-interest; +but self-interest being to a certain extent compact and intelligent +self-love, the visible sign of real superiority, it follows that +self-love and self-interest are two parts of the same whole,--egotism. +From this arises, perhaps, the excessive curiosity shown in the habits +of a miser’s life whenever they are put before the world. Every nature +holds by a thread to those beings who challenge all human sentiments by +concentrating all in one passion. Where is the man without desire? and +what social desire can be satisfied without money? + +Grandet unquestionably “had something on his mind,” to use his wife’s +expression. There was in him, as in all misers, a persistent craving to +play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally. To +impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual proof +that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who suffer +themselves to be preyed upon in this world. Oh! who has ever truly +understood the lamb lying peacefully at the feet of God?--touching +emblem of all terrestrial victims, myth of their future, suffering and +weakness glorified! This lamb it is which the miser fattens, puts in his +fold, slaughters, cooks, eats, and then despises. The pasture of misers +is compounded of money and disdain. During the night Grandet’s ideas had +taken another course, which was the reason of his sudden clemency. He +had hatched a plot by which to trick the Parisians, to decoy and dupe +and snare them, to drive them into a trap, and make them go and come and +sweat and hope and turn pale,--a plot by which to amuse himself, the old +provincial cooper, sitting there beneath his gloomy rafters, or passing +up and down the rotten staircase of his house in Saumur. His nephew +filled his mind. He wished to save the honor of his dead brother without +the cost of a penny to the son or to himself. His own funds he was about +to invest for three years; he had therefore nothing further to do than +to manage his property in Saumur. He needed some nutriment for his +malicious activity, and he found it suddenly in his brother’s failure. +Feeling nothing to squeeze between his own paws, he resolved to crush +the Parisians in behalf of Charles, and to play the part of a good +brother on the cheapest terms. The honor of the family counted for so +little in this scheme that his good intentions might be likened to the +interest a gambler takes in seeing a game well played in which he has no +stake. The Cruchots were a necessary part of his plan; but he would not +seek them,--he resolved to make them come to him, and to lead up that +very evening to a comedy whose plot he had just conceived, which should +make him on the morrow an object of admiration to the whole town without +its costing him a single penny. + +In her father’s absence Eugenie had the happiness of busying herself +openly with her much-loved cousin, of spending upon him fearlessly +the treasures of her pity,--woman’s sublime superiority, the sole she +desires to have recognized, the sole she pardons man for letting +her assume. Three or four times the young girl went to listen to her +cousin’s breathing, to know if he were sleeping or awake; then, when he +had risen, she turned her thoughts to the cream, the eggs, the fruits, +the plates, the glasses,--all that was a part of his breakfast became +the object of some special care. At length she ran lightly up the old +staircase to listen to the noise her cousin made. Was he dressing? Did +he still weep? She reached the door. + +“My cousin!” + +“Yes, cousin.” + +“Will you breakfast downstairs, or in your room?” + +“Where you like.” + +“How do you feel?” + +“Dear cousin, I am ashamed of being hungry.” + +This conversation, held through the closed door, was like an episode in +a poem to Eugenie. + +“Well, then, we will bring your breakfast to your own room, so as not to +annoy my father.” + +She ran to the kitchen with the swiftness and lightness of a bird. + +“Nanon, go and do his room!” + +That staircase, so often traversed, which echoed to the slightest noise, +now lost its decaying aspect in the eyes of Eugenie. It grew luminous; +it had a voice and spoke to her; it was young like herself,--young like +the love it was now serving. Her mother, her kind, indulgent mother, +lent herself to the caprices of the child’s love, and after the room +was put in order, both went to sit with the unhappy youth and keep him +company. Does not Christian charity make consolation a duty? The two +women drew a goodly number of little sophistries from their religion +wherewith to justify their conduct. Charles was made the object of the +tenderest and most loving care. His saddened heart felt the sweetness +of the gentle friendship, the exquisite sympathy which these two souls, +crushed under perpetual restraint, knew so well how to display when, for +an instant, they were left unfettered in the regions of suffering, their +natural sphere. + +Claiming the right of relationship, Eugenie began to fold the linen and +put in order the toilet articles which Charles had brought; thus she +could marvel at her ease over each luxurious bauble and the various +knick-knacks of silver or chased gold, which she held long in her hand +under a pretext of examining them. Charles could not see without emotion +the generous interest his aunt and cousin felt in him; he knew society +in Paris well enough to feel assured that, placed as he now was, he +would find all hearts indifferent or cold. Eugenie thus appeared to him +in the splendor of a special beauty, and from thenceforth he admired +the innocence of life and manners which the previous evening he had been +inclined to ridicule. So when Eugenie took from Nanon the bowl of coffee +and cream, and began to pour it out for her cousin with the simplicity +of real feeling, giving him a kindly glance, the eyes of the Parisian +filled with tears; he took her hand and kissed it. + +“What troubles you?” she said. + +“Oh! these are tears of gratitude,” he answered. + +Eugenie turned abruptly to the chimney-piece to take the candlesticks. + +“Here, Nanon, carry them away!” she said. + +When she looked again towards her cousin she was still blushing, but her +looks could at least deceive, and did not betray the excess of joy which +innundated her heart; yet the eyes of both expressed the same sentiment +as their souls flowed together in one thought,--the future was theirs. +This soft emotion was all the more precious to Charles in the midst +of his heavy grief because it was wholly unexpected. The sound of the +knocker recalled the women to their usual station. Happily they were +able to run downstairs with sufficient rapidity to be seated at their +work when Grandet entered; had he met them under the archway it would +have been enough to rouse his suspicions. After breakfast, which the +goodman took standing, the keeper from Froidfond, to whom the promised +indemnity had never yet been paid, made his appearance, bearing a hare +and some partridges shot in the park, with eels and two pike sent as +tribute by the millers. + +“Ha, ha! poor Cornoiller; here he comes, like fish in Lent. Is all that +fit to eat?” + +“Yes, my dear, generous master; it has been killed two days.” + +“Come, Nanon, bestir yourself,” said Grandet; “take these things, +they’ll do for dinner. I have invited the two Cruchots.” + +Nanon opened her eyes, stupid with amazement, and looked at everybody in +the room. + +“Well!” she said, “and how am I to get the lard and the spices?” + +“Wife,” said Grandet, “give Nanon six francs, and remind me to get some +of the good wine out of the cellar.” + +“Well, then, Monsieur Grandet,” said the keeper, who had come prepared +with an harangue for the purpose of settling the question of the +indemnity, “Monsieur Grandet--” + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta!” said Grandet; “I know what you want to say. You are a +good fellow; we will see about it to-morrow, I’m too busy to-day. Wife, +give him five francs,” he added to Madame Grandet as he decamped. + +The poor woman was only too happy to buy peace at the cost of eleven +francs. She knew that Grandet would let her alone for a fortnight after +he had thus taken back, franc by franc, the money he had given her. + +“Here, Cornoiller,” she said, slipping ten francs into the man’s hand, +“some day we will reward your services.” + +Cornoiller could say nothing, so he went away. + +“Madame,” said Nanon, who had put on her black coif and taken her +basket, “I want only three francs. You keep the rest; it’ll go fast +enough somehow.” + +“Have a good dinner, Nanon; my cousin will come down,” said Eugenie. + +“Something very extraordinary is going on, I am certain of it,” said +Madame Grandet. “This is only the third time since our marriage that +your father has given a dinner.” + + * * * * * + +About four o’clock, just as Eugenie and her mother had finished setting +the table for six persons, and after the master of the house had brought +up a few bottles of the exquisite wine which provincials cherish with +true affection, Charles came down into the hall. The young fellow was +pale; his gestures, the expression of his face, his glance, and the +tones of his voice, all had a sadness which was full of grace. He was +not pretending grief, he truly suffered; and the veil of pain cast over +his features gave him an interesting air dear to the heart of women. +Eugenie loved him the more for it. Perhaps she felt that sorrow drew him +nearer to her. Charles was no longer the rich and distinguished young +man placed in a sphere far above her, but a relation plunged into +frightful misery. Misery begets equality. Women have this in common with +the angels,--suffering humanity belongs to them. Charles and Eugenie +understood each other and spoke only with their eyes; for the poor +fallen dandy, orphaned and impoverished, sat apart in a corner of the +room, and was proudly calm and silent. Yet, from time to time, the +gentle and caressing glance of the young girl shone upon him and +constrained him away from his sad thoughts, drawing him with her into +the fields of hope and of futurity, where she loved to hold him at her +side. + + + + +VII + +At this moment the town of Saumur was more excited about the dinner +given by Grandet to the Cruchots than it had been the night before at +the sale of his vintage, though that constituted a crime of high-treason +against the whole wine-growing community. If the politic old miser had +given his dinner from the same idea that cost the dog of Alcibiades his +tail, he might perhaps have been called a great man; but the fact is, +considering himself superior to a community which he could trick on all +occasions, he paid very little heed to what Saumur might say. + +The des Grassins soon learned the facts of the failure and the violent +death of Guillaume Grandet, and they determined to go to their client’s +house that very evening to commiserate his misfortune and show him some +marks of friendship, with a view of ascertaining the motives which had +led him to invite the Cruchots to dinner. At precisely five o’clock +Monsieur C. de Bonfons and his uncle the notary arrived in their +Sunday clothes. The party sat down to table and began to dine with good +appetites. Grandet was grave, Charles silent, Eugenie dumb, and Madame +Grandet did not say more than usual; so that the dinner was, very +properly, a repast of condolence. When they rose from table Charles said +to his aunt and uncle,-- + +“Will you permit me to retire? I am obliged to undertake a long and +painful correspondence.” + +“Certainly, nephew.” + +As soon as the goodman was certain that Charles could hear nothing and +was probably deep in his letter-writing, he said, with a dissimulating +glance at his wife,-- + +“Madame Grandet, what we have to talk about will be Latin to you; it +is half-past seven; you can go and attend to your household accounts. +Good-night, my daughter.” + +He kissed Eugenie, and the two women departed. A scene now took place in +which Pere Grandet brought to bear, more than at any other moment of his +life, the shrewd dexterity he had acquired in his intercourse with +men, and which had won him from those whose flesh he sometimes bit +too sharply the nickname of “the old dog.” If the mayor of Saumur had +carried his ambition higher still, if fortunate circumstances, drawing +him towards the higher social spheres, had sent him into congresses +where the affairs of nations were discussed, and had he there employed +the genius with which his personal interests had endowed him, he would +undoubtedly have proved nobly useful to his native land. Yet it is +perhaps equally certain that outside of Saumur the goodman would have +cut a very sorry figure. Possibly there are minds like certain animals +which cease to breed when transplanted from the climates in which they +are born. + +“M-m-mon-sieur le p-p-president, you said t-t-that b-b-bankruptcy--” + +The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited +him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes +complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural +defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that +while they listened they unconsciously made faces and moved their lips, +as if pronouncing the words over which he was hesitating and stuttering +at will. Here it may be well to give the history of this impediment +of the speech and hearing of Monsieur Grandet. No one in Anjou heard +better, or could pronounce more crisply the French language (with an +Angevin accent) than the wily old cooper. Some years earlier, in spite +of his shrewdness, he had been taken in by an Israelite, who in the +course of the discussion held his hand behind his ear to catch sounds, +and mangled his meaning so thoroughly in trying to utter his words that +Grandet fell a victim to his humanity and was compelled to prompt the +wily Jew with the words and ideas he seemed to seek, to complete himself +the arguments of the said Jew, to say what that cursed Jew ought to have +said for himself; in short, to be the Jew instead of being Grandet. When +the cooper came out of this curious encounter he had concluded the only +bargain of which in the course of a long commercial life he ever had +occasion to complain. But if he lost at the time pecuniarily, he gained +morally a valuable lesson; later, he gathered its fruits. Indeed, the +goodman ended by blessing that Jew for having taught him the art of +irritating his commercial antagonist and leading him to forget his own +thoughts in his impatience to suggest those over which his tormentor +was stuttering. No affair had ever needed the assistance of deafness, +impediments of speech, and all the incomprehensible circumlocutions with +which Grandet enveloped his ideas, as much as the affair now in hand. In +the first place, he did not mean to shoulder the responsibility of +his own scheme; in the next, he was determined to remain master of the +conversation and to leave his real intentions in doubt. + +“M-m-monsieur de B-B-Bonfons,”--for the second time in three years +Grandet called the Cruchot nephew Monsieur de Bonfons; the +president felt he might consider himself the artful old fellow’s +son-in-law,--“you-ou said th-th-that b-b-bankruptcy c-c-could, in some +c-c-cases, b-b-be p-p-prevented b-b-by--” + +“By the courts of commerce themselves. It is done constantly,” said +Monsieur C. de Bonfons, bestriding Grandet’s meaning, or thinking he +guessed it, and kindly wishing to help him out with it. “Listen.” + +“Y-yes,” said Grandet humbly, with the mischievous expression of a boy +who is inwardly laughing at his teacher while he pays him the greatest +attention. + +“When a man so respected and important as, for example, your late +brother--” + +“M-my b-b-brother, yes.” + +“--is threatened with insolvency--” + +“They c-c-call it in-ins-s-solvency?” + +“Yes; when his failure is imminent, the court of commerce, to which he +is amenable (please follow me attentively), has the power, by a decree, +to appoint a receiver. Liquidation, you understand, is not the same +as failure. When a man fails, he is dishonored; but when he merely +liquidates, he remains an honest man.” + +“T-t-that’s very d-d-different, if it d-d-doesn’t c-c-cost m-m-more,” + said Grandet. + +“But a liquidation can be managed without having recourse to the courts +at all. For,” said the president, sniffing a pinch of snuff, “don’t you +know how failures are declared?” + +“N-n-no, I n-n-never t-t-thought,” answered Grandet. + +“In the first place,” resumed the magistrate, “by filing the schedule +in the record office of the court, which the merchant may do himself, or +his representative for him with a power of attorney duly certified. In +the second place, the failure may be declared under compulsion from the +creditors. Now if the merchant does not file his schedule, and if no +creditor appears before the courts to obtain a decree of insolvency +against the merchant, what happens?” + +“W-w-what h-h-happens?” + +“Why, the family of the deceased, his representatives, his heirs, or +the merchant himself, if he is not dead, or his friends if he is only +hiding, liquidate his business. Perhaps you would like to liquidate your +brother’s affairs?” + +“Ah! Grandet,” said the notary, “that would be the right thing to do. +There is honor down here in the provinces. If you save your name--for it +is your name--you will be a man--” + +“A noble man!” cried the president, interrupting his uncle. + +“Certainly,” answered the old man, “my b-b-brother’s name was +G-G-Grandet, like m-m-mine. Th-that’s c-c-certain; I d-d-don’t d-d-deny +it. And th-th-this l-l-liquidation might be, in m-m-many ways, v-v-very +advan-t-t-tageous t-t-to the interests of m-m-my n-n-nephew, whom +I l-l-love. But I must consider. I don’t k-k-know the t-t-tricks of +P-P-Paris. I b-b-belong to Sau-m-mur, d-d-don’t you see? M-m-my vines, +my d-d-drains--in short, I’ve my own b-b-business. I never g-g-give +n-n-notes. What are n-n-notes? I t-t-take a good m-m-many, but I +have never s-s-signed one. I d-d-don’t understand such things. I have +h-h-heard say that n-n-notes c-c-can be b-b-bought up.” + +“Of course,” said the president. “Notes can be bought in the market, +less so much per cent. Don’t you understand?” + +Grandet made an ear-trumpet of his hand, and the president repeated his +words. + +“Well, then,” replied the man, “there’s s-s-something to be g-g-got out +of it? I k-know n-nothing at my age about such th-th-things. I l-l-live +here and l-l-look after the v-v-vines. The vines g-g-grow, and it’s the +w-w-wine that p-p-pays. L-l-look after the v-v-vintage, t-t-that’s my +r-r-rule. My c-c-chief interests are at Froidfond. I c-c-can’t l-l-leave +my h-h-house to m-m-muddle myself with a d-d-devilish b-b-business +I kn-know n-n-nothing about. You say I ought to l-l-liquidate my +b-b-brother’s af-f-fairs, to p-p-prevent the f-f-failure. I c-c-can’t be +in two p-p-places at once, unless I were a little b-b-bird, and--” + +“I understand,” cried the notary. “Well, my old friend, you have +friends, old friends, capable of devoting themselves to your interests.” + +“All right!” thought Grandet, “make haste and come to the point!” + +“Suppose one of them went to Paris and saw your brother Guillaume’s +chief creditor and said to him--” + +“One m-m-moment,” interrupted the goodman, “said wh-wh-what? Something +l-l-like this. Monsieur Gr-Grandet of Saumur this, Monsieur Grandet of +Saumur that. He l-loves his b-b-brother, he loves his n-nephew. Grandet +is a g-g-good uncle; he m-m-means well. He has sold his v-v-vintage. +D-d-don’t declare a f-f-failure; c-c-call a meeting; l-l-liquidate; and +then Gr-Gr-Grandet will see what he c-c-can do. B-b-better liquidate +than l-let the l-l-law st-st-stick its n-n-nose in. Hein? isn’t it so?” + +“Exactly so,” said the president. + +“B-because, don’t you see, Monsieur de B-Bonfons, a man must l-l-look +b-b-before he l-leaps. If you c-c-can’t, you c-c-can’t. M-m-must know +all about the m-m-matter, all the resources and the debts, if you +d-d-don’t want to be r-r-ruined. Hein? isn’t it so?” + +“Certainly,” said the president. “I’m of opinion that in a few months +the debts might be bought up for a certain sum, and then paid in full +by an agreement. Ha! ha! you can coax a dog a long way if you show him a +bit of lard. If there has been no declaration of failure, and you hold +a lien on the debts, you come out of the business as white as the driven +snow.” + +“Sn-n-now,” said Grandet, putting his hand to his ear, “wh-wh-what about +s-now?” + +“But,” cried the president, “do pray attend to what I am saying.” + +“I am at-t-tending.” + +“A note is merchandise,--an article of barter which rises and falls in +prices. That is a deduction from Jeremy Bentham’s theory about usury. +That writer has proved that the prejudice which condemned usurers to +reprobation was mere folly.” + +“Whew!” ejaculated the goodman. + +“Allowing that money, according to Bentham, is an article of +merchandise, and that whatever represents money is equally merchandise,” + resumed the president; “allowing also that it is notorious that the +commercial note, bearing this or that signature, is liable to the +fluctuation of all commercial values, rises or falls in the market, +is dear at one moment, and is worth nothing at another, the courts +decide--ah! how stupid I am, I beg your pardon--I am inclined to think +you could buy up your brother’s debts for twenty-five per cent.” + +“D-d-did you c-c-call him Je-Je-Jeremy B-Ben?” + +“Bentham, an Englishman.’ + +“That’s a Jeremy who might save us a lot of lamentations in business,” + said the notary, laughing. + +“Those Englishmen s-sometimes t-t-talk sense,” said Grandet. “So, +ac-c-cording to Ben-Bentham, if my b-b-brother’s n-notes are worth +n-n-nothing; if Je-Je--I’m c-c-correct, am I not? That seems c-c-clear +to my m-m-mind--the c-c-creditors would be--No, would not be; I +understand.” + +“Let me explain it all,” said the president. “Legally, if you acquire a +title to all the debts of the Maison Grandet, your brother or his heirs +will owe nothing to any one. Very good.” + +“Very g-good,” repeated Grandet. + +“In equity, if your brother’s notes are negotiated--negotiated, do you +clearly understand the term?--negotiated in the market at a reduction +of so much per cent in value, and if one of your friends happening to be +present should buy them in, the creditors having sold them of their +own free-will without constraint, the estate of the late Grandet is +honorably released.” + +“That’s t-true; b-b-business is b-business,” said the cooper. “B-b-but, +st-still, you know, it is d-d-difficult. I h-have n-no m-m-money and +n-no t-t-time.” + +“Yes, but you need not undertake it. I am quite ready to go to Paris +(you may pay my expenses, they will only be a trifle). I will see +the creditors and talk with them and get an extension of time, and +everything can be arranged if you will add something to the assets so as +to buy up all title to the debts.” + +“We-we’ll see about th-that. I c-c-can’t and I w-w-won’t bind myself +without--He who c-c-can’t, can’t; don’t you see?” + +“That’s very true.” + +“I’m all p-p-put ab-b-bout by what you’ve t-t-told me. This is the +f-first t-t-time in my life I have b-been obliged to th-th-think--” + +“Yes, you are not a lawyer.” + +“I’m only a p-p-poor wine-g-grower, and know n-nothing about wh-what you +have just t-told me; I m-m-must th-think about it.” + +“Very good,” said the president, preparing to resume his argument. + +“Nephew!” said the notary, interrupting him in a warning tone. + +“Well, what, uncle?” answered the president. + +“Let Monsieur Grandet explain his own intentions. The matter in question +is of the first importance. Our good friend ought to define his meaning +clearly, and--” + +A loud knock, which announced the arrival of the des Grassins family, +succeeded by their entrance and salutations, hindered Cruchot from +concluding his sentence. The notary was glad of the interruption, for +Grandet was beginning to look suspiciously at him, and the wen gave +signs of a brewing storm. In the first place, the notary did not think +it becoming in a president of the Civil courts to go to Paris and +manipulate creditors and lend himself to an underhand job which clashed +with the laws of strict integrity; moreover, never having known old +Grandet to express the slightest desire to pay anything, no matter what, +he instinctively feared to see his nephew taking part in the affair. +He therefore profited by the entrance of the des Grassins to take the +nephew by the arm and lead him into the embrasure of the window,-- + +“You have said enough, nephew; you’ve shown enough devotion. Your desire +to win the girl blinds you. The devil! you mustn’t go at it tooth and +nail. Let me sail the ship now; you can haul on the braces. Do you think +it right to compromise your dignity as a magistrate in such a--” + +He stopped, for he heard Monsieur des Grassins saying to the old cooper +as they shook hands,-- + +“Grandet, we have heard of the frightful misfortunes which have just +befallen your family,--the failure of the house of Guillaume Grandet and +the death of your brother. We have come to express our grief at these +sad events.” + +“There is but one sad event,” said the notary, interrupting the +banker,--“the death of Monsieur Grandet, junior; and he would never have +killed himself had he thought in time of applying to his brother for +help. Our old friend, who is honorable to his finger-nails, intends +to liquidate the debts of the Maison Grandet of Paris. To save him the +worry of legal proceedings, my nephew, the president, has just offered +to go to Paris and negotiate with the creditors for a satisfactory +settlement.” + +These words, corroborated by Grandet’s attitude as he stood silently +nursing his chin, astonished the three des Grassins, who had been +leisurely discussing the old man’s avarice as they came along, very +nearly accusing him of fratricide. + +“Ah! I was sure of it,” cried the banker, looking at his wife. “What did +I tell you just now, Madame des Grassins? Grandet is honorable to the +backbone, and would never allow his name to remain under the slightest +cloud! Money without honor is a disease. There is honor in the +provinces! Right, very right, Grandet. I’m an old soldier, and I can’t +disguise my thoughts; I speak roughly. Thunder! it is sublime!” + +“Th-then s-s-sublime th-things c-c-cost d-dear,” answered the goodman, +as the banker warmly wrung his hand. + +“But this, my dear Grandet,--if the president will excuse me,--is a +purely commercial matter, and needs a consummate business man. Your +agent must be some one fully acquainted with the markets,--with +disbursements, rebates, interest calculations, and so forth. I am going +to Paris on business of my own, and I can take charge of--” + +“We’ll see about t-t-trying to m-m-manage it b-b-between us, under the +p-p-peculiar c-c-circumstances, b-b-but without b-b-binding m-m-myself +to anything th-that I c-c-could not do,” said Grandet, stuttering; +“because, you see, monsieur le president naturally expects me to pay the +expenses of his journey.” + +The goodman did not stammer over the last words. + +“Eh!” cried Madame des Grassins, “why it is a pleasure to go to Paris. I +would willingly pay to go myself.” + +She made a sign to her husband, as if to encourage him in cutting +the enemy out of the commission, _coute que coute_; then she glanced +ironically at the two Cruchots, who looked chap-fallen. Grandet seized +the banker by a button and drew him into a corner of the room. + +“I have a great deal more confidence in you than in the president,” he +said; “besides, I’ve other fish to fry,” he added, wriggling his wen. “I +want to buy a few thousand francs in the Funds while they are at eighty. +They fall, I’m told, at the end of each month. You know all about these +things, don’t you?” + +“Bless me! then, am I to invest enough to give you a few thousand francs +a year?” + +“That’s not much to begin with. Hush! I don’t want any one to know I am +going to play that game. You can make the investment by the end of +the month. Say nothing to the Cruchots; that’ll annoy them. If you are +really going to Paris, we will see if there is anything to be done for +my poor nephew.” + +“Well, it’s all settled. I’ll start to-morrow by the mail-post,” said +des Grassins aloud, “and I will come and take your last directions +at--what hour will suit you?” + +“Five o’clock, just before dinner,” said Grandet, rubbing his hands. + +The two parties stayed on for a short time. Des Grassins said, after a +pause, striking Grandet on the shoulder,-- + +“It is a good thing to have a relation like him.” + +“Yes, yes; without making a show,” said Grandet, “I am a g-good +relation. I loved my brother, and I will prove it, unless it +c-c-costs--” + +“We must leave you, Grandet,” said the banker, interrupting him +fortunately before he got to the end of his sentence. “If I hurry my +departure, I must attend to some matters at once.” + +“Very good, very good! I myself--in c-consequence of what I t-told +you--I must retire to my own room and ‘d-d-deliberate,’ as President +Cruchot says.” + +“Plague take him! I am no longer Monsieur de Bonfons,” thought the +magistrate ruefully, his face assuming the expression of a judge bored +by an argument. + +The heads of the two factions walked off together. Neither gave any +further thought to the treachery Grandet had been guilty of in the +morning against the whole wine-growing community; each tried to fathom +what the other was thinking about the real intentions of the wily old +man in this new affair, but in vain. + +“Will you go with us to Madame Dorsonval’s?” said des Grassins to the +notary. + +“We will go there later,” answered the president. “I have promised to +say good-evening to Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt, and we will go there +first, if my uncle is willing.” + +“Farewell for the present!” said Madame des Grassins. + +When the Cruchots were a few steps off, Adolphe remarked to his +father,-- + +“Are not they fuming, hein?” + +“Hold your tongue, my son!” said his mother; “they might hear you. +Besides, what you say is not in good taste,--law-school language.” + +“Well, uncle,” cried the president when he saw the des Grassins +disappearing, “I began by being de Bonfons, and I have ended as nothing +but Cruchot.” + +“I saw that that annoyed you; but the wind has set fair for the des +Grassins. What a fool you are, with all your cleverness! Let them sail +off on Grandet’s ‘We’ll see about it,’ and keep yourself quiet, young +man. Eugenie will none the less be your wife.” + +In a few moments the news of Grandet’s magnanimous resolve was +disseminated in three houses at the same moment, and the whole town +began to talk of his fraternal devotion. Every one forgave Grandet for +the sale made in defiance of the good faith pledged to the community; +they admired his sense of honor, and began to laud a generosity of which +they had never thought him capable. It is part of the French nature to +grow enthusiastic, or angry, or fervent about some meteor of the moment. +Can it be that collective beings, nationalities, peoples, are devoid of +memory? + +When Pere Grandet had shut the door he called Nanon. + +“Don’t let the dog loose, and don’t go to bed; we have work to do +together. At eleven o’clock Cornoiller will be at the door with the +chariot from Froidfond. Listen for him and prevent his knocking; tell +him to come in softly. Police regulations don’t allow nocturnal racket. +Besides, the whole neighborhood need not know that I am starting on a +journey.” + +So saying, Grandet returned to his private room, where Nanon heard +him moving about, rummaging, and walking to and fro, though with much +precaution, for he evidently did not wish to wake his wife and daughter, +and above all not to rouse the attention of his nephew, whom he had +begun to anathematize when he saw a thread of light under his door. +About the middle of the night Eugenie, intent on her cousin, fancied +she heard a cry like that of a dying person. It must be Charles, she +thought; he was so pale, so full of despair when she had seen him +last,--could he have killed himself? She wrapped herself quickly in a +loose garment,--a sort of pelisse with a hood,--and was about to leave +the room when a bright light coming through the chinks of her door made +her think of fire. But she recovered herself as she heard Nanon’s heavy +steps and gruff voice mingling with the snorting of several horses. + +“Can my father be carrying off my cousin?” she said to herself, opening +her door with great precaution lest it should creak, and yet enough to +let her see into the corridor. + +Suddenly her eye encountered that of her father; and his glance, vague +and unnoticing as it was, terrified her. The goodman and Nanon were +yoked together by a stout stick, each end of which rested on their +shoulders; a stout rope was passed over it, on which was slung a small +barrel or keg like those Pere Grandet still made in his bakehouse as an +amusement for his leisure hours. + +“Holy Virgin, how heavy it is!” said the voice of Nanon. + +“What a pity that it is only copper sous!” answered Grandet. “Take care +you don’t knock over the candlestick.” + +The scene was lighted by a single candle placed between two rails of the +staircase. + +“Cornoiller,” said Grandet to his keeper _in partibus_, “have you +brought your pistols?” + +“No, monsieur. Mercy! what’s there to fear for your copper sous?” + +“Oh! nothing,” said Pere Grandet. + +“Besides, we shall go fast,” added the man; “your farmers have picked +out their best horses.” + +“Very good. You did not tell them where I was going?” + +“I didn’t know where.” + +“Very good. Is the carriage strong?” + +“Strong? hear to that, now! Why, it can carry three thousand weight. How +much does that old keg weigh?” + +“Goodness!” exclaimed Nanon. “I ought to know! There’s pretty nigh +eighteen hundred--” + +“Will you hold your tongue, Nanon! You are to tell my wife I have gone +into the country. I shall be back to dinner. Drive fast, Cornoiller; I +must get to Angers before nine o’clock.” + +The carriage drove off. Nanon bolted the great door, let loose the dog, +and went off to bed with a bruised shoulder, no one in the neighborhood +suspecting either the departure of Grandet or the object of his journey. +The precautions of the old miser and his reticence were never relaxed. +No one had ever seen a penny in that house, filled as it was with gold. +Hearing in the morning, through the gossip of the port, that exchange +on gold had doubled in price in consequence of certain military +preparations undertaken at Nantes, and that speculators had arrived +at Angers to buy coin, the old wine-grower, by the simple process of +borrowing horses from his farmers, seized the chance of selling his gold +and of bringing back in the form of treasury notes the sum he intended +to put into the Funds, having swelled it considerably by the exchange. + + + + +VIII + +“My father has gone,” thought Eugenie, who heard all that took place +from the head of the stairs. Silence was restored in the house, and the +distant rumbling of the carriage, ceasing by degrees, no longer echoed +through the sleeping town. At this moment Eugenie heard in her heart, +before the sound caught her ears, a cry which pierced the partitions and +came from her cousin’s chamber. A line of light, thin as the blade of +a sabre, shone through a chink in the door and fell horizontally on the +balusters of the rotten staircase. + +“He suffers!” she said, springing up the stairs. A second moan brought +her to the landing near his room. The door was ajar, she pushed it open. +Charles was sleeping; his head hung over the side of the old armchair, +and his hand, from which the pen had fallen, nearly touched the +floor. The oppressed breathing caused by the strained posture suddenly +frightened Eugenie, who entered the room hastily. + +“He must be very tired,” she said to herself, glancing at a dozen +letters lying sealed upon the table. She read their addresses: “To +Messrs. Farry, Breilmann, & Co., carriage-makers”; “To Monsieur Buisson, +tailor,” etc. + +“He has been settling all his affairs, so as to leave France at once,” + she thought. Her eyes fell upon two open letters. The words, “My dear +Annette,” at the head of one of them, blinded her for a moment. Her +heart beat fast, her feet were nailed to the floor. + +“His dear Annette! He loves! he is loved! No hope! What does he say to +her?” + +These thoughts rushed through her head and heart. She saw the words +everywhere, even on the bricks of the floor, in letters of fire. + +“Resign him already? No, no! I will not read the letter. I ought to go +away--What if I do read it?” + +She looked at Charles, then she gently took his head and placed it +against the back of the chair; he let her do so, like a child which, +though asleep, knows its mother’s touch and receives, without awaking, +her kisses and watchful care. Like a mother Eugenie raised the drooping +hand, and like a mother she gently kissed the chestnut hair--“Dear +Annette!” a demon shrieked the words in her ear. + +“I am doing wrong; but I must read it, that letter,” she said. She +turned away her head, for her noble sense of honor reproached her. +For the first time in her life good and evil struggled together in her +heart. Up to that moment she had never had to blush for any action. +Passion and curiosity triumphed. As she read each sentence her heart +swelled more and more, and the keen glow which filled her being as she +did so, only made the joys of first love still more precious. + + My dear Annette,--Nothing could ever have separated us but the + great misfortune which has now overwhelmed me, and which no human + foresight could have prevented. My father has killed himself; his + fortune and mine are irretrievably lost. I am orphaned at an age + when, through the nature of my education, I am still a child; and + yet I must lift myself as a man out of the abyss into which I am + plunged. I have just spent half the night in facing my position. + If I wish to leave France an honest man,--and there is no doubt of + that,--I have not a hundred francs of my own with which to try my + fate in the Indies or in America. Yes, my poor Anna, I must seek + my fortune in those deadly climates. Under those skies, they tell + me, I am sure to make it. As for remaining in Paris, I cannot do + so. Neither my nature nor my face are made to bear the affronts, + the neglect, the disdain shown to a ruined man, the son of a + bankrupt! Good God! think of owing two millions! I should be + killed in a duel the first week; therefore I shall not return + there. Your love--the most tender and devoted love which ever + ennobled the heart of man--cannot draw me back. Alas! my beloved, + I have no money with which to go to you, to give and receive a + last kiss from which I might derive some strength for my forlorn + enterprise. + +“Poor Charles! I did well to read the letter. I have gold; I will give +it to him,” thought Eugenie. + +She wiped her eyes, and went on reading. + + I have never thought of the miseries of poverty. If I have the + hundred louis required for the mere costs of the journey, I have + not a sou for an outfit. But no, I have not the hundred louis, not + even one louis. I don’t know that anything will be left after I + have paid my debts in Paris. If I have nothing, I shall go quietly + to Nantes and ship as a common sailor; and I will begin in the new + world like other men who have started young without a sou and + brought back the wealth of the Indies. During this long day I have + faced my future coolly. It seems more horrible for me than for + another, because I have been so petted by a mother who adored me, + so indulged by the kindest of fathers, so blessed by meeting, on + my entrance into life, with the love of an Anna! The flowers of + life are all I have ever known. Such happiness could not last. + Nevertheless, my dear Annette, I feel more courage than a careless + young man is supposed to feel,--above all a young man used to the + caressing ways of the dearest woman in all Paris, cradled in + family joys, on whom all things smiled in his home, whose wishes + were a law to his father--oh, my father! Annette, he is dead! + + Well, I have thought over my position, and yours as well. I have + grown old in twenty-four hours. Dear Anna, if in order to keep me + with you in Paris you were to sacrifice your luxury, your dress, + your opera-box, we should even then not have enough for the + expenses of my extravagant ways of living. Besides, I would never + accept such sacrifices. No, we must part now and forever-- + +“He gives her up! Blessed Virgin! What happiness!” + +Eugenie quivered with joy. Charles made a movement, and a chill of +terror ran through her. Fortunately, he did not wake, and she resumed +her reading. + + When shall I return? I do not know. The climate of the West Indies + ages a European, so they say; especially a European who works + hard. Let us think what may happen ten years hence. In ten years + your daughter will be eighteen; she will be your companion, your + spy. To you society will be cruel, and your daughter perhaps more + cruel still. We have seen cases of the harsh social judgment and + ingratitude of daughters; let us take warning by them. Keep in the + depths of your soul, as I shall in mine, the memory of four years + of happiness, and be faithful, if you can, to the memory of your + poor friend. I cannot exact such faithfulness, because, do you + see, dear Annette, I must conform to the exigencies of my new + life; I must take a commonplace view of them and do the best I + can. Therefore I must think of marriage, which becomes one of the + necessities of my future existence; and I will admit to you that I + have found, here in Saumur, in my uncle’s house, a cousin whose + face, manners, mind, and heart would please you, and who, besides, + seems to me-- + +“He must have been very weary to have ceased writing to her,” thought +Eugenie, as she gazed at the letter which stopped abruptly in the middle +of the last sentence. + +Already she defended him. How was it possible that an innocent girl +should perceive the cold-heartedness evinced by this letter? To young +girls religiously brought up, whose minds are ignorant and pure, all is +love from the moment they set their feet within the enchanted regions +of that passion. They walk there bathed in a celestial light shed from +their own souls, which reflects its rays upon their lover; they color +all with the flame of their own emotion and attribute to him their +highest thoughts. A woman’s errors come almost always from her belief +in good or her confidence in truth. In Eugenie’s simple heart the words, +“My dear Annette, my loved one,” echoed like the sweetest language of +love; they caressed her soul as, in childhood, the divine notes of the +_Venite adoremus_, repeated by the organ, caressed her ear. Moreover, +the tears which still lingered on the young man’s lashes gave signs of +that nobility of heart by which young girls are rightly won. How could +she know that Charles, though he loved his father and mourned him truly, +was moved far more by paternal goodness than by the goodness of his own +heart? Monsieur and Madame Guillaume Grandet, by gratifying every fancy +of their son, and lavishing upon him the pleasures of a large fortune, +had kept him from making the horrible calculations of which so many +sons in Paris become more or less guilty when, face to face with the +enjoyments of the world, they form desires and conceive schemes which +they see with bitterness must be put off or laid aside during the +lifetime of their parents. The liberality of the father in this instance +had shed into the heart of the son a real love, in which there was no +afterthought of self-interest. + +Nevertheless, Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs +of society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already +an old man under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful +education of social life, of that world where in one evening more crimes +are committed in thought and speech than justice ever punishes at the +assizes; where jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest ideas; +where no one is counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and to see +clear in that world is to believe in nothing, neither in feelings, nor +in men, nor even in events,--for events are falsified. There, to “see +clear” we must weigh a friend’s purse daily, learn how to keep ourselves +adroitly on the top of the wave, cautiously admire nothing, neither +works of art nor glorious actions, and remember that self-interest is +the mainspring of all things here below. After committing many follies, +the great lady--the beautiful Annette--compelled Charles to think +seriously; with her perfumed hand among his curls, she talked to him of +his future position; as she rearranged his locks, she taught him lessons +of worldly prudence; she made him effeminate and materialized him,--a +double corruption, but a delicate and elegant corruption, in the best +taste. + +“You are very foolish, Charles,” she would say to him. “I shall have +a great deal of trouble in teaching you to understand the world. You +behaved extremely ill to Monsieur des Lupeaulx. I know very well he is +not an honorable man; but wait till he is no longer in power, then you +may despise him as much as you like. Do you know what Madame Campan used +to tell us?--‘My dears, as long as a man is a minister, adore him; when +he falls, help to drag him in the gutter. Powerful, he is a sort of god; +fallen, he is lower than Marat in the sewer, because he is living, and +Marat is dead. Life is a series of combinations, and you must study +them and understand them if you want to keep yourselves always in good +position.’” + +Charles was too much a man of the world, his parents had made him too +happy, he had received too much adulation in society, to be possessed of +noble sentiments. The grain of gold dropped by his mother into his heart +was beaten thin in the smithy of Parisian society; he had spread it +superficially, and it was worn away by the friction of life. Charles +was only twenty-one years old. At that age the freshness of youth seems +inseparable from candor and sincerity of soul. The voice, the glance, +the face itself, seem in harmony with the feelings; and thus it happens +that the sternest judge, the most sceptical lawyer, the least complying +of usurers, always hesitate to admit decrepitude of heart or the +corruption of worldly calculation while the eyes are still bathed +in purity and no wrinkles seam the brow. Charles, so far, had had no +occasion to apply the maxims of Parisian morality; up to this time he +was still endowed with the beauty of inexperience. And yet, unknown to +himself, he had been inoculated with selfishness. The germs of Parisian +political economy, latent in his heart, would assuredly burst forth, +sooner or later, whenever the careless spectator became an actor in the +drama of real life. + +Nearly all young girls succumb to the tender promises such an outward +appearance seems to offer: even if Eugenie had been as prudent and +observing as provincial girls are often found to be, she was not likely +to distrust her cousin when his manners, words, and actions were still +in unison with the aspirations of a youthful heart. A mere chance--a +fatal chance--threw in her way the last effusions of real feeling which +stirred the young man’s soul; she heard as it were the last breathings +of his conscience. She laid down the letter--to her so full of love--and +began smilingly to watch her sleeping cousin; the fresh illusions of +life were still, for her at least, upon his face; she vowed to herself +to love him always. Then she cast her eyes on the other letter, without +attaching much importance to this second indiscretion; and though she +read it, it was only to obtain new proofs of the noble qualities which, +like all women, she attributed to the man her heart had chosen. + + + My dear Alphonse,--When you receive this letter I shall be without + friends; but let me assure you that while I doubt the friendship + of the world, I have never doubted yours. I beg you therefore to + settle all my affairs, and I trust to you to get as much as you + can out of my possessions. By this time you know my situation. I + have nothing left, and I intend to go at once to the Indies. I + have just written to all the people to whom I think I owe money, + and you will find enclosed a list of their names, as correct as I + can make it from memory. My books, my furniture, my pictures, my + horses, etc., ought, I think, to pay my debts. I do not wish to + keep anything, except, perhaps, a few baubles which might serve as + the beginning of an outfit for my enterprise. My dear Alphonse, I + will send you a proper power of attorney under which you can make + these sales. Send me all my weapons. Keep Briton for yourself; + nobody would pay the value of that noble beast, and I would rather + give him to you--like a mourning-ring bequeathed by a dying man to + his executor. Farry, Breilmann, & Co. built me a very comfortable + travelling-carriage, which they have not yet delivered; persuade + them to keep it and not ask for any payment on it. If they refuse, + do what you can in the matter, and avoid everything that might + seem dishonorable in me under my present circumstances. I owe the + British Islander six louis, which I lost at cards; don’t fail to + pay him-- + + +“Dear cousin!” whispered Eugenie, throwing down the letter and running +softly back to her room, carrying one of the lighted candles. A thrill +of pleasure passed over her as she opened the drawer of an old oak +cabinet, a fine specimen of the period called the Renaissance, on which +could still be seen, partly effaced, the famous royal salamander. She +took from the drawer a large purse of red velvet with gold tassels, +edged with a tarnished fringe of gold wire,--a relic inherited from her +grandmother. She weighed it proudly in her hand, and began with delight +to count over the forgotten items of her little hoard. First she took +out twenty _portugaises_, still new, struck in the reign of John V., +1725, worth by exchange, as her father told her, five _lisbonnines_, +or a hundred and sixty-eight francs, sixty-four centimes each; their +conventional value, however, was a hundred and eighty francs apiece, on +account of the rarity and beauty of the coins, which shone like little +suns. Item, five _genovines_, or five hundred-franc pieces of Genoa; +another very rare coin worth eighty-seven francs on exchange, but +a hundred francs to collectors. These had formerly belonged to old +Monsieur de la Bertelliere. Item, three gold _quadruples_, Spanish, of +Philip V., struck in 1729, given to her one by one by Madame Gentillet, +who never failed to say, using the same words, when she made the gift, +“This dear little canary, this little yellow-boy, is worth ninety-eight +francs! Keep it, my pretty one, it will be the flower of your treasure.” + Item (that which her father valued most of all, the gold of these coins +being twenty-three carats and a fraction), a hundred Dutch ducats, +made in the year 1756, and worth thirteen francs apiece. Item, a great +curiosity, a species of medal precious to the soul of misers,--three +rupees with the sign of the Scales, and five rupees with the sign of the +Virgin, all in pure gold of twenty-four carats; the magnificent money +of the Great Mogul, each of which was worth by mere weight thirty-seven +francs, forty centimes, but at least fifty francs to those connoisseurs +who love to handle gold. Item, the napoleon of forty francs received +the day before, which she had forgotten to put away in the velvet purse. +This treasure was all in virgin coins, true works of art, which Grandet +from time to time inquired after and asked to see, pointing out to his +daughter their intrinsic merits,--such as the beauty of the milled edge, +the clearness of the flat surface, the richness of the lettering, whose +angles were not yet rubbed off. + +Eugenie gave no thought to these rarities, nor to her father’s mania for +them, nor to the danger she incurred in depriving herself of a treasure +so dear to him; no, she thought only of her cousin, and soon made out, +after a few mistakes of calculation, that she possessed about five +thousand eight hundred francs in actual value, which might be sold for +their additional value to collectors for nearly six thousand. She looked +at her wealth and clapped her hands like a happy child forced to +spend its overflowing joy in artless movements of the body. Father and +daughter had each counted up their fortune this night,--he, to sell his +gold; Eugenie to fling hers into the ocean of affection. She put the +pieces back into the old purse, took it in her hand, and ran upstairs +without hesitation. The secret misery of her cousin made her forget the +hour and conventional propriety; she was strong in her conscience, in +her devotion, in her happiness. + +As she stood upon the threshold of the door, holding the candle in one +hand and the purse in the other, Charles woke, caught sight of her, and +remained speechless with surprise. Eugenie came forward, put the candle +on the table, and said in a quivering voice: + +“My cousin, I must beg pardon for a wrong I have done you; but God will +pardon me--if you--will help me to wipe it out.” + +“What is it?” asked Charles, rubbing his eyes. + +“I have read those letters.” + +Charles colored. + +“How did it happen?” she continued; “how came I here? Truly, I do not +know. I am tempted not to regret too much that I have read them; they +have made me know your heart, your soul, and--” + +“And what?” asked Charles. + +“Your plans, your need of a sum--” + +“My dear cousin--” + +“Hush, hush! my cousin, not so loud; we must not wake others. See,” she +said, opening her purse, “here are the savings of a poor girl who wants +nothing. Charles, accept them! This morning I was ignorant of the value +of money; you have taught it to me. It is but a means, after all. A +cousin is almost a brother; you can surely borrow the purse of your +sister.” + +Eugenie, as much a woman as a young girl, never dreamed of refusal; but +her cousin remained silent. + +“Oh! you will not refuse?” cried Eugenie, the beatings of whose heart +could be heard in the deep silence. + +Her cousin’s hesitation mortified her; but the sore need of his position +came clearer still to her mind, and she knelt down. + +“I will never rise till you have taken that gold!” she said. “My cousin, +I implore you, answer me! let me know if you respect me, if you are +generous, if--” + +As he heard this cry of noble distress the young man’s tears fell upon +his cousin’s hands, which he had caught in his own to keep her from +kneeling. As the warm tears touched her, Eugenie sprang to the purse and +poured its contents upon the table. + +“Ah! yes, yes, you consent?” she said, weeping with joy. “Fear nothing, +my cousin, you will be rich. This gold will bring you happiness; some +day you shall bring it back to me,--are we not partners? I will obey all +conditions. But you should not attach such value to the gift.” + +Charles was at last able to express his feelings. + +“Yes, Eugenie; my soul would be small indeed if I did not accept. And +yet,--gift for gift, confidence for confidence.” + +“What do you mean?” she said, frightened. + +“Listen, dear cousin; I have here--” He interrupted himself to point +out a square box covered with an outer case of leather which was on the +drawers. “There,” he continued, “is something as precious to me as +life itself. This box was a present from my mother. All day I have been +thinking that if she could rise from her grave, she would herself sell +the gold which her love for me lavished on this dressing-case; but were +I to do so, the act would seem to me a sacrilege.” Eugenie pressed +his hand as she heard these last words. “No,” he added, after a slight +pause, during which a liquid glance of tenderness passed between them, +“no, I will neither sell it nor risk its safety on my journey. Dear +Eugenie, you shall be its guardian. Never did friend commit anything +more sacred to another. Let me show it to you.” + +He went to the box, took it from its outer coverings, opened it, and +showed his delighted cousin a dressing-case where the rich workmanship +gave to the gold ornaments a value far above their weight. + +“What you admire there is nothing,” he said, pushing a secret spring +which opened a hidden drawer. “Here is something which to me is worth +the whole world.” He drew out two portraits, masterpieces of Madame +Mirbel, richly set with pearls. + +“Oh, how beautiful! Is it the lady to whom you wrote that--” + +“No,” he said, smiling; “this is my mother, and here is my father, your +aunt and uncle. Eugenie, I beg you on my knees, keep my treasure safely. +If I die and your little fortune is lost, this gold and these pearls +will repay you. To you alone could I leave these portraits; you are +worthy to keep them. But destroy them at last, so that they may pass +into no other hands.” Eugenie was silent. “Ah, yes, say yes! You +consent?” he added with winning grace. + +Hearing the very words she had just used to her cousin now addressed to +herself, she turned upon him a look of love, her first look of loving +womanhood,--a glance in which there is nearly as much of coquetry as of +inmost depth. He took her hand and kissed it. + +“Angel of purity! between us two money is nothing, never can be +anything. Feeling, sentiment, must be all henceforth.” + +“You are like your mother,--was her voice as soft as yours?” + +“Oh! much softer--” + +“Yes, for you,” she said, dropping her eyelids. “Come, Charles, go to +bed; I wish it; you must be tired. Good-night.” She gently disengaged +her hand from those of her cousin, who followed her to her room, +lighting the way. When they were both upon the threshold,-- + +“Ah!” he said, “why am I ruined?” + +“What matter?--my father is rich; I think so,” she answered. + +“Poor child!” said Charles, making a step into her room and leaning +his back against the wall, “if that were so, he would never have let my +father die; he would not let you live in this poor way; he would live +otherwise himself.” + +“But he owns Froidfond.” + +“What is Froidfond worth?” + +“I don’t know; but he has Noyers.” + +“Nothing but a poor farm!” + +“He has vineyards and fields.” + +“Mere nothing,” said Charles disdainfully. “If your father had only +twenty-four thousand francs a year do you suppose you would live in this +cold, barren room?” he added, making a step in advance. “Ah! there you +will keep my treasures,” he said, glancing at the old cabinet, as if to +hide his thoughts. + +“Go and sleep,” she said, hindering his entrance into the disordered +room. + +Charles stepped back, and they bid each other good-night with a mutual +smile. + +Both fell asleep in the same dream; and from that moment the youth began +to wear roses with his mourning. The next day, before breakfast, Madame +Grandet found her daughter in the garden in company with Charles. +The young man was still sad, as became a poor fellow who, plunged in +misfortune, measures the depths of the abyss into which he has fallen, +and sees the terrible burden of his whole future life. + +“My father will not be home till dinner-time,” said Eugenie, perceiving +the anxious look on her mother’s face. + +It was easy to trace in the face and manners of the young girl and in +the singular sweetness of her voice a unison of thought between her and +her cousin. Their souls had espoused each other, perhaps before they +even felt the force of the feelings which bound them together. Charles +spent the morning in the hall, and his sadness was respected. Each of +the three women had occupations of her own. Grandet had left all his +affairs unattended to, and a number of persons came on business,--the +plumber, the mason, the slater, the carpenter, the diggers, the +dressers, the farmers; some to drive a bargain about repairs, others to +pay their rent or to be paid themselves for services. Madame Grandet and +Eugenie were obliged to go and come and listen to the interminable talk +of all these workmen and country folk. Nanon put away in her kitchen +the produce which they brought as tribute. She always waited for her +master’s orders before she knew what portion was to be used in the house +and what was to be sold in the market. It was the goodman’s custom, like +that of a great many country gentlemen, to drink his bad wine and eat +his spoiled fruit. + +Towards five in the afternoon Grandet returned from Angers, having made +fourteen thousand francs by the exchange on his gold, bringing home +in his wallet good treasury-notes which bore interest until the day he +should invest them in the Funds. He had left Cornoiller at Angers to +look after the horses, which were well-nigh foundered, with orders to +bring them home slowly after they were rested. + +“I have got back from Angers, wife,” he said; “I am hungry.” + +Nanon called out to him from the kitchen: “Haven’t you eaten anything +since yesterday?” + +“Nothing,” answered the old man. + +Nanon brought in the soup. Des Grassins came to take his client’s orders +just as the family sat down to dinner. Grandet had not even observed his +nephew. + +“Go on eating, Grandet,” said the banker; “we can talk. Do you know what +gold is worth in Angers? They have come from Nantes after it? I shall +send some of ours.” + +“Don’t send any,” said Grandet; “they have got enough. We are such old +friends, I ought to save you from such a loss of time.” + +“But gold is worth thirteen francs fifty centimes.” + +“Say _was_ worth--” + +“Where the devil have they got any?” + +“I went to Angers last night,” answered Grandet in a low voice. + +The banker shook with surprise. Then a whispered conversation began +between the two, during which Grandet and des Grassins frequently +looked at Charles. Presently des Grassins gave a start of astonishment; +probably Grandet was then instructing him to invest the sum which was to +give him a hundred thousand francs a year in the Funds. + +“Monsieur Grandet,” said the banker to Charles, “I am starting for +Paris; if you have any commissions--” + +“None, monsieur, I thank you,” answered Charles. + +“Thank him better than that, nephew. Monsieur is going to settle the +affairs of the house of Guillaume Grandet.” + +“Is there any hope?” said Charles eagerly. + +“What!” exclaimed his uncle, with well-acted pride, “are you not my +nephew? Your honor is ours. Is not your name Grandet?” + +Charles rose, seized Pere Grandet, kissed him, turned pale, and left the +room. Eugenie looked at her father with admiration. + +“Well, good-by, des Grassins; it is all in your hands. Decoy those +people as best you can; lead ‘em by the nose.” + +The two diplomatists shook hands. The old cooper accompanied the banker +to the front door. Then, after closing it, he came back and plunged into +his armchair, saying to Nanon,-- + +“Get me some black-currant ratafia.” + +Too excited, however, to remain long in one place, he got up, looked +at the portrait of Monsieur de la Bertelliere, and began to sing, doing +what Nanon called his dancing steps,-- + + “Dans les gardes francaises + J’avais un bon papa.” + +Nanon, Madame Grandet, and Eugenie looked at each other in silence. +The hilarity of the master always frightened them when it reached its +climax. The evening was soon over. Pere Grandet chose to go to bed +early, and when he went to bed, everybody else was expected to go too; +like as when Augustus drank, Poland was drunk. On this occasion Nanon, +Charles, and Eugenie were not less tired than the master. As for Madame +Grandet, she slept, ate, drank, and walked according to the will of her +husband. However, during the two hours consecrated to digestion, the +cooper, more facetious than he had ever been in his life, uttered a +number of his own particular apothegms,--a single one of which will give +the measure of his mind. When he had drunk his ratafia, he looked at his +glass and said,-- + +“You have no sooner put your lips to a glass than it is empty! Such is +life. You can’t have and hold. Gold won’t circulate and stay in your +purse. If it were not for that, life would be too fine.” + +He was jovial and benevolent. When Nanon came with her spinning-wheel, +“You must be tired,” he said; “put away your hemp.” + +“Ah, bah! then I shall get sleepy,” she answered. + +“Poor Nanon! Will you have some ratafia?” + +“I won’t refuse a good offer; madame makes it a deal better than the +apothecaries. What they sell is all drugs.” + +“They put too much sugar,” said the master; “you can’t taste anything +else.” + + + + +IX + +The following day the family, meeting at eight o’clock for the early +breakfast, made a picture of genuine domestic intimacy. Grief had +drawn Madame Grandet, Eugenie, and Charles _en rapport_; even Nanon +sympathized, without knowing why. The four now made one family. As to +the old man, his satisfied avarice and the certainty of soon getting rid +of the dandy without having to pay more than his journey to Nantes, made +him nearly indifferent to his presence in the house. He left the two +children, as he called Charles and Eugenie, free to conduct themselves +as they pleased, under the eye of Madame Grandet, in whom he had +implicit confidence as to all that concerned public and religious +morality. He busied himself in straightening the boundaries of his +fields and ditches along the high-road, in his poplar-plantations beside +the Loire, in the winter work of his vineyards, and at Froidfond. All +these things occupied his whole time. + +For Eugenie the springtime of love had come. Since the scene at night +when she gave her little treasure to her cousin, her heart had followed +the treasure. Confederates in the same secret, they looked at each +other with a mutual intelligence which sank to the depth of their +consciousness, giving a closer communion, a more intimate relation +to their feelings, and putting them, so to speak, beyond the pale of +ordinary life. Did not their near relationship warrant the gentleness +in their tones, the tenderness in their glances? Eugenie took delight +in lulling her cousin’s pain with the pretty childish joys of a new-born +love. Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love and the +birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and softest +glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden future? Hope +herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its head? Does it +not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow and its tears of +joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the pretty pebbles with which +to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers forgotten as soon as +plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming time, to spring forward +into life? Love is our second transformation. Childhood and love +were one and the same thing to Eugenie and to Charles; it was a first +passion, with all its child-like play,--the more caressing to their +hearts because they now were wrapped in sadness. Struggling at birth +against the gloom of mourning, their love was only the more in harmony +with the provincial plainness of that gray and ruined house. As they +exchanged a few words beside the well in the silent court, or lingered +in the garden for the sunset hour, sitting on a mossy seat saying to +each other the infinite nothings of love, or mused in the silent calm +which reigned between the house and the ramparts like that beneath the +arches of a church, Charles comprehended the sanctity of love; for his +great lady, his dear Annette, had taught him only its stormy troubles. +At this moment he left the worldly passion, coquettish, vain, and showy +as it was, and turned to the true, pure love. He loved even the house, +whose customs no longer seemed to him ridiculous. He got up early in the +mornings that he might talk with Eugenie for a moment before her father +came to dole out the provisions; when the steps of the old man sounded +on the staircase he escaped into the garden. The small criminality of +this morning _tete-a-tete_ which Nanon pretended not to see, gave to +their innocent love the lively charm of a forbidden joy. + +After breakfast, when Grandet had gone to his fields and his other +occupations, Charles remained with the mother and daughter, finding an +unknown pleasure in holding their skeins, in watching them at work, in +listening to their quiet prattle. The simplicity of this half-monastic +life, which revealed to him the beauty of these souls, unknown and +unknowing of the world, touched him keenly. He had believed such morals +impossible in France, and admitted their existence nowhere but in +Germany; even so, they seemed to him fabulous, only real in the novels +of Auguste Lafontaine. Soon Eugenie became to him the Margaret of +Goethe--before her fall. Day by day his words, his looks enraptured the +poor girl, who yielded herself up with delicious non-resistance to +the current of love; she caught her happiness as a swimmer seizes the +overhanging branch of a willow to draw himself from the river and lie at +rest upon its shore. Did no dread of a coming absence sadden the happy +hours of those fleeting days? Daily some little circumstance reminded +them of the parting that was at hand. + +Three days after the departure of des Grassins, Grandet took his nephew +to the Civil courts, with the solemnity which country people attach to +all legal acts, that he might sign a deed surrendering his rights in his +father’s estate. Terrible renunciation! species of domestic apostasy! +Charles also went before Maitre Cruchot to make two powers of +attorney,--one for des Grassins, the other for the friend whom he had +charged with the sale of his belongings. After that he attended to all +the formalities necessary to obtain a passport for foreign countries; +and finally, when he received his simple mourning clothes from Paris, he +sent for the tailor of Saumur and sold to him his useless wardrobe. This +last act pleased Grandet exceedingly. + +“Ah! now you look like a man prepared to embark and make your fortune,” + he said, when Charles appeared in a surtout of plain black cloth. “Good! +very good!” + +“I hope you will believe, monsieur,” answered his nephew, “that I shall +always try to conform to my situation.” + +“What’s that?” said his uncle, his eyes lighting up at a handful of gold +which Charles was carrying. + +“Monsieur, I have collected all my buttons and rings and other +superfluities which may have some value; but not knowing any one in +Saumur, I wanted to ask you to--” + +“To buy them?” said Grandet, interrupting him. + +“No, uncle; only to tell me of an honest man who--” + +“Give me those things, I will go upstairs and estimate their value; I +will come back and tell you what it is to a fraction. Jeweller’s gold,” + examining a long chain, “eighteen or nineteen carats.” + +The goodman held out his huge hand and received the mass of gold, which +he carried away. + +“Cousin,” said Grandet, “may I offer you these two buttons? They can +fasten ribbons round your wrists; that sort of bracelet is much the +fashion just now.” + +“I accept without hesitation,” she answered, giving him an understanding +look. + +“Aunt, here is my mother’s thimble; I have always kept it carefully in +my dressing-case,” said Charles, presenting a pretty gold thimble to +Madame Grandet, who for many years had longed for one. + +“I cannot thank you; no words are possible, my nephew,” said the poor +mother, whose eyes filled with tears. “Night and morning in my prayers I +shall add one for you, the most earnest of all--for those who travel. If +I die, Eugenie will keep this treasure for you.” + +“They are worth nine hundred and eighty-nine francs, seventy-five +centimes,” said Grandet, opening the door. “To save you the pain of +selling them, I will advance the money--in _livres_.” + +The word _livres_ on the littoral of the Loire signifies that crown +prices of six _livres_ are to be accepted as six francs without +deduction. + +“I dared not propose it to you,” answered Charles; “but it was most +repugnant to me to sell my jewels to some second-hand dealer in your own +town. People should wash their dirty linen at home, as Napoleon said. I +thank you for your kindness.” + +Grandet scratched his ear, and there was a moment’s silence. + +“My dear uncle,” resumed Charles, looking at him with an uneasy air, as +if he feared to wound his feelings, “my aunt and cousin have been kind +enough to accept a trifling remembrance of me. Will you allow me to give +you these sleeve-buttons, which are useless to me now? They will remind +you of a poor fellow who, far away, will always think of those who are +henceforth all his family.” + +“My lad, my lad, you mustn’t rob yourself this way! Let me see, wife, +what have you got?” he added, turning eagerly to her. “Ah! a gold +thimble. And you, little girl? What! diamond buttons? Yes, I’ll accept +your present, nephew,” he answered, shaking Charles by the hand. +“But--you must let me--pay--your--yes, your passage to the Indies. Yes, +I wish to pay your passage because--d’ye see, my boy?--in valuing +your jewels I estimated only the weight of the gold; very likely the +workmanship is worth something. So let us settle it that I am to give +you fifteen hundred francs--in _livres_; Cruchot will lend them to me. I +haven’t got a copper farthing here,--unless Perrotet, who is behindhand +with his rent, should pay up. By the bye, I’ll go and see him.” + +He took his hat, put on his gloves, and went out. + +“Then you are really going?” said Eugenie to her cousin, with a sad +look, mingled with admiration. + +“I must,” he said, bowing his head. + +For some days past, Charles’s whole bearing, manners, and speech had +become those of a man who, in spite of his profound affliction, feels +the weight of immense obligations and has the strength to gather courage +from misfortune. He no longer repined, he became a man. Eugenie never +augured better of her cousin’s character than when she saw him come +down in the plain black clothes which suited well with his pale face and +sombre countenance. On that day the two women put on their own mourning, +and all three assisted at a Requiem celebrated in the parish church for +the soul of the late Guillaume Grandet. + +At the second breakfast Charles received letters from Paris and began to +read them. + +“Well, cousin, are you satisfied with the management of your affairs?” + said Eugenie in a low voice. + +“Never ask such questions, my daughter,” said Grandet. “What the devil! +do I tell you my affairs? Why do you poke your nose into your cousin’s? +Let the lad alone!” + +“Oh! I haven’t any secrets,” said Charles. + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta, nephew; you’ll soon find out that you must hold your +tongue in business.” + +When the two lovers were alone in the garden, Charles said to Eugenie, +drawing her down on the old bench beneath the walnut-tree,-- + +“I did right to trust Alphonse; he has done famously. He has managed my +affairs with prudence and good faith. I now owe nothing in Paris. All my +things have been sold; and he tells me that he has taken the advice +of an old sea-captain and spent three thousand francs on a commercial +outfit of European curiosities which will be sure to be in demand in the +Indies. He has sent my trunks to Nantes, where a ship is loading for San +Domingo. In five days, Eugenie, we must bid each other farewell--perhaps +forever, at least for years. My outfit and ten thousand francs, which +two of my friends send me, are a very small beginning. I cannot look to +return for many years. My dear cousin, do not weight your life in the +scales with mine; I may perish; some good marriage may be offered to +you--” + +“Do you love me?” she said. + +“Oh, yes! indeed, yes!” he answered, with a depth of tone that revealed +an equal depth of feeling. + +“I shall wait, Charles--Good heavens! there is my father at his window,” + she said, repulsing her cousin, who leaned forward to kiss her. + +She ran quickly under the archway. Charles followed her. When she +saw him, she retreated to the foot of the staircase and opened the +swing-door; then, scarcely knowing where she was going, Eugenie reached +the corner near Nanon’s den, in the darkest end of the passage. There +Charles caught her hand and drew her to his heart. Passing his arm about +her waist, he made her lean gently upon him. Eugenie no longer resisted; +she received and gave the purest, the sweetest, and yet, withal, the +most unreserved of kisses. + +“Dear Eugenie, a cousin is better than a brother, for he can marry you,” + said Charles. + +“So be it!” cried Nanon, opening the door of her lair. + +The two lovers, alarmed, fled into the hall, where Eugenie took up her +work and Charles began to read the litanies of the Virgin in Madame +Grandet’s prayer-book. + +“Mercy!” cried Nanon, “now they’re saying their prayers.” + +As soon as Charles announced his immediate departure, Grandet bestirred +himself to testify much interest in his nephew. He became very liberal +of all that cost him nothing; took pains to find a packer; declared the +man asked too much for his cases; insisted on making them himself out +of old planks; got up early in the morning to fit and plane and nail +together the strips, out of which he made, to his own satisfaction, some +strong cases, in which he packed all Charles’s effects; he also took +upon himself to send them by boat down the Loire, to insure them, and +get them to Nantes in proper time. + +After the kiss taken in the passage, the hours fled for Eugenie with +frightful rapidity. Sometimes she thought of following her cousin. +Those who have known that most endearing of all passions,--the one whose +duration is each day shortened by time, by age, by mortal illness, by +human chances and fatalities,--they will understand the poor girl’s +tortures. She wept as she walked in the garden, now so narrow to her, +as indeed the court, the house, the town all seemed. She launched in +thought upon the wide expanse of the ocean he was about to traverse. +At last the eve of his departure came. That morning, in the absence +of Grandet and of Nanon, the precious case which contained the two +portraits was solemnly installed in the only drawer of the old cabinet +which could be locked, where the now empty velvet purse was lying. This +deposit was not made without a goodly number of tears and kisses. When +Eugenie placed the key within her bosom she had no courage to forbid the +kiss with which Charles sealed the act. + +“It shall never leave that place, my friend,” she said. + +“Then my heart will be always there.” + +“Ah! Charles, it is not right,” she said, as though she blamed him. + +“Are we not married?” he said. “I have thy promise,--then take mine.” + +“Thine; I am thine forever!” they each said, repeating the words twice +over. + +No promise made upon this earth was ever purer. The innocent sincerity +of Eugenie had sanctified for a moment the young man’s love. + +On the morrow the breakfast was sad. Nanon herself, in spite of the +gold-embroidered robe and the Jeannette cross bestowed by Charles, had +tears in her eyes. + +“The poor dear monsieur who is going on the seas--oh, may God guide +him!” + +At half-past ten the whole family started to escort Charles to the +diligence for Nantes. Nanon let loose the dog, locked the door, and +insisted on carrying the young man’s carpet-bag. All the tradesmen in +the tortuous old street were on the sill of their shop-doors to watch +the procession, which was joined in the market-place by Maitre Cruchot. + +“Eugenie, be sure you don’t cry,” said her mother. + +“Nephew,” said Grandet, in the doorway of the inn from which the coach +started, kissing Charles on both cheeks, “depart poor, return rich; +you will find the honor of your father safe. I answer for that myself, +I--Grandet; for it will only depend on you to--” + +“Ah! my uncle, you soften the bitterness of my departure. Is it not the +best gift that you could make me?” + +Not understanding his uncle’s words which he had thus interrupted, +Charles shed tears of gratitude upon the tanned cheeks of the old miser, +while Eugenie pressed the hand of her cousin and that of her father with +all her strength. The notary smiled, admiring the sly speech of the old +man, which he alone had understood. The family stood about the coach +until it started; then as it disappeared upon the bridge, and its rumble +grew fainter in the distance, Grandet said: + +“Good-by to you!” + +Happily no one but Maitre Cruchot heard the exclamation. Eugenie and her +mother had gone to a corner of the quay from which they could still see +the diligence and wave their white handkerchiefs, to which Charles made +answer by displaying his. + +“Ah! mother, would that I had the power of God for a single moment,” + said Eugenie, when she could no longer see her lover’s handkerchief. + + * * * * * + +Not to interrupt the current of events which are about to take place in +the bosom of the Grandet family, it is necessary to cast a forestalling +eye upon the various operations which the goodman carried on in Paris +by means of Monsieur des Grassins. A month after the latter’s departure +from Saumur, Grandet, became possessed of a certificate of a hundred +thousand francs a year from his investment in the Funds, bought +at eighty francs net. The particulars revealed at his death by the +inventory of his property threw no light upon the means which his +suspicious nature took to remit the price of the investment and receive +the certificate thereof. Maitre Cruchot was of opinion that Nanon, +unknown to herself, was the trusty instrument by which the money was +transported; for about this time she was absent five days, under a +pretext of putting things to rights at Froidfond,--as if the goodman +were capable of leaving anything lying about or out of order! + +In all that concerned the business of the house of Guillaume Grandet +the old cooper’s intentions were fulfilled to the letter. The Bank of +France, as everybody knows, affords exact information about all the +large fortunes in Paris and the provinces. The names of des Grassins +and Felix Grandet of Saumur were well known there, and they enjoyed the +esteem bestowed on financial celebrities whose wealth comes from immense +and unencumbered territorial possessions. The arrival of the Saumur +banker for the purpose, it was said, of honorably liquidating the +affairs of Grandet of Paris, was enough to avert the shame of protested +notes from the memory of the defunct merchant. The seals on the property +were taken off in presence of the creditors, and the notary employed by +Grandet went to work at once on the inventory of the assets. Soon after +this, des Grassins called a meeting of the creditors, who unanimously +elected him, conjointly with Francois Keller, the head of a rich +banking-house and one of those principally interested in the affair, as +liquidators, with full power to protect both the honor of the family +and the interests of the claimants. The credit of Grandet of Saumur, +the hopes he diffused by means of des Grassins in the minds of all +concerned, facilitated the transactions. Not a single creditor proved +recalcitrant; no one thought of passing his claim to his profit-and-loss +account; each and all said confidently, “Grandet of Saumur will pay.” + +Six months went by. The Parisians had redeemed the notes in circulation +as they fell due, and held them under lock and key in their desks. First +result aimed at by the old cooper! Nine months after this preliminary +meeting, the two liquidators distributed forty-seven per cent to each +creditor on his claim. This amount was obtained by the sale of the +securities, property, and possessions of all kinds belonging to the +late Guillaume Grandet, and was paid over with scrupulous fidelity. +Unimpeachable integrity was shown in the transaction. The creditors +gratefully acknowledged the remarkable and incontestable honor displayed +by the Grandets. When these praises had circulated for a certain length +of time, the creditors asked for the rest of their money. It became +necessary to write a collective letter to Grandet of Saumur. + +“Here it comes!” said the old man as he threw the letter into the fire. +“Patience, my good friends!” + +In answer to the proposals contained in the letter, Grandet of Saumur +demanded that all vouchers for claims against the estate of his brother +should be deposited with a notary, together with acquittances for the +forty-seven per cent already paid; he made this demand under pretence of +sifting the accounts and finding out the exact condition of the estate. +It roused at once a variety of difficulties. Generally speaking, the +creditor is a species of maniac, ready to agree to anything one day, on +the next breathing fire and slaughter; later on, he grows amicable and +easy-going. To-day his wife is good-humored, his last baby has cut its +first tooth, all is well at home, and he is determined not to lose a +sou; on the morrow it rains, he can’t go out, he is gloomy, he says yes +to any proposal that is made to him, so long as it will put an end to +the affair; on the third day he declares he must have guarantees; by +the end of the month he wants his debtor’s head, and becomes at heart an +executioner. The creditor is a good deal like the sparrow on whose tail +confiding children are invited to put salt,--with this difference, that +he applies the image to his claim, the proceeds of which he is never +able to lay hold of. Grandet had studied the atmospheric variations +of creditors, and the creditors of his brother justified all his +calculations. Some were angry, and flatly refused to give in their +vouchers. + +“Very good; so much the better,” said Grandet, rubbing his hands over +the letter in which des Grassins announced the fact. + +Others agreed to the demand, but only on condition that their rights +should be fully guaranteed; they renounced none, and even reserved +the power of ultimately compelling a failure. On this began a long +correspondence, which ended in Grandet of Saumur agreeing to all +conditions. By means of this concession the placable creditors were +able to bring the dissatisfied creditors to reason. The deposit was then +made, but not without sundry complaints. + +“Your goodman,” they said to des Grassins, “is tricking us.” + +Twenty-three months after the death of Guillaume Grandet many of the +creditors, carried away by more pressing business in the markets of +Paris, had forgotten their Grandet claims, or only thought of them to +say: + +“I begin to believe that forty-seven per cent is all I shall ever get +out of that affair.” + +The old cooper had calculated on the power of time, which, as he used to +say, is a pretty good devil after all. By the end of the third year des +Grassins wrote to Grandet that he had brought the creditors to agree to +give up their claims for ten per cent on the two million four hundred +thousand francs still due by the house of Grandet. Grandet answered that +the notary and the broker whose shameful failures had caused the death +of his brother were still living, that they might now have recovered +their credit, and that they ought to be sued, so as to get something out +of them towards lessening the total of the deficit. + +By the end of the fourth year the liabilities were definitely estimated +at a sum of twelve hundred thousand francs. Many negotiations, lasting +over six months, took place between the creditors and the liquidators, +and between the liquidators and Grandet. To make a long story short, +Grandet of Saumur, anxious by this time to get out of the affair, told +the liquidators, about the ninth month of the fourth year, that his +nephew had made a fortune in the Indies and was disposed to pay his +father’s debts in full; he therefore could not take upon himself to make +any settlement without previously consulting him; he had written to him, +and was expecting an answer. The creditors were held in check until the +middle of the fifth year by the words, “payment in full,” which the wily +old miser threw out from time to time as he laughed in his beard, saying +with a smile and an oath, “Those Parisians!” + +But the creditors were reserved for a fate unexampled in the annals +of commerce. When the events of this history bring them once more into +notice, they will be found still in the position Grandet had resolved to +force them into from the first. + +As soon as the Funds reached a hundred and fifteen, Pere Grandet sold +out his interests and withdrew two million four hundred thousand francs +in gold, to which he added, in his coffers, the six hundred thousand +francs compound interest which he had derived from the capital. Des +Grassins now lived in Paris. In the first place he had been made a +deputy; then he became infatuated (father of a family as he was, though +horribly bored by the provincial life of Saumur) with a pretty actress +at the Theatre de Madame, known as Florine, and he presently relapsed +into the old habits of his army life. It is useless to speak of his +conduct; Saumur considered it profoundly immoral. His wife was fortunate +in the fact of her property being settled upon herself, and in having +sufficient ability to keep up the banking-house in Saumur, which was +managed in her name and repaired the breach in her fortune caused by the +extravagance of her husband. The Cruchotines made so much talk about +the false position of the quasi-widow that she married her daughter very +badly, and was forced to give up all hope of an alliance between Eugenie +Grandet and her son. Adolphe joined his father in Paris and became, it +was said, a worthless fellow. The Cruchots triumphed. + +“Your husband hasn’t common sense,” said Grandet as he lent Madame des +Grassins some money on a note securely endorsed. “I am very sorry for +you, for you are a good little woman.” + +“Ah, monsieur,” said the poor lady, “who could have believed that when +he left Saumur to go to Paris on your business he was going to his +ruin?” + +“Heaven is my witness, madame, that up to the last moment I did all I +could to prevent him from going. Monsieur le president was most anxious +to take his place; but he was determined to go, and now we all see why.” + +In this way Grandet made it quite plain that he was under no obligation +to des Grassins. + + * * * * * + +In all situations women have more cause for suffering than men, and they +suffer more. Man has strength and the power of exercising it; he acts, +moves, thinks, occupies himself; he looks ahead, and sees consolation in +the future. It was thus with Charles. But the woman stays at home; she +is always face to face with the grief from which nothing distracts +her; she goes down to the depths of the abyss which yawns before her, +measures it, and often fills it with her tears and prayers. Thus did +Eugenie. She initiated herself into her destiny. To feel, to love, to +suffer, to devote herself,--is not this the sum of woman’s life? Eugenie +was to be in all things a woman, except in the one thing that consoles +for all. Her happiness, picked up like nails scattered on a wall--to use +the fine simile of Bossuet--would never so much as fill even the hollow +of her hand. Sorrows are never long in coming; for her they came soon. +The day after Charles’s departure the house of Monsieur Grandet resumed +its ordinary aspect in the eyes of all, except in those of Eugenie, to +whom it grew suddenly empty. She wished, if it could be done unknown to +her father, that Charles’s room might be kept as he had left it. Madame +Grandet and Nanon were willing accomplices in this _statu quo_. + +“Who knows but he may come back sooner than we think for?” she said. + +“Ah, don’t I wish I could see him back!” answered Nanon. “I took to him! +He was such a dear, sweet young man,--pretty too, with his curly hair.” + Eugenie looked at Nanon. “Holy Virgin! don’t look at me that way, +mademoiselle; your eyes are like those of a lost soul.” + +From that day the beauty of Mademoiselle Grandet took a new character. +The solemn thoughts of love which slowly filled her soul, and the +dignity of the woman beloved, gave to her features an illumination such +as painters render by a halo. Before the coming of her cousin, Eugenie +might be compared to the Virgin before the conception; after he had +gone, she was like the Virgin Mother,--she had given birth to love. +These two Marys so different, so well represented by Spanish art, embody +one of those shining symbols with which Christianity abounds. + +Returning from Mass on the morning after Charles’s departure,--having +made a vow to hear it daily,--Eugenie bought a map of the world, which +she nailed up beside her looking-glass, that she might follow her cousin +on his westward way, that she might put herself, were it ever so little, +day by day into the ship that bore him, and see him and ask him a +thousand questions,--“Art thou well? Dost thou suffer? Dost thou think +of me when the star, whose beauty and usefulness thou hast taught me +to know, shines upon thee?” In the mornings she sat pensive beneath the +walnut-tree, on the worm-eaten bench covered with gray lichens, where +they had said to each other so many precious things, so many trifles, +where they had built the pretty castles of their future home. She +thought of the future now as she looked upward to the bit of sky which +was all the high walls suffered her to see; then she turned her eyes +to the angle where the sun crept on, and to the roof above the room in +which he had slept. Hers was the solitary love, the persistent love, +which glides into every thought and becomes the substance, or, as our +fathers might have said, the tissue of life. When the would-be friends +of Pere Grandet came in the evening for their game at cards, she was gay +and dissimulating; but all the morning she talked of Charles with her +mother and Nanon. Nanon had brought herself to see that she could pity +the sufferings of her young mistress without failing in her duty to the +old master, and she would say to Eugenie,-- + +“If I had a man for myself I’d--I’d follow him to hell, yes, I’d +exterminate myself for him; but I’ve none. I shall die and never know +what life is. Would you believe, mamz’elle, that old Cornoiller (a good +fellow all the same) is always round my petticoats for the sake of my +money,--just for all the world like the rats who come smelling after the +master’s cheese and paying court to you? I see it all; I’ve got a shrewd +eye, though I am as big as a steeple. Well, mamz’elle, it pleases me, +but it isn’t love.” + + + + +X + +Two months went by. This domestic life, once so monotonous, was now +quickened with the intense interest of a secret that bound these women +intimately together. For them Charles lived and moved beneath the +grim gray rafters of the hall. Night and morning Eugenie opened the +dressing-case and gazed at the portrait of her aunt. One Sunday morning +her mother surprised her as she stood absorbed in finding her cousin’s +features in his mother’s face. Madame Grandet was then for the first +time admitted into the terrible secret of the exchange made by Charles +against her daughter’s treasure. + +“You gave him all!” cried the poor mother, terrified. “What will you say +to your father on New Year’s Day when he asks to see your gold?” + +Eugenie’s eyes grew fixed, and the two women lived through mortal terror +for more than half the morning. They were so troubled in mind that they +missed high Mass, and only went to the military service. In three days +the year 1819 would come to an end. In three days a terrible drama would +begin, a bourgeois tragedy, without poison, or dagger, or the spilling +of blood; but--as regards the actors in it--more cruel than all the +fabled horrors in the family of the Atrides. + +“What will become of us?” said Madame Grandet to her daughter, letting +her knitting fall upon her knees. + +The poor mother had gone through such anxiety for the past two months +that the woollen sleeves which she needed for the coming winter were not +yet finished. This domestic fact, insignificant as it seems, bore sad +results. For want of those sleeves, a chill seized her in the midst of +a sweat caused by a terrible explosion of anger on the part of her +husband. + +“I have been thinking, my poor child, that if you had confided your +secret to me we should have had time to write to Monsieur des Grassins +in Paris. He might have sent us gold pieces like yours; though Grandet +knows them all, perhaps--” + +“Where could we have got the money?” + +“I would have pledged my own property. Besides, Monsieur des Grassins +would have--” + +“It is too late,” said Eugenie in a broken, hollow voice. “To-morrow +morning we must go and wish him a happy New Year in his chamber.” + +“But, my daughter, why should I not consult the Cruchots?” + +“No, no; it would be delivering me up to them, and putting ourselves +in their power. Besides, I have chosen my course. I have done right, I +repent of nothing. God will protect me. His will be done! Ah! mother, if +you had read his letter, you, too, would have thought only of him.” + +The next morning, January 1, 1820, the horrible fear to which mother and +daughter were a prey suggested to their minds a natural excuse by which +to escape the solemn entrance into Grandet’s chamber. The winter of +1819-1820 was one of the coldest of that epoch. The snow encumbered the +roofs. + +Madame Grandet called to her husband as soon as she heard him stirring +in his chamber, and said,-- + +“Grandet, will you let Nanon light a fire here for me? The cold is so +sharp that I am freezing under the bedclothes. At my age I need some +comforts. Besides,” she added, after a slight pause, “Eugenie shall come +and dress here; the poor child might get an illness from dressing in her +cold room in such weather. Then we will go and wish you a happy New Year +beside the fire in the hall.” + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta, what a tongue! a pretty way to begin the new year, +Madame Grandet! You never talked so much before; but you haven’t been +sopping your bread in wine, I know that.” + +There was a moment’s silence. + +“Well,” resumed the goodman, who no doubt had some reason of his own for +agreeing to his wife’s request, “I’ll do what you ask, Madame Grandet. +You are a good woman, and I don’t want any harm to happen to you at your +time of life,--though as a general thing the Bertellieres are as sound +as a roach. Hein! isn’t that so?” he added after a pause. “Well, I +forgive them; we got their property in the end.” And he coughed. + +“You are very gay this morning, monsieur,” said the poor woman gravely. + +“I’m always gay,-- + + “‘Gai, gai, gai, le tonnelier, + Raccommodez votre cuvier!’” + +he answered, entering his wife’s room fully dressed. “Yes, on my word, +it is cold enough to freeze you solid. We shall have a fine breakfast, +wife. Des Grassins has sent me a pate-de-foie-gras truffled! I am going +now to get it at the coach-office. There’ll be a double napoleon for +Eugenie in the package,” he whispered in Madame Grandet’s ear. “I have +no gold left, wife. I had a few stray pieces--I don’t mind telling you +that--but I had to let them go in business.” + +Then, by way of celebrating the new year, he kissed her on the forehead. + +“Eugenie,” cried the mother, when Grandet was fairly gone, “I don’t know +which side of the bed your father got out of, but he is good-tempered +this morning. Perhaps we shall come out safe after all?” + +“What’s happened to the master?” said Nanon, entering her mistress’s +room to light the fire. “First place, he said, ‘Good-morning; happy New +Year, you big fool! Go and light my wife’s fire, she’s cold’; and then, +didn’t I feel silly when he held out his hand and gave me a six-franc +piece, which isn’t worn one bit? Just look at it, madame! Oh, the kind +man! He is a good man, that’s a fact. There are some people who the +older they get the harder they grow; but he,--why he’s getting soft and +improving with time, like your ratafia! He is a good, good man--” + +The secret of Grandet’s joy lay in the complete success of his +speculation. Monsieur des Grassins, after deducting the amount which +the old cooper owed him for the discount on a hundred and fifty thousand +francs in Dutch notes, and for the surplus which he had advanced to make +up the sum required for the investment in the Funds which was to produce +a hundred thousand francs a year, had now sent him, by the diligence, +thirty thousand francs in silver coin, the remainder of his first +half-year’s interest, informing him at the same time that the Funds +had already gone up in value. They were then quoted at eighty-nine; +the shrewdest capitalists bought in, towards the last of January, at +ninety-three. Grandet had thus gained in two months twelve per cent on +his capital; he had simplified his accounts, and would in future receive +fifty thousand francs interest every six months, without incurring any +taxes or costs for repairs. He understood at last what it was to invest +money in the public securities,--a system for which provincials have +always shown a marked repugnance,--and at the end of five years he found +himself master of a capital of six millions, which increased without +much effort of his own, and which, joined to the value and proceeds +of his territorial possessions, gave him a fortune that was absolutely +colossal. The six francs bestowed on Nanon were perhaps the reward of +some great service which the poor servant had rendered to her master +unawares. + +“Oh! oh! where’s Pere Grandet going? He has been scurrying about since +sunrise as if to a fire,” said the tradespeople to each other as they +opened their shops for the day. + +When they saw him coming back from the wharf, followed by a porter from +the coach-office wheeling a barrow which was laden with sacks, they all +had their comments to make:-- + +“Water flows to the river; the old fellow was running after his gold,” + said one. + +“He gets it from Paris and Froidfond and Holland,” said another. + +“He’ll end by buying up Saumur,” cried a third. + +“He doesn’t mind the cold, he’s so wrapped up in his gains,” said a wife +to her husband. + +“Hey! hey! Monsieur Grandet, if that’s too heavy for you,” said a +cloth-dealer, his nearest neighbor, “I’ll take it off your hands.” + +“Heavy?” said the cooper, “I should think so; it’s all sous!” + +“Silver sous,” said the porter in a low voice. + +“If you want me to take care of you, keep your tongue between your +teeth,” said the goodman to the porter as they reached the door. + +“The old fox! I thought he was deaf; seems he can hear fast enough in +frosty weather.” + +“Here’s twenty sous for your New Year, and _mum_!” said Grandet. “Be off +with you! Nanon shall take back your barrow. Nanon, are the linnets at +church?” + +“Yes, monsieur.” + +“Then lend a hand! go to work!” he cried, piling the sacks upon her. +In a few moments all were carried up to his inner room, where he shut +himself in with them. “When breakfast is ready, knock on the wall,” he +said as he disappeared. “Take the barrow back to the coach-office.” + +The family did not breakfast that day until ten o’clock. + +“Your father will not ask to see your gold downstairs,” said Madame +Grandet as they got back from Mass. “You must pretend to be very chilly. +We may have time to replace the treasure before your fete-day.” + +Grandet came down the staircase thinking of his splendid speculation +in government securities, and wondering how he could metamorphose his +Parisian silver into solid gold; he was making up his mind to invest in +this way everything he could lay hands on until the Funds should reach +a par value. Fatal reverie for Eugenie! As soon as he came in, the two +women wished him a happy New Year,--his daughter by putting her arms +round his neck and caressing him; Madame Grandet gravely and with +dignity. + +“Ha! ha! my child,” he said, kissing his daughter on both cheeks. “I +work for you, don’t you see? I think of your happiness. Must have money +to be happy. Without money there’s not a particle of happiness. Here! +there’s a new napoleon for you. I sent to Paris for it. On my word of +honor, it’s all the gold I have; you are the only one that has got any +gold. I want to see your gold, little one.” + +“Oh! it is too cold; let us have breakfast,” answered Eugenie. + +“Well, after breakfast, then; it will help the digestion. That fat des +Grassins sent me the pate. Eat as much as you like, my children, it +costs nothing. Des Grassins is getting along very well. I am satisfied +with him. The old fish is doing Charles a good service, and gratis too. +He is making a very good settlement of that poor deceased Grandet’s +business. Hoo! hoo!” he muttered, with his mouth full, after a pause, +“how good it is! Eat some, wife; that will feed you for at least two +days.” + +“I am not hungry. I am very poorly; you know that.” + +“Ah, bah! you can stuff yourself as full as you please without danger, +you’re a Bertelliere; they are all hearty. You are a bit yellow, that’s +true; but I like yellow, myself.” + +The expectation of ignominious and public death is perhaps less horrible +to a condemned criminal than the anticipation of what was coming after +breakfast to Madame Grandet and Eugenie. The more gleefully the old man +talked and ate, the more their hearts shrank within them. The daughter, +however, had an inward prop at this crisis,--she gathered strength +through love. + +“For him! for him!” she cried within her, “I would die a thousand +deaths.” + +At this thought, she shot a glance at her mother which flamed with +courage. + +“Clear away,” said Grandet to Nanon when, about eleven o’clock, +breakfast was over, “but leave the table. We can spread your little +treasure upon it,” he said, looking at Eugenie. “Little? Faith! no; it +isn’t little. You possess, in actual value, five thousand nine hundred +and fifty-nine francs and the forty I gave you just now. That makes six +thousand francs, less one. Well, now see here, little one! I’ll give you +that one franc to make up the round number. Hey! what are you listening +for, Nanon? Mind your own business; go and do your work.” + +Nanon disappeared. + +“Now listen, Eugenie; you must give me back your gold. You won’t refuse +your father, my little girl, hein?” + +The two women were dumb. + +“I have no gold myself. I had some, but it is all gone. I’ll give you +in return six thousand francs in _livres_, and you are to put them just +where I tell you. You mustn’t think anything more about your ‘dozen.’ +When I marry you (which will be soon) I shall get you a husband who can +give you the finest ‘dozen’ ever seen in the provinces. Now attend to +me, little girl. There’s a fine chance for you; you can put your six +thousand francs into government funds, and you will receive every six +months nearly two hundred francs interest, without taxes, or repairs, +or frost, or hail, or floods, or anything else to swallow up the money. +Perhaps you don’t like to part with your gold, hey, my girl? Never mind, +bring it to me all the same. I’ll get you some more like it,--like +those Dutch coins and the _portugaises_, the rupees of Mogul, and the +_genovines_,--I’ll give you some more on your fete-days, and in three +years you’ll have got back half your little treasure. What’s that you +say? Look up, now. Come, go and get it, the precious metal. You ought to +kiss me on the eyelids for telling you the secrets and the mysteries of +the life and death of money. Yes, silver and gold live and swarm like +men; they come, and go, and sweat, and multiply--” + +Eugenie rose; but after making a few steps towards the door she turned +abruptly, looked her father in the face, and said,-- + +“I have not got _my_ gold.” + +“You have not got your gold!” cried Grandet, starting up erect, like a +horse that hears a cannon fired beside him. + +“No, I have not got it.” + +“You are mistaken, Eugenie.” + +“No.” + +“By the shears of my father!” + +Whenever the old man swore that oath the rafters trembled. + +“Holy Virgin! Madame is turning pale,” cried Nanon. + +“Grandet, your anger will kill me,” said the poor mother. + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta! nonsense; you never die in your family! Eugenie, what +have you done with your gold?” he cried, rushing upon her. + +“Monsieur,” said the daughter, falling at Madame Grandet’s knees, “my +mother is ill. Look at her; do not kill her.” + +Grandet was frightened by the pallor which overspread his wife’s face, +usually so yellow. + +“Nanon, help me to bed,” said the poor woman in a feeble voice; “I am +dying--” + +Nanon gave her mistress an arm, Eugenie gave her another; but it was +only with infinite difficulty that they could get her upstairs, she fell +with exhaustion at every step. Grandet remained alone. However, in a few +moments he went up six or eight stairs and called out,-- + +“Eugenie, when your mother is in bed, come down.” + +“Yes, father.” + +She soon came, after reassuring her mother. + +“My daughter,” said Grandet, “you will now tell me what you have done +with your gold.” + +“My father, if you make me presents of which I am not the sole mistress, +take them back,” she answered coldly, picking up the napoleon from the +chimney-piece and offering it to him. + +Grandet seized the coin and slipped it into his breeches’ pocket. + +“I shall certainly never give you anything again. Not so much as that!” + he said, clicking his thumb-nail against a front tooth. “Do you dare to +despise your father? have you no confidence in him? Don’t you know what +a father is? If he is nothing for you, he is nothing at all. Where is +your gold?” + +“Father, I love and respect you, in spite of your anger; but I humbly +ask you to remember that I am twenty-three years old. You have told me +often that I have attained my majority, and I do not forget it. I have +used my money as I chose to use it, and you may be sure that it was put +to a good use--” + +“What use?” + +“That is an inviolable secret,” she answered. “Have you no secrets?” + +“I am the head of the family; I have my own affairs.” + +“And this is mine.” + +“It must be something bad if you can’t tell it to your father, +Mademoiselle Grandet.” + +“It is good, and I cannot tell it to my father.” + +“At least you can tell me when you parted with your gold?” + +Eugenie made a negative motion with her head. + +“You had it on your birthday, hein?” + +She grew as crafty through love as her father was through avarice, and +reiterated the negative sign. + +“Was there ever such obstinacy! It’s a theft,” cried Grandet, his voice +going up in a crescendo which gradually echoed through the house. +“What! here, in my own home, under my very eyes, somebody has taken your +gold!--the only gold we have!--and I’m not to know who has got it! Gold +is a precious thing. Virtuous girls go wrong sometimes, and give--I +don’t know what; they do it among the great people, and even among the +bourgeoisie. But give their gold!--for you have given it to some one, +hein?--” + +Eugenie was silent and impassive. + +“Was there ever such a daughter? Is it possible that I am your father? +If you have invested it anywhere, you must have a receipt--” + +“Was I free--yes or no--to do what I would with my own? Was it not +mine?” + +“You are a child.” + +“Of age.” + +Dumbfounded by his daughter’s logic, Grandet turned pale and stamped and +swore. When at last he found words, he cried: “Serpent! Cursed girl! Ah, +deceitful creature! You know I love you, and you take advantage of it. +She’d cut her father’s throat! Good God! you’ve given our fortune to +that ne’er-do-well,--that dandy with morocco boots! By the shears of my +father! I can’t disinherit you, but I curse you,--you and your cousin +and your children! Nothing good will come of it! Do you hear? If it was +to Charles--but, no; it’s impossible. What! has that wretched fellow +robbed me?--” + +He looked at his daughter, who continued cold and silent. + +“She won’t stir; she won’t flinch! She’s more Grandet than I’m Grandet! +Ha! you have not given your gold for nothing? Come, speak the truth!” + +Eugenie looked at her father with a sarcastic expression that stung him. + +“Eugenie, you are here, in my house,--in your father’s house. If you +wish to stay here, you must submit yourself to me. The priests tell you +to obey me.” Eugenie bowed her head. “You affront me in all I hold most +dear. I will not see you again until you submit. Go to your chamber. You +will stay there till I give you permission to leave it. Nanon will bring +you bread and water. You hear me--go!” + +Eugenie burst into tears and fled up to her mother. Grandet, after +marching two or three times round the garden in the snow without heeding +the cold, suddenly suspected that his daughter had gone to her mother; +only too happy to find her disobedient to his orders, he climbed the +stairs with the agility of a cat and appeared in Madame Grandet’s room +just as she was stroking Eugenie’s hair, while the girl’s face was +hidden in her motherly bosom. + +“Be comforted, my poor child,” she was saying; “your father will get +over it.” + +“She has no father!” said the old man. “Can it be you and I, Madame +Grandet, who have given birth to such a disobedient child? A fine +education,--religious, too! Well! why are you not in your chamber? Come, +to prison, to prison, mademoiselle!” + +“Would you deprive me of my daughter, monsieur?” said Madame Grandet, +turning towards him a face that was now red with fever. + +“If you want to keep her, carry her off! Clear out--out of my house, +both of you! Thunder! where is the gold? what’s become of the gold?” + +Eugenie rose, looked proudly at her father, and withdrew to her room. +Grandet turned the key of the door. + +“Nanon,” he cried, “put out the fire in the hall.” + +Then he sat down in an armchair beside his wife’s fire and said to +her,-- + +“Undoubtedly she has given the gold to that miserable seducer, Charles, +who only wanted our money.” + +“I knew nothing about it,” she answered, turning to the other side of +the bed, that she might escape the savage glances of her husband. “I +suffer so much from your violence that I shall never leave this room, if +I trust my own presentiments, till I am carried out of it in my coffin. +You ought to have spared me this suffering, monsieur,--you, to whom I +have caused no pain; that is, I think so. Your daughter loves you. +I believe her to be as innocent as the babe unborn. Do not make her +wretched. Revoke your sentence. The cold is very severe; you may give +her some serious illness.” + +“I will not see her, neither will I speak to her. She shall stay in +her room, on bread and water, until she submits to her father. What the +devil! shouldn’t a father know where the gold in his house has gone to? +She owned the only rupees in France, perhaps, and the Dutch ducats and +the _genovines_--” + +“Monsieur, Eugenie is our only child; and even if she had thrown them +into the water--” + +“Into the water!” cried her husband; “into the water! You are crazy, +Madame Grandet! What I have said is said; you know that well enough. If +you want peace in this household, make your daughter confess, pump it +out of her. Women understand how to do that better than we do. Whatever +she has done, I sha’n’t eat her. Is she afraid of me? Even if she has +plastered Charles with gold from head to foot, he is on the high seas, +and nobody can get at him, hein!” + +“But, monsieur--” Excited by the nervous crisis through which she had +passed, and by the fate of her daughter, which brought forth all her +tenderness and all her powers of mind, Madame Grandet suddenly observed +a frightful movement of her husband’s wen, and, in the very act of +replying, she changed her speech without changing the tones of her +voice,--“But, monsieur, I have not more influence over her than you +have. She has said nothing to me; she takes after you.” + +“Tut, tut! Your tongue is hung in the middle this morning. Ta, ta, ta, +ta! You are setting me at defiance, I do believe. I daresay you are in +league with her.” + +He looked fixedly at his wife. + +“Monsieur Grandet, if you wish to kill me, you have only to go on like +this. I tell you, monsieur,--and if it were to cost me my life, I would +say it,--you do wrong by your daughter; she is more in the right than +you are. That money belonged to her; she is incapable of making any but +a good use of it, and God alone has the right to know our good deeds. +Monsieur, I implore you, take Eugenie back into favor; forgive her. +If you will do this you will lessen the injury your anger has done me; +perhaps you will save my life. My daughter! oh, monsieur, give me back +my daughter!” + +“I shall decamp,” he said; “the house is not habitable. A mother and +daughter talking and arguing like that! Broooouh! Pouah! A fine New +Year’s present you’ve made me, Eugenie,” he called out. “Yes, yes, cry +away! What you’ve done will bring you remorse, do you hear? What’s the +good of taking the sacrament six times every three months, if you give +away your father’s gold secretly to an idle fellow who’ll eat your heart +out when you’ve nothing else to give him? You’ll find out some day what +your Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and supercilious airs. He +has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to carry off a young girl’s +treasure without the consent of her parents.” + +When the street-door was shut, Eugenie came out of her room and went to +her mother. + +“What courage you have had for your daughter’s sake!” she said. + +“Ah! my child, see where forbidden things may lead us. You forced me to +tell a lie.” + +“I will ask God to punish only me.” + +“Is it true,” cried Nanon, rushing in alarmed, “that mademoiselle is to +be kept on bread and water for the rest of her life?” + +“What does that signify, Nanon?” said Eugenie tranquilly. + +“Goodness! do you suppose I’ll eat _frippe_ when the daughter of the +house is eating dry bread? No, no!” + +“Don’t say a word about all this, Nanon,” said Eugenie. + +“I’ll be as mute as a fish; but you’ll see!” + + * * * * * + +Grandet dined alone for the first time in twenty-four years. + +“So you’re a widower, monsieur,” said Nanon; “it must be disagreeable to +be a widower with two women in the house.” + +“I did not speak to you. Hold your jaw, or I’ll turn you off! What is +that I hear boiling in your saucepan on the stove?” + +“It is grease I’m trying out.” + +“There will be some company to-night. Light the fire.” + +The Cruchots, Madame des Grassins, and her son arrived at the usual +hour of eight, and were surprised to see neither Madame Grandet nor her +daughter. + +“My wife is not very well, and Eugenie is with her,” said the old +wine-grower, whose face betrayed no emotion. + +At the end of an hour spent in idle conversation, Madame des Grassins, +who had gone up to see Madame Grandet, came down, and every one +inquired,-- + +“How is Madame Grandet?” + +“Not at all well,” she answered; “her condition seems to me really +alarming. At her age you ought to take every precaution, Papa Grandet.” + +“We’ll see about it,” said the old man in an absent way. + +They all wished him good-night. When the Cruchots got into the street +Madame des Grassins said to them,-- + +“There is something going on at the Grandets. The mother is very ill +without her knowing it. The girl’s eyes are red, as if she had been +crying all day. Can they be trying to marry her against her will?” + + * * * * * + +When Grandet had gone to bed Nanon came softly to Eugenie’s room in her +stockinged feet and showed her a pate baked in a saucepan. + +“See, mademoiselle,” said the good soul, “Cornoiller gave me a hare. You +eat so little that this pate will last you full a week; in such frosty +weather it won’t spoil. You sha’n’t live on dry bread, I’m determined; +it isn’t wholesome.” + +“Poor Nanon!” said Eugenie, pressing her hand. + +“I’ve made it downright good and dainty, and _he_ never found it out. I +bought the lard and the spices out of my six francs: I’m the mistress of +my own money”; and she disappeared rapidly, fancying she heard Grandet. + + + + +XI + +For several months the old wine-grower came constantly to his wife’s +room at all hours of the day, without ever uttering his daughter’s name, +or seeing her, or making the smallest allusion to her. Madame Grandet +did not leave her chamber, and daily grew worse. Nothing softened the +old man; he remained unmoved, harsh, and cold as a granite rock. He +continued to go and come about his business as usual; but ceased to +stutter, talked less, and was more obdurate in business transactions +than ever before. Often he made mistakes in adding up his figures. + +“Something is going on at the Grandets,” said the Grassinists and the +Cruchotines. + +“What has happened in the Grandet family?” became a fixed question which +everybody asked everybody else at the little evening-parties of Saumur. +Eugenie went to Mass escorted by Nanon. If Madame des Grassins said a +few words to her on coming out of church, she answered in an evasive +manner, without satisfying any curiosity. However, at the end of two +months, it became impossible to hide, either from the three Cruchots +or from Madame des Grassins, the fact that Eugenie was in confinement. +There came a moment when all pretexts failed to explain her perpetual +absence. Then, though it was impossible to discover by whom the secret +had been betrayed, all the town became aware that ever since New Year’s +day Mademoiselle Grandet had been kept in her room without fire, on +bread and water, by her father’s orders, and that Nanon cooked little +dainties and took them to her secretly at night. It was even known that +the young woman was not able to see or take care of her mother, except +at certain times when her father was out of the house. + +Grandet’s conduct was severely condemned. The whole town outlawed him, +so to speak; they remembered his treachery, his hard-heartedness, +and they excommunicated him. When he passed along the streets, people +pointed him out and muttered at him. When his daughter came down the +winding street, accompanied by Nanon, on her way to Mass or Vespers, the +inhabitants ran to the windows and examined with intense curiosity the +bearing of the rich heiress and her countenance, which bore the +impress of angelic gentleness and melancholy. Her imprisonment and the +condemnation of her father were as nothing to her. Had she not a map of +the world, the little bench, the garden, the angle of the wall? Did she +not taste upon her lips the honey that love’s kisses left there? She +was ignorant for a time that the town talked about her, just as Grandet +himself was ignorant of it. Pious and pure in heart before God, her +conscience and her love helped her to suffer patiently the wrath and +vengeance of her father. + +One deep grief silenced all others. Her mother, that gentle, tender +creature, made beautiful by the light which shone from the inner to the +outer as she approached the tomb,--her mother was perishing from day to +day. Eugenie often reproached herself as the innocent cause of the slow, +cruel malady that was wasting her away. This remorse, though her mother +soothed it, bound her still closer to her love. Every morning, as soon +as her father left the house, she went to the bedside of her mother, +and there Nanon brought her breakfast. The poor girl, sad, and suffering +through the sufferings of her mother, would turn her face to the old +servant with a mute gesture, weeping, and yet not daring to speak of her +cousin. It was Madame Grandet who first found courage to say,-- + +“Where is _he_? Why does _he_ not write?” + +“Let us think about him, mother, but not speak of him. You are ill--you, +before all.” + +“All” meant “him.” + +“My child,” said Madame Grandet, “I do not wish to live. God protects me +and enables me to look with joy to the end of my misery.” + +Every utterance of this woman was unfalteringly pious and Christian. +Sometimes, during the first months of the year, when her husband came +to breakfast with her and tramped up and down the room, she would say +to him a few religious words, always spoken with angelic sweetness, yet +with the firmness of a woman to whom approaching death lends a courage +she had lacked in life. + +“Monsieur, I thank you for the interest you take in my health,” she +would answer when he made some commonplace inquiry; “but if you really +desire to render my last moments less bitter and to ease my grief, take +back your daughter: be a Christian, a husband, and a father.” + +When he heard these words, Grandet would sit down by the bed with the +air of a man who sees the rain coming and quietly gets under the shelter +of a gateway till it is over. When these touching, tender, and religious +supplications had all been made, he would say,-- + +“You are rather pale to-day, my poor wife.” + +Absolute forgetfulness of his daughter seemed graven on his stony brow, +on his closed lips. He was unmoved by the tears which flowed down the +white cheeks of his unhappy wife as she listened to his meaningless +answers. + +“May God pardon you,” she said, “even as I pardon you! You will some day +stand in need of mercy.” + +Since Madame Grandet’s illness he had not dared to make use of his +terrible “Ta, ta, ta, ta!” Yet, for all that, his despotic nature was +not disarmed by this angel of gentleness, whose ugliness day by day +decreased, driven out by the ineffable expression of moral qualities +which shone upon her face. She was all soul. The spirit of prayer seemed +to purify her and refine those homely features and make them luminous. +Who has not seen the phenomenon of a like transfiguration on sacred +faces where the habits of the soul have triumphed over the plainest +features, giving them that spiritual illumination whose light comes from +the purity and nobility of the inward thought? The spectacle of this +transformation wrought by the struggle which consumed the last shreds of +the human life of this woman, did somewhat affect the old cooper, +though feebly, for his nature was of iron; if his language ceased to +be contemptuous, an imperturbable silence, which saved his dignity as +master of the household, took its place and ruled his conduct. + +When the faithful Nanon appeared in the market, many quips and quirks +and complaints about the master whistled in her ears; but however loudly +public opinion condemned Monsieur Grandet, the old servant defended him, +for the honor of the family. + +“Well!” she would say to his detractors, “don’t we all get hard as +we grow old? Why shouldn’t he get horny too? Stop telling lies. +Mademoiselle lives like a queen. She’s alone, that’s true; but she likes +it. Besides, my masters have good reasons.” + +At last, towards the end of spring, Madame Grandet, worn out by grief +even more than by illness, having failed, in spite of her prayers, to +reconcile the father and daughter, confided her secret troubles to the +Cruchots. + +“Keep a girl of twenty-three on bread and water!” cried Monsieur de +Bonfons; “without any reason, too! Why, that constitutes wrongful +cruelty; she can contest, as much in as upon--” + +“Come, nephew, spare us your legal jargon,” said the notary. “Set your +mind at ease, madame; I will put a stop to such treatment to-morrow.” + +Eugenie, hearing herself mentioned, came out of her room. + +“Gentlemen,” she said, coming forward with a proud step, “I beg you not +to interfere in this matter. My father is master in his own house. As +long as I live under his roof I am bound to obey him. His conduct is +not subject to the approbation or the disapprobation of the world; he +is accountable to God only. I appeal to your friendship to keep total +silence in this affair. To blame my father is to attack our family +honor. I am much obliged to you for the interest you have shown in +me; you will do me an additional service if you will put a stop to +the offensive rumors which are current in the town, of which I am +accidentally informed.” + +“She is right,” said Madame Grandet. + +“Mademoiselle, the best way to stop such rumors is to procure your +liberty,” answered the old notary respectfully, struck with the beauty +which seclusion, melancholy, and love had stamped upon her face. + +“Well, my daughter, let Monsieur Cruchot manage the matter if he is so +sure of success. He understands your father, and how to manage him. If +you wish to see me happy for my few remaining days, you must, at any +cost, be reconciled to your father.” + +On the morrow Grandet, in pursuance of a custom he had begun since +Eugenie’s imprisonment, took a certain number of turns up and down the +little garden; he had chosen the hour when Eugenie brushed and arranged +her hair. When the old man reached the walnut-tree he hid behind its +trunk and remained for a few moments watching his daughter’s movements, +hesitating, perhaps, between the course to which the obstinacy of his +character impelled him and his natural desire to embrace his child. +Sometimes he sat down on the rotten old bench where Charles and Eugenie +had vowed eternal love; and then she, too, looked at her father secretly +in the mirror before which she stood. If he rose and continued his walk, +she sat down obligingly at the window and looked at the angle of the +wall where the pale flowers hung, where the Venus-hair grew from the +crevices with the bindweed and the sedum,--a white or yellow stone-crop +very abundant in the vineyards of Saumur and at Tours. Maitre Cruchot +came early, and found the old wine-grower sitting in the fine June +weather on the little bench, his back against the division wall of the +garden, engaged in watching his daughter. + +“What may you want, Maitre Cruchot?” he said, perceiving the notary. + +“I came to speak to you on business.” + +“Ah! ah! have you brought some gold in exchange for my silver?” + +“No, no, I have not come about money; it is about your daughter Eugenie. +All the town is talking of her and you.” + +“What does the town meddle for? A man’s house is his castle.” + +“Very true; and a man may kill himself if he likes, or, what is worse, +he may fling his money into the gutter.” + +“What do you mean?” + +“Why, your wife is very ill, my friend. You ought to consult Monsieur +Bergerin; she is likely to die. If she does die without receiving proper +care, you will not be very easy in mind, I take it.” + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta! you know a deal about my wife! These doctors, if they +once get their foot in your house, will come five and six times a day.” + +“Of course you will do as you think best. We are old friends; there is +no one in all Saumur who takes more interest than I in what concerns +you. Therefore, I was bound to tell you this. However, happen what may, +you have the right to do as you please; you can choose your own course. +Besides, that is not what brings me here. There is another thing which +may have serious results for you. After all, you can’t wish to kill +your wife; her life is too important to you. Think of your situation in +connection with your daughter if Madame Grandet dies. You must render an +account to Eugenie, because you enjoy your wife’s estate only during her +lifetime. At her death your daughter can claim a division of property, +and she may force you to sell Froidfond. In short, she is her mother’s +heir, and you are not.” + +These words fell like a thunderbolt on the old man, who was not as wise +about law as he was about business. He had never thought of a legal +division of the estate. + +“Therefore I advise you to treat her kindly,” added Cruchot, in +conclusion. + +“But do you know what she has done, Cruchot?” + +“What?” asked the notary, curious to hear the truth and find out the +cause of the quarrel. + +“She has given away her gold!” + +“Well, wasn’t it hers?” said the notary. + +“They all tell me that!” exclaimed the old man, letting his arms fall to +his sides with a movement that was truly tragic. + +“Are you going--for a mere nothing,”--resumed Cruchot, “to put obstacles +in the way of the concessions which you will be obliged to ask from your +daughter as soon as her mother dies?” + +“Do you call six thousand francs a mere nothing?” + +“Hey! my old friend, do you know what the inventory of your wife’s +property will cost, if Eugenie demands the division?” + +“How much?” + +“Two, three, four thousand francs, perhaps! The property would have to +be put up at auction and sold, to get at its actual value. Instead of +that, if you are on good terms with--” + +“By the shears of my father!” cried Grandet, turning pale as he suddenly +sat down, “we will see about it, Cruchot.” + +After a moment’s silence, full of anguish perhaps, the old man looked at +the notary and said,-- + +“Life is very hard! It has many griefs! Cruchot,” he continued solemnly, +“you would not deceive me? Swear to me upon your honor that all you’ve +told me is legally true. Show me the law; I must see the law!” + +“My poor friend,” said the notary, “don’t I know my own business?” + +“Then it is true! I am robbed, betrayed, killed, destroyed by my own +daughter!” + +“It is true that your daughter is her mother’s heir.” + +“Why do we have children? Ah! my wife, I love her! Luckily she’s sound +and healthy; she’s a Bertelliere.” + +“She has not a month to live.” + +Grandet struck his forehead, went a few steps, came back, cast a +dreadful look on Cruchot, and said,-- + +“What can be done?” + +“Eugenie can relinquish her claim to her mother’s property. Should she +do this you would not disinherit her, I presume?--but if you want to +come to such a settlement, you must not treat her harshly. What I am +telling you, old man, is against my own interests. What do I live by, +if it isn’t liquidations, inventories, conveyances, divisions of +property?--” + +“We’ll see, we’ll see! Don’t let’s talk any more about it, Cruchot; it +wrings my vitals. Have you received any gold?” + +“No; but I have a few old louis, a dozen or so, which you may have. +My good friend, make it up with Eugenie. Don’t you know all Saumur is +pelting you with stones?” + +“The scoundrels!” + +“Come, the Funds are at ninety-nine. Do be satisfied for once in your +life.” + +“At ninety-nine! Are they, Cruchot?” + +“Yes.” + +“Hey, hey! Ninety-nine!” repeated the old man, accompanying the notary +to the street-door. Then, too agitated by what he had just heard to stay +in the house, he went up to his wife’s room and said,-- + +“Come, mother, you may have your daughter to spend the day with you. +I’m going to Froidfond. Enjoy yourselves, both of you. This is our +wedding-day, wife. See! here are sixty francs for your altar at the +Fete-Dieu; you’ve wanted one for a long time. Come, cheer up, enjoy +yourself, and get well! Hurrah for happiness!” + +He threw ten silver pieces of six francs each upon the bed, and took his +wife’s head between his hands and kissed her forehead. + +“My good wife, you are getting well, are not you?” + +“How can you think of receiving the God of mercy in your house when you +refuse to forgive your daughter?” she said with emotion. + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta!” said Grandet in a coaxing voice. “We’ll see about +that.” + +“Merciful heaven! Eugenie,” cried the mother, flushing with joy, “come +and kiss your father; he forgives you!” + +But the old man had disappeared. He was going as fast as his legs could +carry him towards his vineyards, trying to get his confused ideas into +order. Grandet had entered his seventy-sixth year. During the last two +years his avarice had increased upon him, as all the persistent passions +of men increase at a certain age. As if to illustrate an observation +which applies equally to misers, ambitious men, and others whose lives +are controlled by any dominant idea, his affections had fastened upon +one special symbol of his passion. The sight of gold, the possession +of gold, had become a monomania. His despotic spirit had grown in +proportion to his avarice, and to part with the control of the smallest +fraction of his property at the death of his wife seemed to him a thing +“against nature.” To declare his fortune to his daughter, to give an +inventory of his property, landed and personal, for the purposes of +division-- + +“Why,” he cried aloud in the midst of a field where he was pretending to +examine a vine, “it would be cutting my throat!” + +He came at last to a decision, and returned to Saumur in time for +dinner, resolved to unbend to Eugenie, and pet and coax her, that he +might die regally, holding the reins of his millions in his own hands so +long as the breath was in his body. At the moment when the old man, who +chanced to have his pass-key in his pocket, opened the door and climbed +with a stealthy step up the stairway to go into his wife’s room, Eugenie +had brought the beautiful dressing-case from the oak cabinet and placed +it on her mother’s bed. Mother and daughter, in Grandet’s absence, +allowed themselves the pleasure of looking for a likeness to Charles in +the portrait of his mother. + +“It is exactly his forehead and his mouth,” Eugenie was saying as the +old man opened the door. At the look which her husband cast upon the +gold, Madame Grandet cried out,-- + +“O God, have pity upon us!” + +The old man sprang upon the box as a famished tiger might spring upon a +sleeping child. + +“What’s this?” he said, snatching the treasure and carrying it to the +window. “Gold, good gold!” he cried. “All gold,--it weighs two pounds! +Ha, ha! Charles gave you that for your money, did he? Hein! Why didn’t +you tell me so? It was a good bargain, little one! Yes, you are my +daughter, I see that--” Eugenie trembled in every limb. “This came from +Charles, of course, didn’t it?” continued the old man. + +“Yes, father; it is not mine. It is a sacred trust.” + +“Ta, ta, ta, ta! He took your fortune, and now you can get it back.” + +“Father!” + +Grandet took his knife to pry out some of the gold; to do this, he +placed the dressing-case on a chair. Eugenie sprang forward to recover +it; but her father, who had his eye on her and on the treasure too, +pushed her back so violently with a thrust of his arm that she fell upon +her mother’s bed. + +“Monsieur, monsieur!” cried the mother, lifting herself up. + +Grandet had opened his knife, and was about to apply it to the gold. + +“Father!” cried Eugenie, falling on her knees and dragging herself close +to him with clasped hands, “father, in the name of all the saints and +the Virgin! in the name of Christ who died upon the cross! in the name +of your eternal salvation, father! for my life’s sake, father!--do not +touch that! It is neither yours nor mine. It is a trust placed in my +hands by an unhappy relation: I must give it back to him uninjured!” + +“If it is a trust, why were you looking at it? To look at it is as bad +as touching it.” + +“Father, don’t destroy it, or you will disgrace me! Father, do you +hear?” + +“Oh, have pity!” said the mother. + +“Father!” cried Eugenie in so startling a voice that Nanon ran upstairs +terrified. Eugenie sprang upon a knife that was close at hand. + +“Well, what now?” said Grandet coldly, with a callous smile. + +“Oh, you are killing me!” said the mother. + +“Father, if your knife so much as cuts a fragment of that gold, I will +stab myself with this one! You have already driven my mother to her +death; you will now kill your child! Do as you choose! Wound for wound!” + +Grandet held his knife over the dressing-case and hesitated as he looked +at his daughter. + +“Are you capable of doing it, Eugenie?” he said. + +“Yes, yes!” said the mother. + +“She’ll do it if she says so!” cried Nanon. “Be reasonable, monsieur, +for once in your life.” + +The old man looked at the gold and then at his daughter alternately for +an instant. Madame Grandet fainted. + +“There! don’t you see, monsieur, that madame is dying?” cried Nanon. + +“Come, come, my daughter, we won’t quarrel for a box! Here, take it!” + he cried hastily, flinging the case upon the bed. “Nanon, go and fetch +Monsieur Bergerin! Come, mother,” said he, kissing his wife’s hand, +“it’s all over! There! we’ve made up--haven’t we, little one? No more +dry bread; you shall have all you want--Ah, she opens her eyes! Well, +mother, little mother, come! See, I’m kissing Eugenie! She loves her +cousin, and she may marry him if she wants to; she may keep his case. +But don’t die, mother; live a long time yet, my poor wife! Come, try +to move! Listen! you shall have the finest altar that ever was made in +Saumur.” + +“Oh, how can you treat your wife and daughter so!” said Madame Grandet +in a feeble voice. + +“I won’t do so again, never again,” cried her husband; “you shall see, +my poor wife!” He went to his inner room and returned with a handful +of louis, which he scattered on the bed. “Here, Eugenie! see, wife! all +these are for you,” he said, fingering the coins. “Come, be happy, +wife! feel better, get well; you sha’n’t want for anything, nor Eugenie +either. Here’s a hundred _louis d’or_ for her. You won’t give these +away, will you, Eugenie, hein?” + +Madame Grandet and her daughter looked at each other in astonishment. + +“Take back your money, father; we ask for nothing but your affection.” + +“Well, well, that’s right!” he said, pocketing the coins; “let’s be good +friends! We will all go down to dinner to-day, and we’ll play loto every +evening for two sous. You shall both be happy. Hey, wife?” + +“Alas! I wish I could, if it would give you pleasure,” said the dying +woman; “but I cannot rise from my bed.” + +“Poor mother,” said Grandet, “you don’t know how I love you! and you +too, my daughter!” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Oh, how +good it is to kiss a daughter when we have been angry with her! There, +mother, don’t you see it’s all over now? Go and put that away, Eugenie,” + he added, pointing to the case. “Go, don’t be afraid! I shall never +speak of it again, never!” + +Monsieur Bergerin, the celebrated doctor of Saumur, presently arrived. +After an examination, he told Grandet positively that his wife was very +ill; but that perfect peace of mind, a generous diet, and great care +might prolong her life until the autumn. + +“Will all that cost much?” said the old man. “Will she need medicines?” + +“Not much medicine, but a great deal of care,” answered the doctor, who +could scarcely restrain a smile. + +“Now, Monsieur Bergerin,” said Grandet, “you are a man of honor, are +not you? I trust to you! Come and see my wife how and when you think +necessary. Save my good wife! I love her,--don’t you see?--though I +never talk about it; I keep things to myself. I’m full of trouble. +Troubles began when my brother died; I have to spend enormous sums on +his affairs in Paris. Why, I’m paying through my nose; there’s no end +to it. Adieu, monsieur! If you can save my wife, save her. I’ll spare no +expense, not even if it costs me a hundred or two hundred francs.” + +In spite of Grandet’s fervent wishes for the health of his wife, whose +death threatened more than death to him; in spite of the consideration +he now showed on all occasions for the least wish of his astonished wife +and daughter; in spite of the tender care which Eugenie lavished upon +her mother,--Madame Grandet rapidly approached her end. Every day she +grew weaker and wasted visibly, as women of her age when attacked +by serious illness are wont to do. She was fragile as the foliage in +autumn; the radiance of heaven shone through her as the sun strikes +athwart the withering leaves and gilds them. It was a death worthy of +her life,--a Christian death; and is not that sublime? In the month +of October, 1822, her virtues, her angelic patience, her love for her +daughter, seemed to find special expression; and then she passed away +without a murmur. Lamb without spot, she went to heaven, regretting +only the sweet companion of her cold and dreary life, for whom her last +glance seemed to prophesy a destiny of sorrows. She shrank from leaving +her ewe-lamb, white as herself, alone in the midst of a selfish world +that sought to strip her of her fleece and grasp her treasures. + +“My child,” she said as she expired, “there is no happiness except in +heaven; you will know it some day.” + + + + +XII + +On the morrow of this death Eugenie felt a new motive for attachment to +the house in which she was born, where she had suffered so much, where +her mother had just died. She could not see the window and the chair on +its castors without weeping. She thought she had mistaken the heart of +her old father when she found herself the object of his tenderest cares. +He came in the morning and gave her his arm to take her to breakfast; +he looked at her for hours together with an eye that was almost kind; he +brooded over her as though she had been gold. The old man was so unlike +himself, he trembled so often before his daughter, that Nanon and the +Cruchotines, who witnessed his weakness, attributed it to his great age, +and feared that his faculties were giving away. But the day on which +the family put on their mourning, and after dinner, to which meal Maitre +Cruchot (the only person who knew his secret) had been invited, the +conduct of the old miser was explained. + +“My dear child,” he said to Eugenie when the table had been cleared and +the doors carefully shut, “you are now your mother’s heiress, and we +have a few little matters to settle between us. Isn’t that so, Cruchot?” + +“Yes.” + +“Is it necessary to talk of them to-day, father?” + +“Yes, yes, little one; I can’t bear the uncertainty in which I’m placed. +I think you don’t want to give me pain?” + +“Oh! father--” + +“Well, then! let us settle it all to-night.” + +“What is it you wish me to do?” + +“My little girl, it is not for me to say. Tell her, Cruchot.” + +“Mademoiselle, your father does not wish to divide the property, nor +sell the estate, nor pay enormous taxes on the ready money which he may +possess. Therefore, to avoid all this, he must be released from making +the inventory of his whole fortune, part of which you inherit from your +mother, and which is now undivided between you and your father--” + +“Cruchot, are you quite sure of what you are saying before you tell it +to a mere child?” + +“Let me tell it my own way, Grandet.” + +“Yes, yes, my friend. Neither you nor my daughter wish to rob me,--do +you, little one?” + +“But, Monsieur Cruchot, what am I to do?” said Eugenie impatiently. + +“Well,” said the notary, “it is necessary to sign this deed, by which +you renounce your rights to your mother’s estate and leave your father +the use and disposition, during his lifetime, of all the property +undivided between you, of which he guarantees you the capital.” + +“I do not understand a word of what you are saying,” returned Eugenie; +“give me the deed, and show me where I am to sign it.” + +Pere Grandet looked alternately at the deed and at his daughter, at his +daughter and at the deed, undergoing as he did so such violent emotion +that he wiped the sweat from his brow. + +“My little girl,” he said, “if, instead of signing this deed, which will +cost a great deal to record, you would simply agree to renounce your +rights as heir to your poor dear, deceased mother’s property, and would +trust to me for the future, I should like it better. In that case I will +pay you monthly the good round sum of a hundred francs. See, now, you +could pay for as many masses as you want for anybody--Hein! a hundred +francs a month--in _livres_?” + +“I will do all you wish, father.” + +“Mademoiselle,” said the notary, “it is my duty to point out to you that +you are despoiling yourself without guarantee--” + +“Good heavens! what is all that to me?” + +“Hold your tongue, Cruchot! It’s settled, all settled,” cried Grandet, +taking his daughter’s hand and striking it with his own. “Eugenie, you +won’t go back on your word?--you are an honest girl, hein?” + +“Oh! father!--” + +He kissed her effusively, and pressed her in his arms till he almost +choked her. + +“Go, my good child, you restore your father’s life; but you only return +to him that which he gave you: we are quits. This is how business should +be done. Life is a business. I bless you! you are a virtuous girl, +and you love your father. Do just what you like in future. To-morrow, +Cruchot,” he added, looking at the horrified notary, “you will see about +preparing the deed of relinquishment, and then enter it on the records +of the court.” + +The next morning Eugenie signed the papers by which she herself +completed her spoliation. At the end of the first year, however, in +spite of his bargain, the old man had not given his daughter one sou +of the hundred francs he had so solemnly pledged to her. When Eugenie +pleasantly reminded him of this, he could not help coloring, and went +hastily to his secret hiding-place, from whence he brought down about a +third of the jewels he had taken from his nephew, and gave them to her. + +“There, little one,” he said in a sarcastic tone, “do you want those for +your twelve hundred francs?” + +“Oh! father, truly? will you really give them to me?” + +“I’ll give you as many more next year,” he said, throwing them into her +apron. “So before long you’ll get all his gewgaws,” he added, rubbing +his hands, delighted to be able to speculate on his daughter’s feelings. + +Nevertheless, the old man, though still robust, felt the importance +of initiating his daughter into the secrets of his thrift and its +management. For two consecutive years he made her order the household +meals in his presence and receive the rents, and he taught her slowly +and successively the names and remunerative capacity of his vineyards +and his farms. About the third year he had so thoroughly accustomed her +to his avaricious methods that they had turned into the settled habits +of her own life, and he was able to leave the household keys in her +charge without anxiety, and to install her as mistress of the house. + + * * * * * + +Five years passed away without a single event to relieve the monotonous +existence of Eugenie and her father. The same actions were performed +daily with the automatic regularity of clockwork. The deep sadness of +Mademoiselle Grandet was known to every one; but if others surmised the +cause, she herself never uttered a word that justified the suspicions +which all Saumur entertained about the state of the rich heiress’s +heart. Her only society was made up of the three Cruchots and a few of +their particular friends whom they had, little by little, introduced +into the Grandet household. They had taught her to play whist, and +they came every night for their game. During the year 1827 her father, +feeling the weight of his infirmities, was obliged to initiate her still +further into the secrets of his landed property, and told her that in +case of difficulty she was to have recourse to Maitre Cruchot, whose +integrity was well known to him. + +Towards the end of this year the old man, then eighty-two, was seized by +paralysis, which made rapid progress. Dr. Bergerin gave him up. Eugenie, +feeling that she was about to be left alone in the world, came, as it +were, nearer to her father, and clasped more tightly this last living +link of affection. To her mind, as in that of all loving women, love was +the whole of life. Charles was not there, and she devoted all her care +and attention to the old father, whose faculties had begun to weaken, +though his avarice remained instinctively acute. The death of this man +offered no contrast to his life. In the morning he made them roll him +to a spot between the chimney of his chamber and the door of the secret +room, which was filled, no doubt, with gold. He asked for an explanation +of every noise he heard, even the slightest; to the great astonishment +of the notary, he even heard the watch-dog yawning in the court-yard. He +woke up from his apparent stupor at the day and hour when the rents +were due, or when accounts had to be settled with his vine-dressers, and +receipts given. At such times he worked his chair forward on its castors +until he faced the door of the inner room. He made his daughter open it, +and watched while she placed the bags of money one upon another in his +secret receptacles and relocked the door. Then she returned silently to +her seat, after giving him the key, which he replaced in his waistcoat +pocket and fingered from time to time. His old friend the notary, +feeling sure that the rich heiress would inevitably marry his nephew +the president, if Charles Grandet did not return, redoubled all his +attentions; he came every day to take Grandet’s orders, went on his +errands to Froidfond, to the farms and the fields and the vineyards, +sold the vintages, and turned everything into gold and silver, which +found their way in sacks to the secret hiding-place. + +At length the last struggle came, in which the strong frame of the +old man slowly yielded to destruction. He was determined to sit at +the chimney-corner facing the door of the secret room. He drew off and +rolled up all the coverings which were laid over him, saying to Nanon, +“Put them away, lock them up, for fear they should be stolen.” + +So long as he could open his eyes, in which his whole being had now +taken refuge, he turned them to the door behind which lay his treasures, +saying to his daughter, “Are they there? are they there?” in a tone of +voice which revealed a sort of panic fear. + +“Yes, my father,” she would answer. + +“Take care of the gold--put gold before me.” + +Eugenie would then spread coins on a table before him, and he would sit +for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like a child who, at +the moment it first begins to see, gazes in stupid contemplation at the +same object, and like the child, a distressful smile would flicker upon +his face. + +“It warms me!” he would sometimes say, as an expression of beatitude +stole across his features. + +When the cure of the parish came to administer the last sacraments, the +old man’s eyes, sightless, apparently, for some hours, kindled at the +sight of the cross, the candlesticks, and the holy-water vessel of +silver; he gazed at them fixedly, and his wen moved for the last time. +When the priest put the crucifix of silver-gilt to his lips, that he +might kiss the Christ, he made a frightful gesture, as if to seize it; +and that last effort cost him his life. He called Eugenie, whom he +did not see, though she was kneeling beside him bathing with tears his +stiffening hand, which was already cold. + +“My father, bless me!” she entreated. + +“Take care of it all. You will render me an account yonder!” he said, +proving by these last words that Christianity must always be the +religion of misers. + + * * * * * + +Eugenie Grandet was now alone in the world in that gray house, with none +but Nanon to whom she could turn with the certainty of being heard and +understood,--Nanon the sole being who loved her for herself and with +whom she could speak of her sorrows. La Grande Nanon was a providence +for Eugenie. She was not a servant, but a humble friend. After her +father’s death Eugenie learned from Maitre Cruchot that she possessed +an income of three hundred thousand francs from landed and personal +property in the arrondissement of Saumur; also six millions invested at +three per cent in the Funds (bought at sixty, and now worth seventy-six +francs); also two millions in gold coin, and a hundred thousand francs +in silver crown-pieces, besides all the interest which was still to be +collected. The sum total of her property reached seventeen millions. + +“Where is my cousin?” was her one thought. + +The day on which Maitre Cruchot handed in to his client a clear and +exact schedule of the whole inheritance, Eugenie remained alone with +Nanon, sitting beside the fireplace in the vacant hall, where all was +now a memory, from the chair on castors which her mother had sat in, to +the glass from which her cousin drank. + +“Nanon, we are alone--” + +“Yes, mademoiselle; and if I knew where he was, the darling, I’d go on +foot to find him.” + +“The ocean is between us,” she said. + +While the poor heiress wept in company of an old servant, in that cold +dark house, which was to her the universe, the whole province rang, from +Nantes to Orleans, with the seventeen millions of Mademoiselle Grandet. +Among her first acts she had settled an annuity of twelve hundred francs +on Nanon, who, already possessed of six hundred more, became a rich and +enviable match. In less than a month that good soul passed from single +to wedded life under the protection of Antoine Cornoiller, who +was appointed keeper of all Mademoiselle Grandet’s estates. Madame +Cornoiller possessed one striking advantage over her contemporaries. +Although she was fifty-nine years of age, she did not look more than +forty. Her strong features had resisted the ravages of time. Thanks to +the healthy customs of her semi-conventual life, she laughed at old age +from the vantage-ground of a rosy skin and an iron constitution. Perhaps +she never looked as well in her life as she did on her marriage-day. She +had all the benefits of her ugliness, and was big and fat and strong, +with a look of happiness on her indestructible features which made a +good many people envy Cornoiller. + +“Fast colors!” said the draper. + +“Quite likely to have children,” said the salt merchant. “She’s pickled +in brine, saving your presence.” + +“She is rich, and that fellow Cornoiller has done a good thing for +himself,” said a third man. + +When she came forth from the old house on her way to the parish church, +Nanon, who was loved by all the neighborhood, received many compliments +as she walked down the tortuous street. Eugenie had given her three +dozen silver forks and spoons as a wedding present. Cornoiller, amazed +at such magnificence, spoke of his mistress with tears in his eyes; +he would willingly have been hacked in pieces in her behalf. Madame +Cornoiller, appointed housekeeper to Mademoiselle Grandet, got as much +happiness out of her new position as she did from the possession of +a husband. She took charge of the weekly accounts; she locked up the +provisions and gave them out daily, after the manner of her defunct +master; she ruled over two servants,--a cook, and a maid whose business +it was to mend the house-linen and make mademoiselle’s dresses. +Cornoiller combined the functions of keeper and bailiff. It is +unnecessary to say that the women-servants selected by Nanon were +“perfect treasures.” Mademoiselle Grandet thus had four servants, whose +devotion was unbounded. The farmers perceived no change after Monsieur +Grandet’s death; the usages and customs he had sternly established were +scrupulously carried out by Monsieur and Madame Cornoiller. + +At thirty years of age Eugenie knew none of the joys of life. Her +pale, sad childhood had glided on beside a mother whose heart, always +misunderstood and wounded, had known only suffering. Leaving this life +joyfully, the mother pitied the daughter because she still must live; +and she left in her child’s soul some fugitive remorse and many lasting +regrets. Eugenie’s first and only love was a wellspring of sadness +within her. Meeting her lover for a few brief days, she had given him +her heart between two kisses furtively exchanged; then he had left her, +and a whole world lay between them. This love, cursed by her father, had +cost the life of her mother and brought her only sorrow, mingled with a +few frail hopes. Thus her upward spring towards happiness had wasted her +strength and given her nothing in exchange for it. In the life of +the soul, as in the physical life, there is an inspiration and a +respiration; the soul needs to absorb the sentiments of another soul and +assimilate them, that it may render them back enriched. Were it not for +this glorious human phenomenon, there would be no life for the heart; +air would be wanting; it would suffer, and then perish. Eugenie had +begun to suffer. For her, wealth was neither a power nor a consolation; +she could not live except through love, through religion, through faith +in the future. Love explained to her the mysteries of eternity. Her +heart and the Gospel taught her to know two worlds; she bathed, night +and day, in the depths of two infinite thoughts, which for her may have +had but one meaning. She drew back within herself, loving, and believing +herself beloved. For seven years her passion had invaded everything. Her +treasuries were not the millions whose revenues were rolling up; they +were Charles’s dressing-case, the portraits hanging above her bed, the +jewels recovered from her father and proudly spread upon a bed of wool +in a drawer of the oaken cabinet, the thimble of her aunt, used for a +while by her mother, which she wore religiously as she worked at a piece +of embroidery,--a Penelope’s web, begun for the sole purpose of putting +upon her finger that gold so rich in memories. + +It seemed unlikely that Mademoiselle Grandet would marry during the +period of her mourning. Her genuine piety was well known. Consequently +the Cruchots, whose policy was sagely guided by the old abbe, contented +themselves for the time being with surrounding the great heiress and +paying her the most affectionate attentions. Every evening the hall was +filled with a party of devoted Cruchotines, who sang the praises of +its mistress in every key. She had her doctor in ordinary, her grand +almoner, her chamberlain, her first lady of honor, her prime minister; +above all, her chancellor, a chancellor who would fain have said much to +her. If the heiress had wished for a train-bearer, one would instantly +have been found. She was a queen, obsequiously flattered. Flattery never +emanates from noble souls; it is the gift of little minds, who thus +still further belittle themselves to worm their way into the vital being +of the persons around whom they crawl. Flattery means self-interest. So +the people who, night after night, assembled in Mademoiselle Grandet’s +house (they called her Mademoiselle de Froidfond) outdid each other in +expressions of admiration. This concert of praise, never before bestowed +upon Eugenie, made her blush under its novelty; but insensibly her ear +became habituated to the sound, and however coarse the compliments might +be, she soon was so accustomed to hear her beauty lauded that if +any new-comer had seemed to think her plain, she would have felt the +reproach far more than she might have done eight years earlier. She +ended at last by loving the incense, which she secretly laid at the feet +of her idol. By degrees she grew accustomed to be treated as a sovereign +and to see her court pressing around her every evening. + +Monsieur de Bonfons was the hero of the little circle, where his wit, +his person, his education, his amiability, were perpetually praised. One +or another would remark that in seven years he had largely increased his +fortune, that Bonfons brought in at least ten thousand francs a year, +and was surrounded, like the other possessions of the Cruchots, by the +vast domains of the heiress. + +“Do you know, mademoiselle,” said an habitual visitor, “that the +Cruchots have an income of forty thousand francs among them!” + +“And then, their savings!” exclaimed an elderly female Cruchotine, +Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt. + +“A gentleman from Paris has lately offered Monsieur Cruchot two hundred +thousand francs for his practice,” said another. “He will sell it if he +is appointed _juge de paix_.” + +“He wants to succeed Monsieur de Bonfons as president of the Civil +courts, and is taking measures,” replied Madame d’Orsonval. “Monsieur le +president will certainly be made councillor.” + +“Yes, he is a very distinguished man,” said another,--“don’t you think +so, mademoiselle?” + +Monsieur de Bonfons endeavored to put himself in keeping with the role +he sought to play. In spite of his forty years, in spite of his dusky +and crabbed features, withered like most judicial faces, he dressed +in youthful fashions, toyed with a bamboo cane, never took snuff in +Mademoiselle de Froidfond’s house, and came in a white cravat and a +shirt whose pleated frill gave him a family resemblance to the race of +turkeys. He addressed the beautiful heiress familiarly, and spoke of her +as “Our dear Eugenie.” In short, except for the number of visitors, the +change from loto to whist, and the disappearance of Monsieur and Madame +Grandet, the scene was about the same as the one with which this history +opened. The pack were still pursuing Eugenie and her millions; but the +hounds, more in number, lay better on the scent, and beset the prey more +unitedly. If Charles could have dropped from the Indian Isles, he would +have found the same people and the same interests. Madame des Grassins, +to whom Eugenie was full of kindness and courtesy, still persisted in +tormenting the Cruchots. Eugenie, as in former days, was the central +figure of the picture; and Charles, as heretofore, would still have +been the sovereign of all. Yet there had been some progress. The flowers +which the president formerly presented to Eugenie on her birthdays and +fete-days had now become a daily institution. Every evening he brought +the rich heiress a huge and magnificent bouquet, which Madame Cornoiller +placed conspicuously in a vase, and secretly threw into a corner of the +court-yard when the visitors had departed. + +Early in the spring, Madame des Grassins attempted to trouble the peace +of the Cruchotines by talking to Eugenie of the Marquis de Froidfond, +whose ancient and ruined family might be restored if the heiress would +give him back his estates through marriage. Madame des Grassins rang +the changes on the peerage and the title of marquise, until, mistaking +Eugenie’s disdainful smile for acquiescence, she went about proclaiming +that the marriage with “Monsieur Cruchot” was not nearly as certain as +people thought. + +“Though Monsieur de Froidfond is fifty,” she said, “he does not look +older than Monsieur Cruchot. He is a widower, and he has children, +that’s true. But then he is a marquis; he will be peer of France; and +in times like these where you will find a better match? I know it for +a fact that Pere Grandet, when he put all his money into Froidfond, +intended to graft himself upon that stock; he often told me so. He was a +deep one, that old man!” + +“Ah! Nanon,” said Eugenie, one night as she was going to bed, “how is it +that in seven years he has never once written to me?” + + + + +XIII + +While these events were happening in Saumur, Charles was making his +fortune in the Indies. His commercial outfit had sold well. He began by +realizing a sum of six thousand dollars. Crossing the line had brushed a +good many cobwebs out of his brain; he perceived that the best means of +attaining fortune in tropical regions, as well as in Europe, was to +buy and sell men. He went to the coast of Africa and bought Negroes, +combining his traffic in human flesh with that of other merchandise +equally advantageous to his interests. He carried into this business an +activity which left him not a moment of leisure. He was governed by the +desire of reappearing in Paris with all the prestige of a large fortune, +and by the hope of regaining a position even more brilliant than the one +from which he had fallen. + +By dint of jostling with men, travelling through many lands, and +studying a variety of conflicting customs, his ideas had been modified +and had become sceptical. He ceased to have fixed principles of right +and wrong, for he saw what was called a crime in one country lauded as +a virtue in another. In the perpetual struggle of selfish interests his +heart grew cold, then contracted, and then dried up. The blood of the +Grandets did not fail of its destiny; Charles became hard, and eager +for prey. He sold Chinamen, Negroes, birds’ nests, children, artists; he +practised usury on a large scale; the habit of defrauding custom-houses +soon made him less scrupulous about the rights of his fellow men. +He went to the Island of St. Thomas and bought, for a mere song, +merchandise that had been captured by pirates, and took it to ports +where he could sell it at a good price. If the pure and noble face of +Eugenie went with him on his first voyage, like that image of the Virgin +which Spanish mariners fastened to their masts, if he attributed his +first success to the magic influence of the prayers and intercessions +of his gentle love, later on women of other kinds,--blacks, mulattoes, +whites, and Indian dancing-girls,--orgies and adventures in many lands, +completely effaced all recollection of his cousin, of Saumur, of the +house, the bench, the kiss snatched in the dark passage. He remembered +only the little garden shut in with crumbling walls, for it was there he +learned the fate that had overtaken him; but he rejected all connection +with his family. His uncle was an old dog who had filched his jewels; +Eugenie had no place in his heart nor in his thoughts, though she did +have a place in his accounts as a creditor for the sum of six thousand +francs. + +Such conduct and such ideas explain Charles Grandet’s silence. In the +Indies, at St. Thomas, on the coast of Africa, at Lisbon, and in the +United States the adventurer had taken the pseudonym of Shepherd, that +he might not compromise his own name. Charles Shepherd could safely +be indefatigable, bold, grasping, and greedy of gain, like a man who +resolves to snatch his fortune _quibus cumque viis_, and makes haste +to have done with villany, that he may spend the rest of his life as an +honest man. + +With such methods, prosperity was rapid and brilliant; and in 1827 +Charles Grandet returned to Bordeaux on the “Marie Caroline,” a fine +brig belonging to a royalist house of business. He brought with him +nineteen hundred thousand francs worth of gold-dust, from which he +expected to derive seven or eight per cent more at the Paris mint. +On the brig he met a gentleman-in-ordinary to His Majesty Charles X., +Monsieur d’Aubrion, a worthy old man who had committed the folly of +marrying a woman of fashion with a fortune derived from the West India +Islands. To meet the costs of Madame d’Aubrion’s extravagance, he had +gone out to the Indies to sell the property, and was now returning with +his family to France. + +Monsieur and Madame d’Aubrion, of the house of d’Aubrion de Buch, a +family of southern France, whose last _captal_, or chief, died before +1789, were now reduced to an income of about twenty thousand francs, and +they possessed an ugly daughter whom the mother was resolved to marry +without a _dot_,--the family fortune being scarcely sufficient for the +demands of her own life in Paris. This was an enterprise whose success +might have seemed problematical to most men of the world, in spite of +the cleverness with which such men credit a fashionable woman; in +fact, Madame d’Aubrion herself, when she looked at her daughter, almost +despaired of getting rid of her to any one, even to a man craving +connection with nobility. Mademoiselle d’Aubrion was a long, spare, +spindling demoiselle, like her namesake the insect; her mouth was +disdainful; over it hung a nose that was too long, thick at the end, +sallow in its normal condition, but very red after a meal,--a sort of +vegetable phenomenon which is particularly disagreeable when it appears +in the middle of a pale, dull, and uninteresting face. In one sense she +was all that a worldly mother, thirty-eight years of age and still +a beauty with claims to admiration, could have wished. However, to +counterbalance her personal defects, the marquise gave her daughter +a distinguished air, subjected her to hygienic treatment which +provisionally kept her nose at a reasonable flesh-tint, taught her the +art of dressing well, endowed her with charming manners, showed her the +trick of melancholy glances which interest a man and make him believe +that he has found a long-sought angel, taught her the manoeuvre of the +foot,--letting it peep beneath the petticoat, to show its tiny size, +at the moment when the nose became aggressively red; in short, Madame +d’Aubrion had cleverly made the very best of her offspring. By means +of full sleeves, deceptive pads, puffed dresses amply trimmed, +and high-pressure corsets, she had obtained such curious feminine +developments that she ought, for the instruction of mothers, to have +exhibited them in a museum. + +Charles became very intimate with Madame d’Aubrion precisely because she +was desirous of becoming intimate with him. Persons who were on board +the brig declared that the handsome Madame d’Aubrion neglected no means +of capturing so rich a son-in-law. On landing at Bordeaux in June, 1827, +Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle d’Aubrion, and Charles lodged at the same +hotel and started together for Paris. The hotel d’Aubrion was hampered +with mortgages; Charles was destined to free it. The mother told him how +delighted she would be to give up the ground-floor to a son-in-law. Not +sharing Monsieur d’Aubrion’s prejudices on the score of nobility, she +promised Charles Grandet to obtain a royal ordinance from Charles +X. which would authorize him, Grandet, to take the name and arms +of d’Aubrion and to succeed, by purchasing the entailed estate for +thirty-six thousand francs a year, to the titles of Captal de Buch and +Marquis d’Aubrion. By thus uniting their fortunes, living on good terms, +and profiting by sinecures, the two families might occupy the hotel +d’Aubrion with an income of over a hundred thousand francs. + +“And when a man has a hundred thousand francs a year, a name, a +family, and a position at court,--for I will get you appointed as +gentleman-of-the-bedchamber,--he can do what he likes,” she said to +Charles. “You can then become anything you choose,--master of the +rolls in the council of State, prefect, secretary to an embassy, the +ambassador himself, if you like. Charles X. is fond of d’Aubrion; they +have known each other from childhood.” + +Intoxicated with ambition, Charles toyed with the hopes thus cleverly +presented to him in the guise of confidences poured from heart to heart. +Believing his father’s affairs to have been settled by his uncle, he +imagined himself suddenly anchored in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,--that +social object of all desire, where, under shelter of Mademoiselle +Mathilde’s purple nose, he was to reappear as the Comte d’Aubrion, very +much as the Dreux reappeared in Breze. Dazzled by the prosperity of the +Restoration, which was tottering when he left France, fascinated by the +splendor of aristocratic ideas, his intoxication, which began on the +brig, increased after he reached Paris, and he finally determined to +take the course and reach the high position which the selfish hopes of +his would-be mother-in-law pointed out to him. His cousin counted for +no more than a speck in this brilliant perspective; but he went to see +Annette. True woman of the world, Annette advised her old friend to +make the marriage, and promised him her support in all his ambitious +projects. In her heart she was enchanted to fasten an ugly and +uninteresting girl on Charles, whose life in the West Indies had +rendered him very attractive. His complexion had bronzed, his manners +had grown decided and bold, like those of a man accustomed to make sharp +decisions, to rule, and to succeed. Charles breathed more at his ease in +Paris, conscious that he now had a part to play. + +Des Grassins, hearing of his return, of his approaching marriage and +his large fortune, came to see him, and inquired about the three hundred +thousand francs still required to settle his father’s debts. He found +Grandet in conference with a goldsmith, from whom he had ordered jewels +for Mademoiselle d’Aubrion’s _corbeille_, and who was then submitting +the designs. Charles had brought back magnificent diamonds, and the +value of their setting, together with the plate and jewelry of the new +establishment, amounted to more than two hundred thousand francs. He +received des Grassins, whom he did not recognize, with the impertinence +of a young man of fashion conscious of having killed four men in as many +duels in the Indies. Monsieur des Grassins had already called several +times. Charles listened to him coldly, and then replied, without fully +understanding what had been said to him,-- + +“My father’s affairs are not mine. I am much obliged, monsieur, for the +trouble you have been good enough to take,--by which, however, I really +cannot profit. I have not earned two millions by the sweat of my brow to +fling them at the head of my father’s creditors.” + +“But suppose that your father’s estate were within a few days to be +declared bankrupt?” + +“Monsieur, in a few days I shall be called the Comte d’Aubrion; you will +understand, therefore, that what you threaten is of no consequence to +me. Besides, you know as well as I do that when a man has an income of +a hundred thousand francs his father has _never failed_.” So saying, he +politely edged Monsieur des Grassins to the door. + + * * * * * + +At the beginning of August in the same year, Eugenie was sitting on the +little wooden bench where her cousin had sworn to love her eternally, +and where she usually breakfasted if the weather were fine. The poor +girl was happy, for the moment, in the fresh and joyous summer air, +letting her memory recall the great and the little events of her love +and the catastrophes which had followed it. The sun had just reached +the angle of the ruined wall, so full of chinks, which no one, through +a caprice of the mistress, was allowed to touch, though Cornoiller often +remarked to his wife that “it would fall and crush somebody one of these +days.” At this moment the postman knocked, and gave a letter to Madame +Cornoiller, who ran into the garden, crying out: + +“Mademoiselle, a letter!” She gave it to her mistress, adding, “Is it +the one you expected?” + +The words rang as loudly in the heart of Eugenie as they echoed in sound +from wall to wall of the court and garden. + +“Paris--from him--he has returned!” + +Eugenie turned pale and held the letter for a moment. She trembled +so violently that she could not break the seal. La Grande Nanon stood +before her, both hands on her hips, her joy puffing as it were like +smoke through the cracks of her brown face. + +“Read it, mademoiselle!” + +“Ah, Nanon, why did he return to Paris? He went from Saumur.” + +“Read it, and you’ll find out.” + +Eugenie opened the letter with trembling fingers. A cheque on the house +of “Madame des Grassins and Coret, of Saumur,” fluttered down. Nanon +picked it up. + + My dear Cousin,-- + +“No longer ‘Eugenie,’” she thought, and her heart quailed. + + You-- + +“He once said ‘thou.’” She folded her arms and dared not read another +word; great tears gathered in her eyes. + +“Is he dead?” asked Nanon. + +“If he were, he could not write,” said Eugenie. + +She then read the whole letter, which was as follows: + + My dear Cousin,--You will, I am sure, hear with pleasure of the + success of my enterprise. You brought me luck; I have come back + rich, and I have followed the advice of my uncle, whose death, + together with that of my aunt, I have just learned from Monsieur + des Grassins. The death of parents is in the course of nature, and + we must succeed them. I trust you are by this time consoled. + Nothing can resist time, as I am well aware. Yes, my dear cousin, + the day of illusions is, unfortunately, gone for me. How could it + be otherwise? Travelling through many lands, I have reflected upon + life. I was a child when I went away,--I have come back a man. + To-day, I think of many I did not dream of then. You are free, my + dear cousin, and I am free still. Nothing apparently hinders the + realization of our early hopes; but my nature is too loyal to hide + from you the situation in which I find myself. I have not + forgotten our relations; I have always remembered, throughout my + long wanderings, the little wooden seat-- + +Eugenie rose as if she were sitting on live coals, and went away and sat +down on the stone steps of the court. + + --the little wooden seat where we vowed to love each other + forever, the passage, the gray hall, my attic chamber, and the + night when, by your delicate kindness, you made my future easier + to me. Yes, these recollections sustained my courage; I said in my + heart that you were thinking of me at the hour we had agreed upon. + Have you always looked at the clouds at nine o’clock? Yes, I am + sure of it. I cannot betray so true a friendship,--no, I must not + deceive you. An alliance has been proposed to me which satisfies + all my ideas of matrimony. Love in marriage is a delusion. My + present experience warns me that in marrying we are bound to obey + all social laws and meet the conventional demands of the world. + Now, between you and me there are differences which might affect + your future, my dear cousin, even more than they would mine. I + will not here speak of your customs and inclinations, your + education, nor yet of your habits, none of which are in keeping + with Parisian life, or with the future which I have marked out for + myself. My intention is to keep my household on a stately footing, + to receive much company,--in short, to live in the world; and I + think I remember that you love a quiet and tranquil life. I will + be frank, and make you the judge of my situation; you have the + right to understand it and to judge it. + + I possess at the present moment an income of eighty thousand + francs. This fortune enables me to marry into the family of + Aubrion, whose heiress, a young girl nineteen years of age, brings + me a title, a place of gentleman-of-the-bed-chamber to His + Majesty, and a very brilliant position. I will admit to you, my + dear cousin, that I do not love Mademoiselle d’Aubrion; but in + marrying her I secure to my children a social rank whose + advantages will one day be incalculable: monarchical principles + are daily coming more and more into favor. Thus in course of time + my son, when he becomes Marquis d’Aubrion, having, as he then will + have, an entailed estate with a rental of forty thousand francs a + year, can obtain any position in the State which he may think + proper to select. We owe ourselves to our children. + + You see, my cousin, with what good faith I lay the state of my + heart, my hopes, and my fortune before you. Possibly, after seven + years’ separation, you have yourself forgotten our youthful loves; + but I have never forgotten either your kindness or my own words. I + remember all, even words that were lightly uttered,--words by + which a man less conscientious than I, with a heart less youthful + and less upright, would scarcely feel himself bound. In telling + you that the marriage I propose to make is solely one of + convenience, that I still remember our childish love, am I not + putting myself entirely in your hands and making you the mistress + of my fate? am I not telling you that if I must renounce my social + ambitions, I shall willingly content myself with the pure and + simple happiness of which you have shown me so sweet an image? + +“Tan, ta, ta--tan, ta, ti,” sang Charles Grandet to the air of _Non piu +andrai_, as he signed himself,-- + +Your devoted cousin, Charles. + + +“Thunder! that’s doing it handsomely!” he said, as he looked about him +for the cheque; having found it, he added the words:-- + + P.S.--I enclose a cheque on the des Grassins bank for eight + thousand francs to your order, payable in gold, which includes the + capital and interest of the sum you were kind enough to lend me. I + am expecting a case from Bordeaux which contains a few things + which you must allow me to offer you as a mark of my unceasing + gratitude. You can send my dressing-case by the diligence to the + hotel d’Aubrion, rue Hillerin-Bertin. + +“By the diligence!” said Eugenie. “A thing for which I would have laid +down my life!” + +Terrible and utter disaster! The ship went down, leaving not a spar, not +a plank, on a vast ocean of hope! Some women when they see themselves +abandoned will try to tear their lover from the arms of a rival, they +will kill her, and rush to the ends of the earth,--to the scaffold, to +their tomb. That, no doubt, is fine; the motive of the crime is a great +passion, which awes even human justice. Other women bow their heads +and suffer in silence; they go their way dying, resigned, weeping, +forgiving, praying, and recollecting, till they draw their last breath. +This is love,--true love, the love of angels, the proud love which lives +upon its anguish and dies of it. Such was Eugenie’s love after she had +read that dreadful letter. She raised her eyes to heaven, thinking of +the last words uttered by her dying mother, who, with the prescience +of death, had looked into the future with clear and penetrating eyes: +Eugenie, remembering that prophetic death, that prophetic life, measured +with one glance her own destiny. Nothing was left for her; she could +only unfold her wings, stretch upward to the skies, and live in prayer +until the day of her deliverance. + +“My mother was right,” she said, weeping. “Suffer--and die!” + + + + +XIV + +Eugenie came slowly back from the garden to the house, and avoided +passing, as was her custom, through the corridor. But the memory of her +cousin was in the gray old hall and on the chimney-piece, where stood +a certain saucer and the old Sevres sugar-bowl which she used every +morning at her breakfast. + +This day was destined to be solemn throughout and full of events. Nanon +announced the cure of the parish church. He was related to the Cruchots, +and therefore in the interests of Monsieur de Bonfons. For some time +past the old abbe had urged him to speak to Mademoiselle Grandet, from +a purely religious point of view, about the duty of marriage for a woman +in her position. When she saw her pastor, Eugenie supposed he had come +for the thousand francs which she gave monthly to the poor, and she told +Nanon to go and fetch them; but the cure only smiled. + +“To-day, mademoiselle,” he said, “I have come to speak to you about +a poor girl in whom the whole town of Saumur takes an interest, who, +through lack of charity to herself, neglects her Christian duties.” + +“Monsieur le cure, you have come to me at a moment when I cannot think +of my neighbor, I am filled with thoughts of myself. I am very unhappy; +my only refuge is in the Church; her bosom is large enough to hold all +human woe, her love so full that we may draw from its depths and never +drain it dry.” + +“Mademoiselle, in speaking of this young girl we shall speak of you. +Listen! If you wish to insure your salvation you have only two paths to +take,--either leave the world or obey its laws. Obey either your earthly +destiny or your heavenly destiny.” + +“Ah! your voice speaks to me when I need to hear a voice. Yes, God has +sent you to me; I will bid farewell to the world and live for God alone, +in silence and seclusion.” + +“My daughter, you must think long before you take so violent a step. +Marriage is life, the veil is death.” + +“Yes, death,--a quick death!” she said, with dreadful eagerness. + +“Death? but you have great obligations to fulfil to society, +mademoiselle. Are you not the mother of the poor, to whom you give +clothes and wood in winter and work in summer? Your great fortune is a +loan which you must return, and you have sacredly accepted it as such. +To bury yourself in a convent would be selfishness; to remain an old +maid is to fail in duty. In the first place, can you manage your vast +property alone? May you not lose it? You will have law-suits, you will +find yourself surrounded by inextricable difficulties. Believe your +pastor: a husband is useful; you are bound to preserve what God has +bestowed upon you. I speak to you as a precious lamb of my flock. You +love God too truly not to find your salvation in the midst of his world, +of which you are noble ornament and to which you owe your example.” + +At this moment Madame des Grassins was announced. She came incited by +vengeance and the sense of a great despair. + +“Mademoiselle,” she said--“Ah! here is monsieur le cure; I am silent. +I came to speak to you on business; but I see that you are conferring +with--” + +“Madame,” said the cure, “I leave the field to you.” + +“Oh! monsieur le cure,” said Eugenie, “come back later; your support is +very necessary to me just now.” + +“Ah, yes, indeed, my poor child!” said Madame des Grassins. + +“What do you mean?” asked Eugenie and the cure together. + +“Don’t I know about your cousin’s return, and his marriage with +Mademoiselle d’Aubrion? A woman doesn’t carry her wits in her pocket.” + +Eugenie blushed, and remained silent for a moment. From this day forth +she assumed the impassible countenance for which her father had been so +remarkable. + +“Well, madame,” she presently said, ironically, “no doubt I carry my +wits in my pocket, for I do not understand you. Speak, say what you +mean, before monsieur le cure; you know he is my director.” + +“Well, then, mademoiselle, here is what des Grassins writes me. Read +it.” + +Eugenie read the following letter:-- + + My dear Wife,--Charles Grandet has returned from the Indies and + has been in Paris about a month-- + +“A month!” thought Eugenie, her hand falling to her side. After a pause +she resumed the letter,-- + + I had to dance attendance before I was allowed to see the future + Vicomte d’Aubrion. Though all Paris is talking of his marriage and + the banns are published-- + +“He wrote to me after that!” thought Eugenie. She did not conclude the +thought; she did not cry out, as a Parisian woman would have done, “The +villain!” but though she said it not, contempt was none the less present +in her mind. + + The marriage, however, will not come off. The Marquis d’Aubrion + will never give his daughter to the son of a bankrupt. I went to + tell Grandet of the steps his uncle and I took in his father’s + business, and the clever manoeuvres by which we had managed to + keep the creditor’s quiet until the present time. The insolent + fellow had the face to say to me--to me, who for five years have + devoted myself night and day to his interests and his honor!--that + _his father’s affairs were not his_! A solicitor would have had + the right to demand fees amounting to thirty or forty thousand + francs, one per cent on the total of the debts. But patience! + there are twelve hundred thousand francs legitimately owing to the + creditors, and I shall at once declare his father a bankrupt. + + I went into this business on the word of that old crocodile + Grandet, and I have made promises in the name of his family. If + Monsieur de vicomte d’Aubrion does not care for his honor, I care + for mine. I shall explain my position to the creditors. Still, I + have too much respect for Mademoiselle Eugenie (to whom under + happier circumstances we once hoped to be allied) to act in this + matter before you have spoken to her about it-- + +There Eugenie paused, and coldly returned the letter without finishing +it. + +“I thank you,” she said to Madame des Grassins. + +“Ah! you have the voice and manner of your deceased father,” Madame des +Grassins replied. + +“Madame, you have eight thousand francs to pay us,” said Nanon, +producing Charles’s cheque. + +“That’s true; have the kindness to come with me now, Madame Cornoiller.” + +“Monsieur le cure,” said Eugenie with a noble composure, inspired by the +thought she was about to express, “would it be a sin to remain a virgin +after marriage?” + +“That is a case of conscience whose solution is not within my knowledge. +If you wish to know what the celebrated Sanchez says of it in his +treatise ‘De Matrimonio,’ I shall be able to tell you to-morrow.” + +The cure went away; Mademoiselle Grandet went up to her father’s secret +room and spent the day there alone, without coming down to dinner, in +spite of Nanon’s entreaties. She appeared in the evening at the hour +when the usual company began to arrive. Never was the old hall so +full as on this occasion. The news of Charles’s return and his foolish +treachery had spread through the whole town. But however watchful the +curiosity of the visitors might be, it was left unsatisfied. Eugenie, +who expected scrutiny, allowed none of the cruel emotions that wrung her +soul to appear on the calm surface of her face. She was able to show a +smiling front in answer to all who tried to testify their interest by +mournful looks or melancholy speeches. She hid her misery behind a veil +of courtesy. Towards nine o’clock the games ended and the players left +the tables, paying their losses and discussing points of the game as +they joined the rest of the company. At the moment when the whole party +rose to take leave, an unexpected and striking event occurred, which +resounded through the length and breadth of Saumur, from thence through +the arrondissement, and even to the four surrounding prefectures. + +“Stay, monsieur le president,” said Eugenie to Monsieur de Bonfons as +she saw him take his cane. + +There was not a person in that numerous assembly who was unmoved by +these words. The president turned pale, and was forced to sit down. + +“The president gets the millions,” said Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt. + +“It is plain enough; the president marries Mademoiselle Grandet,” cried +Madame d’Orsonval. + +“All the trumps in one hand,” said the abbe. + +“A love game,” said the notary. + +Each and all said his say, made his pun, and looked at the heiress +mounted on her millions as on a pedestal. The drama begun nine years +before had reached its conclusion. To tell the president, in face of +all Saumur, to “stay,” was surely the same thing as proclaiming him her +husband. In provincial towns social conventionalities are so rigidly +enforced than an infraction like this constituted a solemn promise. + +“Monsieur le president,” said Eugenie in a voice of some emotion when +they were left alone, “I know what pleases you in me. Swear to leave me +free during my whole life, to claim none of the rights which marriage +will give you over me, and my hand is yours. Oh!” she added, seeing him +about to kneel at her feet, “I have more to say. I must not deceive you. +In my heart I cherish one inextinguishable feeling. Friendship is the +only sentiment which I can give to a husband. I wish neither to affront +him nor to violate the laws of my own heart. But you can possess my hand +and my fortune only at the cost of doing me an inestimable service.” + +“I am ready for all things,” said the president. + +“Here are fifteen hundred thousand francs,” she said, drawing from her +bosom a certificate of a hundred shares in the Bank of France. “Go to +Paris,--not to-morrow, but instantly. Find Monsieur des Grassins, learn +the names of my uncle’s creditors, call them together, pay them in full +all that was owing, with interest at five per cent from the day the debt +was incurred to the present time. Be careful to obtain a full and legal +receipt, in proper form, before a notary. You are a magistrate, and I +can trust this matter in your hands. You are a man of honor; I will put +faith in your word, and meet the dangers of life under shelter of your +name. Let us have mutual indulgence. We have known each other so long +that we are almost related; you would not wish to render me unhappy.” + +The president fell at the feet of the rich heiress, his heart beating +and wrung with joy. + +“I will be your slave!” he said. + +“When you obtain the receipts, monsieur,” she resumed, with a cold +glance, “you will take them with all the other papers to my cousin +Grandet, and you will give him this letter. On your return I will keep +my word.” + +The president understood perfectly that he owed the acquiescence of +Mademoiselle Grandet to some bitterness of love, and he made haste to +obey her orders, lest time should effect a reconciliation between the +pair. + +When Monsieur de Bonfons left her, Eugenie fell back in her chair and +burst into tears. All was over. + +The president took the mail-post, and reached Paris the next evening. +The morning after his arrival he went to see des Grassins, and together +they summoned the creditors to meet at the notary’s office where the +vouchers had been deposited. Not a single creditor failed to be present. +Creditors though they were, justice must be done to them,--they were all +punctual. Monsieur de Bonfons, in the name of Mademoiselle Grandet, paid +them the amount of their claims with interest. The payment of interest +was a remarkable event in the Parisian commerce of that day. When the +receipts were all legally registered, and des Grassins had received for +his services the sum of fifty thousand francs allowed to him by Eugenie, +the president made his way to the hotel d’Aubrion and found Charles +just entering his own apartment after a serious encounter with his +prospective father-in-law. The old marquis had told him plainly that +he should not marry his daughter until all the creditors of Guillaume +Grandet had been paid in full. + +The president gave Charles the following letter:-- + + My Cousin,--Monsieur le president de Bonfons has undertaken to + place in your hands the aquittance for all claims upon my uncle, + also a receipt by which I acknowledge having received from you the + sum total of those claims. I have heard of a possible failure, and + I think that the son of a bankrupt may not be able to marry + Mademoiselle d’Aubrion. Yes, my cousin, you judged rightly of my + mind and of my manners. I have, it is true, no part in the world; + I understand neither its calculations nor its customs; and I could + not give you the pleasures that you seek in it. Be happy, + according to the social conventions to which you have sacrificed + our love. To make your happiness complete I can only offer you + your father’s honor. Adieu! You will always have a faithful friend + in your cousin + +Eugenie. + + +The president smiled at the exclamation which the ambitious young man +could not repress as he received the documents. + +“We shall announce our marriages at the same time,” remarked Monsieur de +Bonfons. + +“Ah! you marry Eugenie? Well, I am delighted; she is a good girl. But,” + added Charles, struck with a luminous idea, “she must be rich?” + +“She had,” said the president, with a mischievous smile, “about nineteen +millions four days ago; but she has only seventeen millions to-day.” + +Charles looked at him thunderstruck. + +“Seventeen mil--” + +“Seventeen millions; yes, monsieur. We shall muster, Mademoiselle +Grandet and I, an income of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs when +we marry.” + +“My dear cousin,” said Charles, recovering a little of his assurance, +“we can push each other’s fortunes.” + +“Agreed,” said the president. “Here is also a little case which I am +charged to give into your own hands,” he added, placing on the table the +leather box which contained the dressing-case. + +“Well, my dear friend,” said Madame d’Aubrion, entering the room without +noticing the president, “don’t pay any attention to what poor Monsieur +d’Aubrion has just said to you; the Duchesse de Chaulieu has turned his +head. I repeat, nothing shall interfere with the marriage--” + +“Very good, madame. The three millions which my father owed were paid +yesterday.” + +“In money?” she asked. + +“Yes, in full, capital and interest; and I am about to do honor to his +memory--” + +“What folly!” exclaimed his mother-in-law. “Who is this?” she whispered +in Grandet’s ear, perceiving the president. + +“My man of business,” he answered in a low voice. + +The marquise bowed superciliously to Monsieur de Bonfons. + +“We are pushing each other’s fortunes already,” said the president, +taking up his hat. “Good-by, cousin.” + +“He is laughing at me, the old cockatoo! I’d like to put six inches of +iron into him!” muttered Charles. + +The president was out of hearing. Three days later Monsieur de Bonfons, +on his return to Saumur, announced his marriage with Eugenie. Six months +after the marriage he was appointed councillor in the Cour royale at +Angers. Before leaving Saumur Madame de Bonfons had the gold of certain +jewels, once so precious to her, melted up, and put, together with the +eight thousand francs paid back by her cousin, into a golden pyx, which +she gave to the parish church where she had so long prayed for _him_. +She now spent her time between Angers and Saumur. Her husband, who had +shown some public spirit on a certain occasion, became a judge in the +superior courts, and finally, after a few years, president of them. He +was anxiously awaiting a general election, in the hope of being returned +to the Chamber of deputies. He hankered after a peerage; and then-- + +“The king will be his cousin, won’t he?” said Nanon, la Grande Nanon, +Madame Cornoiller, bourgeoise of Saumur, as she listened to her +mistress, who was recounting the honors to which she was called. + +Nevertheless, Monsieur de Bonfons (he had finally abolished his +patronymic of Cruchot) did not realize any of his ambitious ideas. He +died eight days after his election as deputy of Saumur. God, who sees +all and never strikes amiss, punished him, no doubt, for his sordid +calculations and the legal cleverness with which, _accurante Cruchot_, +he had drawn up his marriage contract, in which husband and wife gave to +each other, “in case they should have no children, their entire property +of every kind, landed or otherwise, without exception or reservation, +dispensing even with the formality of an inventory; provided that said +omission of said inventory shall not injure their heirs and assigns, it +being understood that this deed of gift is, etc., etc.” This clause +of the contract will explain the profound respect which monsieur le +president always testified for the wishes, and above all, for the +solitude of Madame de Bonfons. Women cited him as the most considerate +and delicate of men, pitied him, and even went so far as to find fault +with the passion and grief of Eugenie, blaming her, as women know so +well how to blame, with cruel but discreet insinuation. + +“Madame de Bonfons must be very ill to leave her husband entirely alone. +Poor woman! Is she likely to get well? What is it? Something gastric? +A cancer?”--“She has grown perfectly yellow. She ought to consult some +celebrated doctor in Paris.”--“How can she be happy without a child? +They say she loves her husband; then why not give him an heir?--in +his position, too!”--“Do you know, it is really dreadful! If it is the +result of mere caprice, it is unpardonable. Poor president!” + +Endowed with the delicate perception which a solitary soul acquires +through constant meditation, through the exquisite clear-sightedness +with which a mind aloof from life fastens on all that falls within +its sphere, Eugenie, taught by suffering and by her later education to +divine thought, knew well that the president desired her death that he +might step into possession of their immense fortune, augmented by the +property of his uncle the notary and his uncle the abbe, whom it had +lately pleased God to call to himself. The poor solitary pitied +the president. Providence avenged her for the calculations and the +indifference of a husband who respected the hopeless passion on which +she spent her life because it was his surest safeguard. To give life to +a child would give death to his hopes,--the hopes of selfishness, the +joys of ambition, which the president cherished as he looked into the +future. + +God thus flung piles of gold upon this prisoner to whom gold was a +matter of indifference, who longed for heaven, who lived, pious and +good, in holy thoughts, succoring the unfortunate in secret, and never +wearying of such deeds. Madame de Bonfons became a widow at thirty-six. +She is still beautiful, but with the beauty of a woman who is nearly +forty years of age. Her face is white and placid and calm; her voice +gentle and self-possessed; her manners are simple. She has the noblest +qualities of sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never soiled her +soul by contact with the world; but she has also the rigid bearing of +an old maid and the petty habits inseparable from the narrow round of +provincial life. In spite of her vast wealth, she lives as the poor +Eugenie Grandet once lived. The fire is never lighted on her hearth +until the day when her father allowed it to be lighted in the hall, and +it is put out in conformity with the rules which governed her youthful +years. She dresses as her mother dressed. The house in Saumur, without +sun, without warmth, always in shadow, melancholy, is an image of her +life. She carefully accumulates her income, and might seem parsimonious +did she not disarm criticism by a noble employment of her wealth. Pious +and charitable institutions, a hospital for old age, Christian schools +for children, a public library richly endowed, bear testimony against +the charge of avarice which some persons lay at her door. The churches +of Saumur owe much of their embellishment to her. Madame de Bonfons +(sometimes ironically spoken of as mademoiselle) inspires for the most +part reverential respect: and yet that noble heart, beating only with +tenderest emotions, has been, from first to last, subjected to the +calculations of human selfishness; money has cast its frigid influence +upon that hallowed life and taught distrust of feelings to a woman who +is all feeling. + +“I have none but you to love me,” she says to Nanon. + +The hand of this woman stanches the secret wounds in many families. +She goes on her way to heaven attended by a train of benefactions. The +grandeur of her soul redeems the narrowness of her education and the +petty habits of her early life. + +Such is the history of Eugenie Grandet, who is in the world but not of +it; who, created to be supremely a wife and mother, has neither husband +nor children nor family. Lately there has been some question of her +marrying again. The Saumur people talk of her and of the Marquis de +Froidfond, whose family are beginning to beset the rich widow just as, +in former days, the Cruchots laid siege to the rich heiress. Nanon and +Cornoiller are, it is said, in the interests of the marquis. Nothing +could be more false. Neither la Grande Nanon nor Cornoiller has +sufficient mind to understand the corruptions of the world. + + + + +ADDENDUM + +The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. + + Chaulieu, Eleonore, Duchesse de + Letters of Two Brides + + Grandet, Victor-Ange-Guillaume + The Firm of Nucingen + + Grandet, Charles + The Firm of Nucingen + + Keller, Francois + Domestic Peace + Cesar Birotteau + The Government Clerks + The Member for Arcis + + Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des + The Muse of the Department + A Bachelor’s Establishment + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + The Government Clerks + Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life + Ursule Mirouet + + Nathan, Madame Raoul + The Muse of the Department + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life + The Government Clerks + A Bachelor’s Establishment + Ursule Mirouet + The Imaginary Mistress + A Prince of Bohemia + A Daughter of Eve + The Unconscious Humorists + + Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de + Father Goriot + The Thirteen + Cesar Birotteau + Melmoth Reconciled + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + The Commission in Lunacy + Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life + Modeste Mignon + The Firm of Nucingen + Another Study of Woman + A Daughter of Eve + The Member for Arcis + + Roguin + Cesar Birotteau + Eugenie Grandet + A Bachelor’s Establishment + The Vendetta + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENIE GRANDET *** + +***** This file should be named 1715-0.txt or 1715-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/1/1715/ + +Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/1715-0.zip b/1715-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b31677 --- /dev/null +++ b/1715-0.zip diff --git a/1715-h.zip b/1715-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0557543 --- /dev/null +++ b/1715-h.zip diff --git a/1715-h/1715-h.htm b/1715-h/1715-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc28779 --- /dev/null +++ b/1715-h/1715-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9381 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Eugenie Grandet + +Author: Honore de Balzac + +Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley + +Release Date: March 1, 2010 [EBook #1715] +Last Updated: November 22, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENIE GRANDET *** + + + + +Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger + + + + + + +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + EUGENIE GRANDET + </h1> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Honore De Balzac + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h3> + Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley + </h3> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + DEDICATION + + To Maria. + + May your name, that of one whose portrait is the noblest ornament + of this work, lie on its opening pages like a branch of sacred + box, taken from an unknown tree, but sanctified by religion, and + kept ever fresh and green by pious hands to bless the house. + + De Balzac. +</pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h2> + Contents + </h2> + <h3> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>EUGENIE GRANDET</b> </a> + </h3> + <h3> + </h3> + <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + <tr> + <td> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII </a> + </p> + </td> + <td> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIV </a> + </p> + </td> + </tr> + </table> + <h3> + <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> ADDENDUM </a> + </h3> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h1> + EUGENIE GRANDET + </h1> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I + </h2> + <p> + There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires + melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary + moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, + perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the + skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger + might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the + pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers + beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step. + </p> + <p> + Such elements of sadness formed the physiognomy, as it were, of a + dwelling-house in Saumur which stands at the end of the steep street + leading to the chateau in the upper part of the town. This street—now + little frequented, hot in summer, cold in winter, dark in certain sections—is + remarkable for the resonance of its little pebbly pavement, always clean + and dry, for the narrowness of its tortuous road-way, for the peaceful + stillness of its houses, which belong to the Old town and are over-topped + by the ramparts. Houses three centuries old are still solid, though built + of wood, and their divers aspects add to the originality which commends + this portion of Saumur to the attention of artists and antiquaries. + </p> + <p> + It is difficult to pass these houses without admiring the enormous oaken + beams, their ends carved into fantastic figures, which crown with a black + bas-relief the lower floor of most of them. In one place these transverse + timbers are covered with slate and mark a bluish line along the frail wall + of a dwelling covered by a roof <i>en colombage</i> which bends beneath + the weight of years, and whose rotting shingles are twisted by the + alternate action of sun and rain. In another place blackened, worn-out + window-sills, with delicate sculptures now scarcely discernible, seem too + weak to bear the brown clay pots from which springs the heart’s-ease or + the rose-bush of some poor working-woman. Farther on are doors studded + with enormous nails, where the genius of our forefathers has traced + domestic hieroglyphics, of which the meaning is now lost forever. Here a + Protestant attested his belief; there a Leaguer cursed Henry IV.; + elsewhere some bourgeois has carved the insignia of his <i>noblesse de + cloches</i>, symbols of his long-forgotten magisterial glory. The whole + history of France is there. + </p> + <p> + Next to a tottering house with roughly plastered walls, where an artisan + enshrines his tools, rises the mansion of a country gentleman, on the + stone arch of which above the door vestiges of armorial bearings may still + be seen, battered by the many revolutions that have shaken France since + 1789. In this hilly street the ground-floors of the merchants are neither + shops nor warehouses; lovers of the Middle Ages will here find the <i>ouvrouere</i> + of our forefathers in all its naive simplicity. These low rooms, which + have no shop-frontage, no show-windows, in fact no glass at all, are deep + and dark and without interior or exterior decoration. Their doors open in + two parts, each roughly iron-bound; the upper half is fastened back within + the room, the lower half, fitted with a spring-bell, swings continually to + and fro. Air and light reach the damp den within, either through the upper + half of the door, or through an open space between the ceiling and a low + front wall, breast-high, which is closed by solid shutters that are taken + down every morning, put up every evening, and held in place by heavy iron + bars. + </p> + <p> + This wall serves as a counter for the merchandise. No delusive display is + there; only samples of the business, whatever it may chance to be,—such, + for instance, as three or four tubs full of codfish and salt, a few + bundles of sail-cloth, cordage, copper wire hanging from the joists above, + iron hoops for casks ranged along the wall, or a few pieces of cloth upon + the shelves. Enter. A neat girl, glowing with youth, wearing a white + kerchief, her arms red and bare, drops her knitting and calls her father + or her mother, one of whom comes forward and sells you what you want, + phlegmatically, civilly, or arrogantly, according to his or her individual + character, whether it be a matter of two sous’ or twenty thousand francs’ + worth of merchandise. You may see a cooper, for instance, sitting in his + doorway and twirling his thumbs as he talks with a neighbor. To all + appearance he owns nothing more than a few miserable boat-ribs and two or + three bundles of laths; but below in the port his teeming wood-yard + supplies all the cooperage trade of Anjou. He knows to a plank how many + casks are needed if the vintage is good. A hot season makes him rich, a + rainy season ruins him; in a single morning puncheons worth eleven francs + have been known to drop to six. In this country, as in Touraine, + atmospheric vicissitudes control commercial life. Wine-growers, + proprietors, wood-merchants, coopers, inn-keepers, mariners, all keep + watch of the sun. They tremble when they go to bed lest they should hear + in the morning of a frost in the night; they dread rain, wind, drought, + and want water, heat, and clouds to suit their fancy. A perpetual duel + goes on between the heavens and their terrestrial interests. The barometer + smooths, saddens, or makes merry their countenances, turn and turn about. + From end to end of this street, formerly the Grand’Rue de Saumur, the + words: “Here’s golden weather,” are passed from door to door; or each man + calls to his neighbor: “It rains louis,” knowing well what a sunbeam or + the opportune rainfall is bringing him. + </p> + <p> + On Saturdays after midday, in the fine season, not one sou’s worth of + merchandise can be bought from these worthy traders. Each has his + vineyard, his enclosure of fields, and all spend two days in the country. + This being foreseen, and purchases, sales, and profits provided for, the + merchants have ten or twelve hours to spend in parties of pleasure, in + making observations, in criticisms, and in continual spying. A housewife + cannot buy a partridge without the neighbors asking the husband if it were + cooked to a turn. A young girl never puts her head near a window that she + is not seen by idling groups in the street. Consciences are held in the + light; and the houses, dark, silent, impenetrable as they seem, hide no + mysteries. Life is almost wholly in the open air; every household sits at + its own threshold, breakfasts, dines, and quarrels there. No one can pass + along the street without being examined; in fact formerly, when a stranger + entered a provincial town he was bantered and made game of from door to + door. From this came many good stories, and the nickname <i>copieux</i>, + which was applied to the inhabitants of Angers, who excelled in such urban + sarcasms. + </p> + <p> + The ancient mansions of the old town of Saumur are at the top of this + hilly street, and were formerly occupied by the nobility of the + neighborhood. The melancholy dwelling where the events of the following + history took place is one of these mansions,—venerable relics of a + century in which men and things bore the characteristics of simplicity + which French manners and customs are losing day by day. Follow the + windings of the picturesque thoroughfare, whose irregularities awaken + recollections that plunge the mind mechanically into reverie, and you will + see a somewhat dark recess, in the centre of which is hidden the door of + the house of Monsieur Grandet. It is impossible to understand the force of + this provincial expression—the house of Monsieur Grandet—without + giving the biography of Monsieur Grandet himself. + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Grandet enjoyed a reputation in Saumur whose causes and effects + can never be fully understood by those who have not, at one time or + another, lived in the provinces. In 1789 Monsieur Grandet—still + called by certain persons le Pere Grandet, though the number of such old + persons has perceptibly diminished—was a master-cooper, able to + read, write, and cipher. At the period when the French Republic offered + for sale the church property in the arrondissement of Saumur, the cooper, + then forty years of age, had just married the daughter of a rich + wood-merchant. Supplied with the ready money of his own fortune and his + wife’s <i>dot</i>, in all about two thousand louis-d’or, Grandet went to + the newly established “district,” where, with the help of two hundred + double louis given by his father-in-law to the surly republican who + presided over the sales of the national domain, he obtained for a song, + legally if not legitimately, one of the finest vineyards in the + arrondissement, an old abbey, and several farms. The inhabitants of Saumur + were so little revolutionary that they thought Pere Grandet a bold man, a + republican, and a patriot with a mind open to all the new ideas; though in + point of fact it was open only to vineyards. He was appointed a member of + the administration of Saumur, and his pacific influence made itself felt + politically and commercially. Politically, he protected the ci-devant + nobles, and prevented, to the extent of his power, the sale of the lands + and property of the <i>emigres</i>; commercially, he furnished the + Republican armies with two or three thousand puncheons of white wine, and + took his pay in splendid fields belonging to a community of women whose + lands had been reserved for the last lot. + </p> + <p> + Under the Consulate Grandet became mayor, governed wisely, and harvested + still better pickings. Under the Empire he was called Monsieur Grandet. + Napoleon, however, did not like republicans, and superseded Monsieur + Grandet (who was supposed to have worn the Phrygian cap) by a man of his + own surroundings, a future baron of the Empire. Monsieur Grandet quitted + office without regret. He had constructed in the interests of the town + certain fine roads which led to his own property; his house and lands, + very advantageously assessed, paid moderate taxes; and since the + registration of his various estates, the vineyards, thanks to his constant + care, had become the “head of the country,”—a local term used to + denote those that produced the finest quality of wine. He might have asked + for the cross of the Legion of honor. + </p> + <p> + This event occurred in 1806. Monsieur Grandet was then fifty-seven years + of age, his wife thirty-six, and an only daughter, the fruit of their + legitimate love, was ten years old. Monsieur Grandet, whom Providence no + doubt desired to compensate for the loss of his municipal honors, + inherited three fortunes in the course of this year,—that of Madame + de la Gaudiniere, born de la Bertelliere, the mother of Madame Grandet; + that of old Monsieur de la Bertelliere, her grandfather; and, lastly, that + of Madame Gentillet, her grandmother on the mother’s side: three + inheritances, whose amount was not known to any one. The avarice of the + deceased persons was so keen that for a long time they had hoarded their + money for the pleasure of secretly looking at it. Old Monsieur de la + Bertelliere called an investment an extravagance, and thought he got + better interest from the sight of his gold than from the profits of usury. + The inhabitants of Saumur consequently estimated his savings according to + “the revenues of the sun’s wealth,” as they said. + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Grandet thus obtained that modern title of nobility which our + mania for equality can never rub out. He became the most imposing + personage in the arrondissement. He worked a hundred acres of vineyard, + which in fruitful years yielded seven or eight hundred hogsheads of wine. + He owned thirteen farms, an old abbey, whose windows and arches he had + walled up for the sake of economy,—a measure which preserved them,—also + a hundred and twenty-seven acres of meadow-land, where three thousand + poplars, planted in 1793, grew and flourished; and finally, the house in + which he lived. Such was his visible estate; as to his other property, + only two persons could give even a vague guess at its value: one was + Monsieur Cruchot, a notary employed in the usurious investments of + Monsieur Grandet; the other was Monsieur des Grassins, the richest banker + in Saumur, in whose profits Grandet had a certain covenanted and secret + share. + </p> + <p> + Although old Cruchot and Monsieur des Grassins were both gifted with the + deep discretion which wealth and trust beget in the provinces, they + publicly testified so much respect to Monsieur Grandet that observers + estimated the amount of his property by the obsequious attention which + they bestowed upon him. In all Saumur there was no one not persuaded that + Monsieur Grandet had a private treasure, some hiding-place full of louis, + where he nightly took ineffable delight in gazing upon great masses of + gold. Avaricious people gathered proof of this when they looked at the + eyes of the good man, to which the yellow metal seemed to have conveyed + its tints. The glance of a man accustomed to draw enormous interest from + his capital acquires, like that of the libertine, the gambler, or the + sycophant, certain indefinable habits,—furtive, eager, mysterious + movements, which never escape the notice of his co-religionists. This + secret language is in a certain way the freemasonry of the passions. + Monsieur Grandet inspired the respectful esteem due to one who owed no man + anything, who, skilful cooper and experienced wine-grower that he was, + guessed with the precision of an astronomer whether he ought to + manufacture a thousand puncheons for his vintage, or only five hundred, + who never failed in any speculation, and always had casks for sale when + casks were worth more than the commodity that filled them, who could store + his whole vintage in his cellars and bide his time to put the puncheons on + the market at two hundred francs, when the little proprietors had been + forced to sell theirs for five louis. His famous vintage of 1811, + judiciously stored and slowly disposed of, brought him in more than two + hundred and forty thousand francs. + </p> + <p> + Financially speaking, Monsieur Grandet was something between a tiger and a + boa-constrictor. He could crouch and lie low, watch his prey a long while, + spring upon it, open his jaws, swallow a mass of louis, and then rest + tranquilly like a snake in process of digestion, impassible, methodical, + and cold. No one saw him pass without a feeling of admiration mingled with + respect and fear; had not every man in Saumur felt the rending of those + polished steel claws? For this one, Maitre Cruchot had procured the money + required for the purchase of a domain, but at eleven per cent. For that + one, Monsieur des Grassins discounted bills of exchange, but at a + frightful deduction of interest. Few days ever passed that Monsieur + Grandet’s name was not mentioned either in the markets or in social + conversations at the evening gatherings. To some the fortune of the old + wine-grower was an object of patriotic pride. More than one merchant, more + than one innkeeper, said to strangers with a certain complacency: + “Monsieur, we have two or three millionaire establishments; but as for + Monsieur Grandet, he does not himself know how much he is worth.” + </p> + <p> + In 1816 the best reckoners in Saumur estimated the landed property of the + worthy man at nearly four millions; but as, on an average, he had made + yearly, from 1793 to 1817, a hundred thousand francs out of that property, + it was fair to presume that he possessed in actual money a sum nearly + equal to the value of his estate. So that when, after a game of boston or + an evening discussion on the matter of vines, the talk fell upon Monsieur + Grandet, knowing people said: “Le Pere Grandet? le Pere Grandet must have + at least five or six millions.” + </p> + <p> + “You are cleverer than I am; I have never been able to find out the + amount,” answered Monsieur Cruchot or Monsieur des Grassins, when either + chanced to overhear the remark. + </p> + <p> + If some Parisian mentioned Rothschild or Monsieur Lafitte, the people of + Saumur asked if he were as rich as Monsieur Grandet. When the Parisian, + with a smile, tossed them a disdainful affirmative, they looked at each + other and shook their heads with an incredulous air. So large a fortune + covered with a golden mantle all the actions of this man. If in early days + some peculiarities of his life gave occasion for laughter or ridicule, + laughter and ridicule had long since died away. His least important + actions had the authority of results repeatedly shown. His speech, his + clothing, his gestures, the blinking of his eyes, were law to the + country-side, where every one, after studying him as a naturalist studies + the result of instinct in the lower animals, had come to understand the + deep mute wisdom of his slightest actions. + </p> + <p> + “It will be a hard winter,” said one; “Pere Grandet has put on his fur + gloves.” + </p> + <p> + “Pere Grandet is buying quantities of staves; there will be plenty of wine + this year.” + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Grandet never bought either bread or meat. His farmers supplied + him weekly with a sufficiency of capons, chickens, eggs, butter, and his + tithe of wheat. He owned a mill; and the tenant was bound, over and above + his rent, to take a certain quantity of grain and return him the flour and + bran. La Grande Nanon, his only servant, though she was no longer young, + baked the bread of the household herself every Saturday. Monsieur Grandet + arranged with kitchen-gardeners who were his tenants to supply him with + vegetables. As to fruits, he gathered such quantities that he sold the + greater part in the market. His fire-wood was cut from his own hedgerows + or taken from the half-rotten old sheds which he built at the corners of + his fields, and whose planks the farmers carted into town for him, all cut + up, and obligingly stacked in his wood-house, receiving in return his + thanks. His only known expenditures were for the consecrated bread, the + clothing of his wife and daughter, the hire of their chairs in church, the + wages of la Grand Nanon, the tinning of the saucepans, lights, taxes, + repairs on his buildings, and the costs of his various industries. He had + six hundred acres of woodland, lately purchased, which he induced a + neighbor’s keeper to watch, under the promise of an indemnity. After the + acquisition of this property he ate game for the first time. + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Grandet’s manners were very simple. He spoke little. He usually + expressed his meaning by short sententious phrases uttered in a soft + voice. After the Revolution, the epoch at which he first came into notice, + the good man stuttered in a wearisome way as soon as he was required to + speak at length or to maintain an argument. This stammering, the + incoherence of his language, the flux of words in which he drowned his + thought, his apparent lack of logic, attributed to defects of education, + were in reality assumed, and will be sufficiently explained by certain + events in the following history. Four sentences, precise as algebraic + formulas, sufficed him usually to grasp and solve all difficulties of life + and commerce: “I don’t know; I cannot; I will not; I will see about it.” + He never said yes, or no, and never committed himself to writing. If + people talked to him he listened coldly, holding his chin in his right + hand and resting his right elbow in the back of his left hand, forming in + his own mind opinions on all matters, from which he never receded. He + reflected long before making any business agreement. When his opponent, + after careful conversation, avowed the secret of his own purposes, + confident that he had secured his listener’s assent, Grandet answered: “I + can decide nothing without consulting my wife.” His wife, whom he had + reduced to a state of helpless slavery, was a useful screen to him in + business. He went nowhere among friends; he neither gave nor accepted + dinners; he made no stir or noise, seeming to economize in everything, + even movement. He never disturbed or disarranged the things of other + people, out of respect for the rights of property. Nevertheless, in spite + of his soft voice, in spite of his circumspect bearing, the language and + habits of a coarse nature came to the surface, especially in his own home, + where he controlled himself less than elsewhere. + </p> + <p> + Physically, Grandet was a man five feet high, thick-set, square-built, + with calves twelve inches in circumference, knotted knee-joints, and broad + shoulders; his face was round, tanned, and pitted by the small-pox; his + chin was straight, his lips had no curves, his teeth were white; his eyes + had that calm, devouring expression which people attribute to the + basilisk; his forehead, full of transverse wrinkles, was not without + certain significant protuberances; his yellow-grayish hair was said to be + silver and gold by certain young people who did not realize the + impropriety of making a jest about Monsieur Grandet. His nose, thick at + the end, bore a veined wen, which the common people said, not without + reason, was full of malice. The whole countenance showed a dangerous + cunning, an integrity without warmth, the egotism of a man long used to + concentrate every feeling upon the enjoyments of avarice and upon the only + human being who was anything whatever to him,—his daughter and sole + heiress, Eugenie. Attitude, manners, bearing, everything about him, in + short, testified to that belief in himself which the habit of succeeding + in all enterprises never fails to give to a man. + </p> + <p> + Thus, though his manners were unctuous and soft outwardly, Monsieur + Grandet’s nature was of iron. His dress never varied; and those who saw + him to-day saw him such as he had been since 1791. His stout shoes were + tied with leathern thongs; he wore, in all weathers, thick woollen + stockings, short breeches of coarse maroon cloth with silver buckles, a + velvet waistcoat, in alternate stripes of yellow and puce, buttoned + squarely, a large maroon coat with wide flaps, a black cravat, and a + quaker’s hat. His gloves, thick as those of a gendarme, lasted him twenty + months; to preserve them, he always laid them methodically on the brim of + his hat in one particular spot. Saumur knew nothing further about this + personage. + </p> + <p> + Only six individuals had a right of entrance to Monsieur Grandet’s house. + The most important of the first three was a nephew of Monsieur Cruchot. + Since his appointment as president of the Civil courts of Saumur this + young man had added the name of Bonfons to that of Cruchot. He now signed + himself C. de Bonfons. Any litigant so ill-advised as to call him Monsieur + Cruchot would soon be made to feel his folly in court. The magistrate + protected those who called him Monsieur le president, but he favored with + gracious smiles those who addressed him as Monsieur de Bonfons. Monsieur + le president was thirty-three years old, and possessed the estate of + Bonfons (Boni Fontis), worth seven thousand francs a year; he expected to + inherit the property of his uncle the notary and that of another uncle, + the Abbe Cruchot, a dignitary of the chapter of Saint-Martin de Tours, + both of whom were thought to be very rich. These three Cruchots, backed by + a goodly number of cousins, and allied to twenty families in the town, + formed a party, like the Medici in Florence; like the Medici, the Cruchots + had their Pazzi. + </p> + <p> + Madame des Grassins, mother of a son twenty-three years of age, came + assiduously to play cards with Madame Grandet, hoping to marry her dear + Adolphe to Mademoiselle Eugenie. Monsieur des Grassins, the banker, + vigorously promoted the schemes of his wife by means of secret services + constantly rendered to the old miser, and always arrived in time upon the + field of battle. The three des Grassins likewise had their adherents, + their cousins, their faithful allies. On the Cruchot side the abbe, the + Talleyrand of the family, well backed-up by his brother the notary, + sharply contested every inch of ground with his female adversary, and + tried to obtain the rich heiress for his nephew the president. + </p> + <p> + This secret warfare between the Cruchots and des Grassins, the prize + thereof being the hand in marriage of Eugenie Grandet, kept the various + social circles of Saumur in violent agitation. Would Mademoiselle Grandet + marry Monsieur le president or Monsieur Adolphe des Grassins? To this + problem some replied that Monsieur Grandet would never give his daughter + to the one or to the other. The old cooper, eaten up with ambition, was + looking, they said, for a peer of France, to whom an income of three + hundred thousand francs would make all the past, present, and future casks + of the Grandets acceptable. Others replied that Monsieur and Madame des + Grassins were nobles, and exceedingly rich; that Adolphe was a personable + young fellow; and that unless the old man had a nephew of the pope at his + beck and call, such a suitable alliance ought to satisfy a man who came + from nothing,—a man whom Saumur remembered with an adze in his hand, + and who had, moreover, worn the <i>bonnet rouge</i>. Certain wise heads + called attention to the fact that Monsieur Cruchot de Bonfons had the + right of entry to the house at all times, whereas his rival was received + only on Sundays. Others, however, maintained that Madame des Grassins was + more intimate with the women of the house of Grandet than the Cruchots + were, and could put into their minds certain ideas which would lead, + sooner or later, to success. To this the former retorted that the Abbe + Cruchot was the most insinuating man in the world: pit a woman against a + monk, and the struggle was even. “It is diamond cut diamond,” said a + Saumur wit. + </p> + <p> + The oldest inhabitants, wiser than their fellows, declared that the + Grandets knew better than to let the property go out of the family, and + that Mademoiselle Eugenie Grandet of Saumur would be married to the son of + Monsieur Grandet of Paris, a wealthy wholesale wine-merchant. To this the + Cruchotines and the Grassinists replied: “In the first place, the two + brothers have seen each other only twice in thirty years; and next, + Monsieur Grandet of Paris has ambitious designs for his son. He is mayor + of an arrondissement, a deputy, colonel of the National Guard, judge in + the commercial courts; he disowns the Grandets of Saumur, and means to + ally himself with some ducal family,—ducal under favor of Napoleon.” + In short, was there anything not said of an heiress who was talked of + through a circumference of fifty miles, and even in the public conveyances + from Angers to Blois, inclusively! + </p> + <p> + At the beginning of 1811, the Cruchotines won a signal advantage over the + Grassinists. The estate of Froidfond, remarkable for its park, its + mansion, its farms, streams, ponds, forests, and worth about three + millions, was put up for sale by the young Marquis de Froidfond, who was + obliged to liquidate his possessions. Maitre Cruchot, the president, and + the abbe, aided by their adherents, were able to prevent the sale of the + estate in little lots. The notary concluded a bargain with the young man + for the whole property, payable in gold, persuading him that suits without + number would have to be brought against the purchasers of small lots + before he could get the money for them; it was better, therefore, to sell + the whole to Monsieur Grandet, who was solvent and able to pay for the + estate in ready money. The fine marquisate of Froidfond was accordingly + conveyed down the gullet of Monsieur Grandet, who, to the great + astonishment of Saumur, paid for it, under proper discount, with the usual + formalities. + </p> + <p> + This affair echoed from Nantes to Orleans. Monsieur Grandet took advantage + of a cart returning by way of Froidfond to go and see his chateau. Having + cast a master’s eye over the whole property, he returned to Saumur, + satisfied that he had invested his money at five per cent, and seized by + the stupendous thought of extending and increasing the marquisate of + Froidfond by concentrating all his property there. Then, to fill up his + coffers, now nearly empty, he resolved to thin out his woods and his + forests, and to sell off the poplars in the meadows. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II + </h2> + <p> + It is now easy to understand the full meaning of the term, “the house of + Monsieur Grandet,”—that cold, silent, pallid dwelling, standing + above the town and sheltered by the ruins of the ramparts. The two pillars + and the arch, which made the porte-cochere on which the door opened, were + built, like the house itself, of tufa,—a white stone peculiar to the + shores of the Loire, and so soft that it lasts hardly more than two + centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously bored or eaten out by + the inclemency of the weather, gave an appearance of the vermiculated + stonework of French architecture to the arch and the side walls of this + entrance, which bore some resemblance to the gateway of a jail. Above the + arch was a long bas-relief, in hard stone, representing the four seasons, + the faces already crumbling away and blackened. This bas-relief was + surmounted by a projecting plinth, upon which a variety of chance growths + had sprung up,—yellow pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, + plantain, and even a little cherry-tree, already grown to some height. + </p> + <p> + The door of the archway was made of solid oak, brown, shrunken, and split + in many places; though frail in appearance, it was firmly held in place by + a system of iron bolts arranged in symmetrical patterns. A small square + grating, with close bars red with rust, filled up the middle panel and + made, as it were, a motive for the knocker, fastened to it by a ring, + which struck upon the grinning head of a huge nail. This knocker, of the + oblong shape and kind which our ancestors called <i>jaquemart</i>, looked + like a huge note of exclamation; an antiquary who examined it attentively + might have found indications of the figure, essentially burlesque, which + it once represented, and which long usage had now effaced. Through this + little grating—intended in olden times for the recognition of + friends in times of civil war—inquisitive persons could perceive, at + the farther end of the dark and slimy vault, a few broken steps which led + to a garden, picturesquely shut in by walls that were thick and damp, and + through which oozed a moisture that nourished tufts of sickly herbage. + These walls were the ruins of the ramparts, under which ranged the gardens + of several neighboring houses. + </p> + <p> + The most important room on the ground-floor of the house was a large hall, + entered directly from beneath the vault of the porte-cochere. Few people + know the importance of a hall in the little towns of Anjou, Touraine, and + Berry. The hall is at one and the same time antechamber, salon, office, + boudoir, and dining-room; it is the theatre of domestic life, the common + living-room. There the barber of the neighborhood came, twice a year, to + cut Monsieur Grandet’s hair; there the farmers, the cure, the + under-prefect, and the miller’s boy came on business. This room, with two + windows looking on the street, was entirely of wood. Gray panels with + ancient mouldings covered the walls from top to bottom; the ceiling showed + all its beams, which were likewise painted gray, while the space between + them had been washed over in white, now yellow with age. An old brass + clock, inlaid with arabesques, adorned the mantel of the ill-cut white + stone chimney-piece, above which was a greenish mirror, whose edges, + bevelled to show the thickness of the glass, reflected a thread of light + the whole length of a gothic frame in damascened steel-work. The two + copper-gilt candelabra which decorated the corners of the chimney-piece + served a double purpose: by taking off the side-branches, each of which + held a socket, the main stem—which was fastened to a pedestal of + bluish marble tipped with copper—made a candlestick for one candle, + which was sufficient for ordinary occasions. The chairs, antique in shape, + were covered with tapestry representing the fables of La Fontaine; it was + necessary, however, to know that writer well to guess at the subjects, for + the faded colors and the figures, blurred by much darning, were difficult + to distinguish. + </p> + <p> + At the four corners of the hall were closets, or rather buffets, + surmounted by dirty shelves. An old card-table in marquetry, of which the + upper part was a chess-board, stood in the space between the two windows. + Above this table was an oval barometer with a black border enlivened with + gilt bands, on which the flies had so licentiously disported themselves + that the gilding had become problematical. On the panel opposite to the + chimney-piece were two portraits in pastel, supposed to represent the + grandfather of Madame Grandet, old Monsieur de la Bertelliere, as a + lieutenant in the French guard, and the deceased Madame Gentillet in the + guise of a shepherdess. The windows were draped with curtains of red <i>gros + de Tours</i> held back by silken cords with ecclesiastical tassels. This + luxurious decoration, little in keeping with the habits of Monsieur + Grandet, had been, together with the steel pier-glass, the tapestries, and + the buffets, which were of rose-wood, included in the purchase of the + house. + </p> + <p> + By the window nearest to the door stood a straw chair, whose legs were + raised on castors to lift its occupant, Madame Grandet, to a height from + which she could see the passers-by. A work-table of stained cherry-wood + filled up the embrasure, and the little armchair of Eugenie Grandet stood + beside it. In this spot the lives had flowed peacefully onward for fifteen + years, in a round of constant work from the month of April to the month of + November. On the first day of the latter month they took their winter + station by the chimney. Not until that day did Grandet permit a fire to be + lighted; and on the thirty-first of March it was extinguished, without + regard either to the chills of the early spring or to those of a wintry + autumn. A foot-warmer, filled with embers from the kitchen fire, which la + Grande Nanon contrived to save for them, enabled Madame and Mademoiselle + Grandet to bear the chilly mornings and evenings of April and October. + Mother and daughter took charge of the family linen, and spent their days + so conscientiously upon a labor properly that of working-women, that if + Eugenie wished to embroider a collar for her mother she was forced to take + the time from sleep, and deceive her father to obtain the necessary light. + For a long time the miser had given out the tallow candle to his daughter + and la Grande Nanon just as he gave out every morning the bread and other + necessaries for the daily consumption. + </p> + <p> + La Grande Nanon was perhaps the only human being capable of accepting + willingly the despotism of her master. The whole town envied Monsieur and + Madame Grandet the possession of her. La Grande Nanon, so called on + account of her height, which was five feet eight inches, had lived with + Monsieur Grandet for thirty-five years. Though she received only sixty + francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the richest + serving-women in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating through + thirty-five years, had recently enabled her to invest four thousand francs + in an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her long and persistent + economy seemed gigantic. Every servant in the town, seeing that the poor + sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old age, was jealous of her, and + never thought of the hard slavery through which it had been won. + </p> + <p> + At twenty-two years of age the poor girl had been unable to find a + situation, so repulsive was her face to almost every one. Yet the feeling + was certainly unjust: the face would have been much admired on the + shoulders of a grenadier of the guard; but all things, so they say, should + be in keeping. Forced to leave a farm where she kept the cows, because the + dwelling-house was burned down, she came to Saumur to find a place, full + of the robust courage that shrinks from no labor. Le Pere Grandet was at + that time thinking of marriage and about to set up his household. He + espied the girl, rejected as she was from door to door. A good judge of + corporeal strength in his trade as a cooper, he guessed the work that + might be got out of a female creature shaped like a Hercules, as firm on + her feet as an oak sixty years old on its roots, strong in the hips, + square in the back, with the hands of a cartman and an honesty as sound as + her unblemished virtue. Neither the warts which adorned her martial + visage, nor the red-brick tints of her skin, nor the sinewy arms, nor the + ragged garments of la Grande Nanon, dismayed the cooper, who was at that + time still of an age when the heart shudders. He fed, shod, and clothed + the poor girl, gave her wages, and put her to work without treating her + too roughly. Seeing herself thus welcomed, la Grande Nanon wept secretly + tears of joy, and attached herself in all sincerity to her master, who + from that day ruled her and worked her with feudal authority. Nanon did + everything. She cooked, she made the lye, she washed the linen in the + Loire and brought it home on her shoulders; she got up early, she went to + bed late; she prepared the food of the vine-dressers during the harvest, + kept watch upon the market-people, protected the property of her master + like a faithful dog, and even, full of blind confidence, obeyed without a + murmur his most absurd exactions. + </p> + <p> + In the famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with unheard-of + difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old watch,—the first + present he had made her during twenty years of service. Though he turned + over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), it is impossible to consider + that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the shoes were always thoroughly + worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had + grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked + collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet + cut the bread with rather too much parsimony, she made no complaint; she + gaily shared the hygienic benefits derived from the severe regime of the + household, in which no one was ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the + family; she laughed when Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed + herself, and toiled as he did. What pleasant compensations there were in + such equality! Never did the master have occasion to find fault with the + servant for pilfering the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines eaten + under the trees. “Come, fall-to, Nanon!” he would say in years when the + branches bent under the fruit and the farmers were obliged to give it to + the pigs. + </p> + <p> + To the poor peasant who in her youth had earned nothing but harsh + treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, Grandet’s ambiguous + laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon’s simple heart and narrow head + could hold only one feeling and one idea. For thirty-five years she had + never ceased to see herself standing before the wood-yard of Monsieur + Grandet, ragged and barefooted, and to hear him say: “What do you want, + young one?” Her gratitude was ever new. Sometimes Grandet, reflecting that + the poor creature had never heard a flattering word, that she was ignorant + of all the tender sentiments inspired by women, that she might some day + appear before the throne of God even more chaste than the Virgin Mary + herself,—Grandet, struck with pity, would say as he looked at her, + “Poor Nanon!” The exclamation was always followed by an undefinable look + cast upon him in return by the old servant. The words, uttered from time + to time, formed a chain of friendship that nothing ever parted, and to + which each exclamation added a link. Such compassion arising in the heart + of the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old spinster, had something + inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel pity, recalling, as it did, a + thousand pleasures to the heart of the old cooper, was for Nanon the sum + total of happiness. Who does not likewise say, “Poor Nanon!” God will + recognize his angels by the inflexions of their voices and by their secret + sighs. + </p> + <p> + There were very many households in Saumur where the servants were better + treated, but where the masters received far less satisfaction in return. + Thus it was often said: “What have the Grandets ever done to make their + Grande Nanon so attached to them? She would go through fire and water for + their sake!” Her kitchen, whose barred windows looked into the court, was + always clean, neat, cold,—a true miser’s kitchen, where nothing went + to waste. When Nanon had washed her dishes, locked up the remains of the + dinner, and put out her fire, she left the kitchen, which was separated by + a passage from the living-room, and went to spin hemp beside her masters. + One tallow candle sufficed the family for the evening. The servant slept + at the end of the passage in a species of closet lighted only by a + fan-light. Her robust health enabled her to live in this hole with + impunity; there she could hear the slightest noise through the deep + silence which reigned night and day in that dreary house. Like a + watch-dog, she slept with one ear open, and took her rest with a mind + alert. + </p> + <p> + A description of the other parts of the dwelling will be found connected + with the events of this history, though the foregoing sketch of the hall, + where the whole luxury of the household appears, may enable the reader to + surmise the nakedness of the upper floors. + </p> + <p> + In 1819, at the beginning of an evening in the middle of November, la + Grande Nanon lighted the fire for the first time. The autumn had been very + fine. This particular day was a fete-day well known to the Cruchotines and + the Grassinists. The six antagonists, armed at all points, were making + ready to meet at the Grandets and surpass each other in testimonials of + friendship. That morning all Saumur had seen Madame and Mademoiselle + Grandet, accompanied by Nanon, on their way to hear Mass at the parish + church, and every one remembered that the day was the anniversary of + Mademoiselle Eugenie’s birth. Calculating the hour at which the family + dinner would be over, Maitre Cruchot, the Abbe Cruchot, and Monsieur C. de + Bonfons hastened to arrive before the des Grassins, and be the first to + pay their compliments to Mademoiselle Eugenie. All three brought enormous + bouquets, gathered in their little green-houses. The stalks of the flowers + which the president intended to present were ingeniously wound round with + a white satin ribbon adorned with gold fringe. In the morning Monsieur + Grandet, following his usual custom on the days that commemorated the + birth and the fete of Eugenie, went to her bedside and solemnly presented + her with his paternal gift,—which for the last thirteen years had + consisted regularly of a curious gold-piece. Madame Grandet gave her + daughter a winter dress or a summer dress, as the case might be. These two + dresses and the gold-pieces, of which she received two others on New + Year’s day and on her father’s fete-day, gave Eugenie a little revenue of + a hundred crowns or thereabouts, which Grandet loved to see her amass. Was + it not putting his money from one strong-box to another, and, as it were, + training the parsimony of his heiress? from whom he sometimes demanded an + account of her treasure (formerly increased by the gifts of the + Bertellieres), saying: “It is to be your marriage dozen.” + </p> + <p> + The “marriage dozen” is an old custom sacredly preserved and still in + force in many parts of central France. In Berry and in Anjou, when a young + girl marries, her family, or that of the husband, must give her a purse, + in which they place, according to their means, twelve pieces, or twelve + dozen pieces, or twelve hundred pieces of gold. The poorest shepherd-girl + never marries without her dozen, be it only a dozen coppers. They still + tell in Issoudun of a certain “dozen” presented to a rich heiress, which + contained a hundred and forty-four <i>portugaises d’or</i>. Pope Clement + VII., uncle of Catherine de’ Medici, gave her when he married her to Henri + II. a dozen antique gold medals of priceless value. + </p> + <p> + During dinner the father, delighted to see his Eugenie looking well in a + new gown, exclaimed: “As it is Eugenie’s birthday let us have a fire; it + will be a good omen.” + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle will be married this year, that’s certain,” said la Grande + Nanon, carrying away the remains of the goose,—the pheasant of + tradesmen. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t see any one suitable for her in Saumur,” said Madame Grandet, + glancing at her husband with a timid look which, considering her years, + revealed the conjugal slavery under which the poor woman languished. + </p> + <p> + Grandet looked at his daughter and exclaimed gaily,— + </p> + <p> + “She is twenty-three years old to-day, the child; we must soon begin to + think of it.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie and her mother silently exchanged a glance of intelligence. + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet was a dry, thin woman, as yellow as a quince, awkward, + slow, one of those women who are born to be down-trodden. She had big + bones, a big nose, a big forehead, big eyes, and presented at first sight + a vague resemblance to those mealy fruits that have neither savor nor + succulence. Her teeth were black and few in number, her mouth was + wrinkled, her chin long and pointed. She was an excellent woman, a true la + Bertelliere. L’abbe Cruchot found occasional opportunity to tell her that + she had not done ill; and she believed him. Angelic sweetness, the + resignation of an insect tortured by children, a rare piety, a good heart, + an unalterable equanimity of soul, made her universally pitied and + respected. Her husband never gave her more than six francs at a time for + her personal expenses. Ridiculous as it may seem, this woman, who by her + own fortune and her various inheritances brought Pere Grandet more than + three hundred thousand francs, had always felt so profoundly humiliated by + her dependence and the slavery in which she lived, against which the + gentleness of her spirit prevented her from revolting, that she had never + asked for one penny or made a single remark on the deeds which Maitre + Cruchot brought for her signature. This foolish secret pride, this + nobility of soul perpetually misunderstood and wounded by Grandet, ruled + the whole conduct of the wife. + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet was attired habitually in a gown of greenish levantine + silk, endeavoring to make it last nearly a year; with it she wore a large + kerchief of white cotton cloth, a bonnet made of plaited straws sewn + together, and almost always a black-silk apron. As she seldom left the + house she wore out very few shoes. She never asked anything for herself. + Grandet, seized with occasional remorse when he remembered how long a time + had elapsed since he gave her the last six francs, always stipulated for + the “wife’s pin-money” when he sold his yearly vintage. The four or five + louis presented by the Belgian or the Dutchman who purchased the wine were + the chief visible signs of Madame Grandet’s annual revenues. But after she + had received the five louis, her husband would often say to her, as though + their purse were held in common: “Can you lend me a few sous?” and the + poor woman, glad to be able to do something for a man whom her confessor + held up to her as her lord and master, returned him in the course of the + winter several crowns out of the “pin-money.” When Grandet drew from his + pocket the five-franc piece which he allowed monthly for the minor + expenses,—thread, needles, and toilet,—of his daughter, he + never failed to say as he buttoned his breeches’ pocket: “And you, mother, + do you want anything?” + </p> + <p> + “My friend,” Madame Grandet would answer, moved by a sense of maternal + dignity, “we will see about that later.” + </p> + <p> + Wasted dignity! Grandet thought himself very generous to his wife. + Philosophers who meet the like of Nanon, of Madame Grandet, of Eugenie, + have surely a right to say that irony is at the bottom of the ways of + Providence. + </p> + <p> + After the dinner at which for the first time allusion had been made to + Eugenie’s marriage, Nanon went to fetch a bottle of black-currant ratafia + from Monsieur Grandet’s bed-chamber, and nearly fell as she came down the + stairs. + </p> + <p> + “You great stupid!” said her master; “are you going to tumble about like + other people, hey?” + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur, it was that step on your staircase which has given way.” + </p> + <p> + “She is right,” said Madame Grandet; “it ought to have been mended long + ago. Yesterday Eugenie nearly twisted her ankle.” + </p> + <p> + “Here,” said Grandet to Nanon, seeing that she looked quite pale, “as it + is Eugenie’s birthday, and you came near falling, take a little glass of + ratafia to set you right.” + </p> + <p> + “Faith! I’ve earned it,” said Nanon; “most people would have broken the + bottle; but I’d sooner have broken my elbow holding it up high.” + </p> + <p> + “Poor Nanon!” said Grandet, filling a glass. + </p> + <p> + “Did you hurt yourself?” asked Eugenie, looking kindly at her. + </p> + <p> + “No, I didn’t fall; I threw myself back on my haunches.” + </p> + <p> + “Well! as it is Eugenie’s birthday,” said Grandet, “I’ll have the step + mended. You people don’t know how to set your foot in the corner where the + wood is still firm.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet took the candle, leaving his wife, daughter, and servant without + any other light than that from the hearth, where the flames were lively, + and went into the bakehouse to fetch planks, nails, and tools. + </p> + <p> + “Can I help you?” cried Nanon, hearing him hammer on the stairs. + </p> + <p> + “No, no! I’m an old hand at it,” answered the former cooper. + </p> + <p> + At the moment when Grandet was mending his worm-eaten staircase and + whistling with all his might, in remembrance of the days of his youth, the + three Cruchots knocked at the door. + </p> + <p> + “Is it you, Monsieur Cruchot?” asked Nanon, peeping through the little + grating. + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” answered the president. + </p> + <p> + Nanon opened the door, and the light from the hearth, reflected on the + ceiling, enabled the three Cruchots to find their way into the room. + </p> + <p> + “Ha! you’ve come a-greeting,” said Nanon, smelling the flowers. + </p> + <p> + “Excuse me, messieurs,” cried Grandet, recognizing their voices; “I’ll be + with you in a moment. I’m not proud; I am patching up a step on my + staircase.” + </p> + <p> + “Go on, go on, Monsieur Grandet; a man’s house is his castle,” said the + president sententiously. + </p> + <p> + Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet rose. The president, profiting by the + darkness, said to Eugenie: + </p> + <p> + “Will you permit me, mademoiselle, to wish you, on this the day of your + birth, a series of happy years and the continuance of the health which you + now enjoy?” + </p> + <p> + He offered her a huge bouquet of choice flowers which were rare in Saumur; + then, taking the heiress by the elbows, he kissed her on each side of her + neck with a complacency that made her blush. The president, who looked + like a rusty iron nail, felt that his courtship was progressing. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t stand on ceremony,” said Grandet, entering. “How well you do things + on fete-days, Monsieur le president!” + </p> + <p> + “When it concerns mademoiselle,” said the abbe, armed with his own + bouquet, “every day is a fete-day for my nephew.” + </p> + <p> + The abbe kissed Eugenie’s hand. As for Maitre Cruchot, he boldly kissed + her on both cheeks, remarking: “How we sprout up, to be sure! Every year + is twelve months.” + </p> + <p> + As he replaced the candlestick beside the clock, Grandet, who never forgot + his own jokes, and repeated them to satiety when he thought them funny, + said,— + </p> + <p> + “As this is Eugenie’s birthday let us illuminate.” + </p> + <p> + He carefully took off the branches of the candelabra, put a socket on each + pedestal, took from Nanon a new tallow candle with paper twisted round the + end of it, put it into the hollow, made it firm, lit it, and then sat down + beside his wife, looking alternately at his friends, his daughter, and the + two candles. The Abbe Cruchot, a plump, puffy little man, with a red wig + plastered down and a face like an old female gambler, said as he stretched + out his feet, well shod in stout shoes with silver buckles: “The des + Grassins have not come?” + </p> + <p> + “Not yet,” said Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “But are they coming?” asked the old notary, twisting his face, which had + as many holes as a collander, into a queer grimace. + </p> + <p> + “I think so,” answered Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “Are your vintages all finished?” said Monsieur de Bonfons to Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, all of them,” said the old man, rising to walk up and down the room, + his chest swelling with pride as he said the words, “all of them.” Through + the door of the passage which led to the kitchen he saw la Grande Nanon + sitting beside her fire with a candle and preparing to spin there, so as + not to intrude among the guests. + </p> + <p> + “Nanon,” he said, going into the passage, “put out that fire and that + candle, and come and sit with us. Pardieu! the hall is big enough for + all.” + </p> + <p> + “But monsieur, you are to have the great people.” + </p> + <p> + “Are not you as good as they? They are descended from Adam, and so are + you.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet came back to the president and said,— + </p> + <p> + “Have you sold your vintage?” + </p> + <p> + “No, not I; I shall keep it. If the wine is good this year, it will be + better two years hence. The proprietors, you know, have made an agreement + to keep up the price; and this year the Belgians won’t get the better of + us. Suppose they are sent off empty-handed for once, faith! they’ll come + back.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, but let us mind what we are about,” said Grandet in a tone which + made the president tremble. + </p> + <p> + “Is he driving some bargain?” thought Cruchot. + </p> + <p> + At this moment the knocker announced the des Grassins family, and their + arrival interrupted a conversation which had begun between Madame Grandet + and the abbe. + </p> + <p> + Madame des Grassins was one of those lively, plump little women, with + pink-and-white skins, who, thanks to the claustral calm of the provinces + and the habits of a virtuous life, keep their youth until they are past + forty. She was like the last rose of autumn,—pleasant to the eye, + though the petals have a certain frostiness, and their perfume is slight. + She dressed well, got her fashions from Paris, set the tone to Saumur, and + gave parties. Her husband, formerly a quartermaster in the Imperial guard, + who had been desperately wounded at Austerlitz, and had since retired, + still retained, in spite of his respect for Grandet, the seeming frankness + of an old soldier. + </p> + <p> + “Good evening, Grandet,” he said, holding out his hand and affecting a + sort of superiority, with which he always crushed the Cruchots. + “Mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Eugenie, after bowing to Madame + Grandet, “you are always beautiful and good, and truly I do not know what + to wish you.” So saying, he offered her a little box which his servant had + brought and which contained a Cape heather,—a flower lately imported + into Europe and very rare. + </p> + <p> + Madame des Grassins kissed Eugenie very affectionately, pressed her hand, + and said: “Adolphe wishes to make you my little offering.” + </p> + <p> + A tall, blond young man, pale and slight, with tolerable manners and + seemingly rather shy, although he had just spent eight or ten thousand + francs over his allowance in Paris, where he had been sent to study law, + now came forward and kissed Eugenie on both cheeks, offering her a workbox + with utensils in silver-gilt,—mere show-case trumpery, in spite of + the monogram E.G. in gothic letters rather well engraved, which belonged + properly to something in better taste. As she opened it, Eugenie + experienced one of those unexpected and perfect delights which make a + young girl blush and quiver and tremble with pleasure. She turned her eyes + to her father as if to ask permission to accept it, and Monsieur Grandet + replied: “Take it, my daughter,” in a tone which would have made an actor + illustrious. + </p> + <p> + The three Cruchots felt crushed as they saw the joyous, animated look cast + upon Adolphe des Grassins by the heiress, to whom such riches were + unheard-of. Monsieur des Grassins offered Grandet a pinch of snuff, took + one himself, shook off the grains as they fell on the ribbon of the Legion + of honor which was attached to the button-hole of his blue surtout; then + he looked at the Cruchots with an air that seemed to say, “Parry that + thrust if you can!” Madame des Grassins cast her eyes on the blue vases + which held the Cruchot bouquets, looking at the enemy’s gifts with the + pretended interest of a satirical woman. At this delicate juncture the + Abbe Cruchot left the company seated in a circle round the fire and joined + Grandet at the lower end of the hall. As the two men reached the embrasure + of the farthest window the priest said in the miser’s ear: “Those people + throw money out of the windows.” + </p> + <p> + “What does that matter if it gets into my cellar?” retorted the old + wine-grower. + </p> + <p> + “If you want to give gilt scissors to your daughter, you have the means,” + said the abbe. + </p> + <p> + “I give her something better than scissors,” answered Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “My nephew is a blockhead,” thought the abbe as he looked at the + president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his brown + countenance. “Couldn’t he have found some little trifle which cost money?” + </p> + <p> + “We will join you at cards, Madame Grandet,” said Madame des Grassins. + </p> + <p> + “We might have two tables, as we are all here.” + </p> + <p> + “As it is Eugenie’s birthday you had better play loto all together,” said + Pere Grandet: “the two young ones can join”; and the old cooper, who never + played any game, motioned to his daughter and Adolphe. “Come, Nanon, set + the tables.” + </p> + <p> + “We will help you, Mademoiselle Nanon,” said Madame des Grassins gaily, + quite joyous at the joy she had given Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “I have never in my life been so pleased,” the heiress said to her; “I + have never seen anything so pretty.” + </p> + <p> + “Adolphe brought it from Paris, and he chose it,” Madame des Grassins + whispered in her ear. + </p> + <p> + “Go on! go on! damned intriguing thing!” thought the president. “If you + ever have a suit in court, you or your husband, it shall go hard with + you.” + </p> + <p> + The notary, sitting in his corner, looked calmly at the abbe, saying to + himself: “The des Grassins may do what they like; my property and my + brother’s and that of my nephew amount in all to eleven hundred thousand + francs. The des Grassins, at the most, have not half that; besides, they + have a daughter. They may give what presents they like; heiress and + presents too will be ours one of these days.” + </p> + <p> + At half-past eight in the evening the two card-tables were set out. Madame + des Grassins succeeded in putting her son beside Eugenie. The actors in + this scene, so full of interest, commonplace as it seems, were provided + with bits of pasteboard striped in many colors and numbered, and with + counters of blue glass, and they appeared to be listening to the jokes of + the notary, who never drew a number without making a remark, while in fact + they were all thinking of Monsieur Grandet’s millions. The old cooper, + with inward self-conceit, was contemplating the pink feathers and the + fresh toilet of Madame des Grassins, the martial head of the banker, the + faces of Adolphe, the president, the abbe, and the notary, saying to + himself:— + </p> + <p> + “They are all after my money. Hey! neither the one nor the other shall + have my daughter; but they are useful—useful as harpoons to fish + with.” + </p> + <p> + This family gaiety in the old gray room dimly lighted by two tallow + candles; this laughter, accompanied by the whirr of Nanon’s + spinning-wheel, sincere only upon the lips of Eugenie or her mother; this + triviality mingled with important interests; this young girl, who, like + certain birds made victims of the price put upon them, was now lured and + trapped by proofs of friendship of which she was the dupe,—all these + things contributed to make the scene a melancholy comedy. Is it not, + moreover, a drama of all times and all places, though here brought down to + its simplest expression? The figure of Grandet, playing his own game with + the false friendship of the two families and getting enormous profits from + it, dominates the scene and throws light upon it. The modern god,—the + only god in whom faith is preserved,—money, is here, in all its + power, manifested in a single countenance. The tender sentiments of life + hold here but a secondary place; only the three pure, simple hearts of + Nanon, of Eugenie, and of her mother were inspired by them. And how much + of ignorance there was in the simplicity of these poor women! Eugenie and + her mother knew nothing of Grandet’s wealth; they could only estimate the + things of life by the glimmer of their pale ideas, and they neither valued + nor despised money, because they were accustomed to do without it. Their + feelings, bruised, though they did not know it, but ever-living, were the + secret spring of their existence, and made them curious exceptions in the + midst of these other people whose lives were purely material. Frightful + condition of the human race! there is no one of its joys that does not + come from some species of ignorance. + </p> + <p> + At the moment when Madame Grandet had won a loto of sixteen sous,—the + largest ever pooled in that house,—and while la Grande Nanon was + laughing with delight as she watched madame pocketing her riches, the + knocker resounded on the house-door with such a noise that the women all + jumped in their chairs. + </p> + <p> + “There is no man in Saumur who would knock like that,” said the notary. + </p> + <p> + “How can they bang in that way!” exclaimed Nanon; “do they want to break + in the door?” + </p> + <p> + “Who the devil is it?” cried Grandet. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III + </h2> + <p> + Nanon took one of the candles and went to open the door, followed by her + master. + </p> + <p> + “Grandet! Grandet!” cried his wife, moved by a sudden impulse of fear, and + running to the door of the room. + </p> + <p> + All the players looked at each other. + </p> + <p> + “Suppose we all go?” said Monsieur des Grassins; “that knock strikes me as + evil-intentioned.” + </p> + <p> + Hardly was Monsieur des Grassins allowed to see the figure of a young man, + accompanied by a porter from the coach-office carrying two large trunks + and dragging a carpet-bag after him, than Monsieur Grandet turned roughly + on his wife and said,— + </p> + <p> + “Madame Grandet, go back to your loto; leave me to speak with monsieur.” + </p> + <p> + Then he pulled the door quickly to, and the excited players returned to + their seats, but did not continue the game. + </p> + <p> + “Is it any one belonging to Saumur, Monsieur des Grassins?” asked his + wife. + </p> + <p> + “No, it is a traveller.” + </p> + <p> + “He must have come from Paris.” + </p> + <p> + “Just so,” said the notary, pulling out his watch, which was two inches + thick and looked like a Dutch man-of-war; “it’s nine o’clock; the + diligence of the Grand Bureau is never late.” + </p> + <p> + “Is the gentleman young?” inquired the Abbe Cruchot. + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” answered Monsieur des Grassins, “and he has brought luggage which + must weigh nearly three tons.” + </p> + <p> + “Nanon does not come back,” said Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “It must be one of your relations,” remarked the president. + </p> + <p> + “Let us go on with our game,” said Madame Grandet gently. “I know from + Monsieur Grandet’s tone of voice that he is annoyed; perhaps he would not + like to find us talking of his affairs.” + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle,” said Adolphe to his neighbor, “it is no doubt your cousin + Grandet,—a very good-looking young man; I met him at the ball of + Monsieur de Nucingen.” Adolphe did not go on, for his mother trod on his + toes; and then, asking him aloud for two sous to put on her stake, she + whispered: “Will you hold your tongue, you great goose!” + </p> + <p> + At this moment Grandet returned, without la Grande Nanon, whose steps, + together with those of the porter, echoed up the staircase; and he was + followed by the traveller who had excited such curiosity and so filled the + lively imaginations of those present that his arrival at this dwelling, + and his sudden fall into the midst of this assembly, can only be likened + to that of a snail into a beehive, or the introduction of a peacock into + some village poultry-yard. + </p> + <p> + “Sit down near the fire,” said Grandet. + </p> + <p> + Before seating himself, the young stranger saluted the assembled company + very gracefully. The men rose to answer by a courteous inclination, and + the women made a ceremonious bow. + </p> + <p> + “You are cold, no doubt, monsieur,” said Madame Grandet; “you have, + perhaps, travelled from—” + </p> + <p> + “Just like all women!” said the old wine-grower, looking up from a letter + he was reading. “Do let monsieur rest himself!” + </p> + <p> + “But, father, perhaps monsieur would like to take something,” said + Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “He has got a tongue,” said the old man sternly. + </p> + <p> + The stranger was the only person surprised by this scene; all the others + were well-used to the despotic ways of the master. However, after the two + questions and the two replies had been exchanged, the newcomer rose, + turned his back towards the fire, lifted one foot so as to warm the sole + of its boot, and said to Eugenie,— + </p> + <p> + “Thank you, my cousin, but I dined at Tours. And,” he added, looking at + Grandet, “I need nothing; I am not even tired.” + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur has come from the capital?” asked Madame des Grassins. + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Charles,—such was the name of the son of Monsieur Grandet + of Paris,—hearing himself addressed, took a little eye-glass, + suspended by a chain from his neck, applied it to his right eye to examine + what was on the table, and also the persons sitting round it. He ogled + Madame des Grassins with much impertinence, and said to her, after he had + observed all he wished,— + </p> + <p> + “Yes, madame. You are playing at loto, aunt,” he added. “Do not let me + interrupt you, I beg; go on with your game: it is too amusing to leave.” + </p> + <p> + “I was certain it was the cousin,” thought Madame des Grassins, casting + repeated glances at him. + </p> + <p> + “Forty-seven!” cried the old abbe. “Mark it down, Madame des Grassins. + Isn’t that your number?” + </p> + <p> + Monsieur des Grassins put a counter on his wife’s card, who sat watching + first the cousin from Paris and then Eugenie, without thinking of her + loto, a prey to mournful presentiments. From time to time the young heiress glanced furtively at her cousin, and the banker’s wife easily + detected a <i>crescendo</i> of surprise and curiosity in her mind. + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Charles Grandet, a handsome young man of twenty-two, presented at + this moment a singular contrast to the worthy provincials, who, + considerably disgusted by his aristocratic manners, were all studying him + with sarcastic intent. This needs an explanation. At twenty-two, young + people are still so near childhood that they often conduct themselves + childishly. In all probability, out of every hundred of them fully + ninety-nine would have behaved precisely as Monsieur Charles Grandet was + now behaving. + </p> + <p> + Some days earlier than this his father had told him to go and spend + several months with his uncle at Saumur. Perhaps Monsieur Grandet was + thinking of Eugenie. Charles, sent for the first time in his life into the + provinces, took a fancy to make his appearance with the superiority of a + man of fashion, to reduce the whole arrondissement to despair by his + luxury, and to make his visit an epoch, importing into those country + regions all the refinements of Parisian life. In short, to explain it in + one word, he mean to pass more time at Saumur in brushing his nails than + he ever thought of doing in Paris, and to assume the extra nicety and + elegance of dress which a young man of fashion often lays aside for a + certain negligence which in itself is not devoid of grace. Charles + therefore brought with him a complete hunting-costume, the finest gun, the + best hunting-knife in the prettiest sheath to be found in all Paris. He + brought his whole collection of waistcoats. They were of all kinds,—gray, + black, white, scarabaeus-colored: some were shot with gold, some spangled, + some <i>chined</i>; some were double-breasted and crossed like a shawl, + others were straight in the collar; some had turned-over collars, some + buttoned up to the top with gilt buttons. He brought every variety of + collar and cravat in fashion at that epoch. He brought two of Buisson’s + coats and all his finest linen He brought his pretty gold toilet-set,—a + present from his mother. He brought all his dandy knick-knacks, not + forgetting a ravishing little desk presented to him by the most amiable of + women,—amiable for him, at least,—a fine lady whom he called + Annette and who at this moment was travelling, matrimonially and wearily, + in Scotland, a victim to certain suspicions which required a passing + sacrifice of happiness; in the desk was much pretty note-paper on which to + write to her once a fortnight. + </p> + <p> + In short, it was as complete a cargo of Parisian frivolities as it was + possible for him to get together,—a collection of all the implements + of husbandry with which the youth of leisure tills his life, from the + little whip which helps to begin a duel, to the handsomely chased pistols + which end it. His father having told him to travel alone and modestly, he + had taken the coupe of the diligence all to himself, rather pleased at not + having to damage a delightful travelling-carriage ordered for a journey on + which he was to meet his Annette, the great lady who, etc.,—whom he + intended to rejoin at Baden in the following June. Charles expected to + meet scores of people at his uncle’s house, to hunt in his uncle’s + forests,—to live, in short, the usual chateau life; he did not know + that his uncle was in Saumur, and had only inquired about him incidentally + when asking the way to Froidfond. Hearing that he was in town, he supposed + that he should find him in a suitable mansion. + </p> + <p> + In order that he might make a becoming first appearance before his uncle + either at Saumur or at Froidfond, he had put on his most elegant + travelling attire, simple yet exquisite,—“adorable,” to use the word + which in those days summed up the special perfections of a man or a thing. + At Tours a hairdresser had re-curled his beautiful chestnut locks; there + he changed his linen and put on a black satin cravat, which, combined with + a round shirt-collar, framed his fair and smiling countenance agreeably. A + travelling great-coat, only half buttoned up, nipped in his waist and + disclosed a cashmere waistcoat crossed in front, beneath which was another + waistcoat of white material. His watch, negligently slipped into a pocket, + was fastened by a short gold chain to a buttonhole. His gray trousers, + buttoned up at the sides, were set off at the seams with patterns of black + silk embroidery. He gracefully twirled a cane, whose chased gold knob did + not mar the freshness of his gray gloves. And to complete all, his cap was + in excellent taste. None but a Parisian, and a Parisian of the upper + spheres, could thus array himself without appearing ridiculous; none other + could give the harmony of self-conceit to all these fopperies, which were + carried off, however, with a dashing air,—the air of a young man who + has fine pistols, a sure aim, and Annette. + </p> + <p> + Now if you wish to understand the mutual amazement of the provincial party + and the young Parisian; if you would clearly see the brilliance which the + traveller’s elegance cast among the gray shadows of the room and upon the + faces of this family group,—endeavor to picture to your minds the + Cruchots. All three took snuff, and had long ceased to repress the habit + of snivelling or to remove the brown blotches which strewed the frills of + their dingy shirts and the yellowing creases of their crumpled collars. + Their flabby cravats were twisted into ropes as soon as they wound them + about their throats. The enormous quantity of linen which allowed these + people to have their clothing washed only once in six months, and to keep + it during that time in the depths of their closets, also enabled time to + lay its grimy and decaying stains upon it. There was perfect unison of + ill-grace and senility about them; their faces, as faded as their + threadbare coats, as creased as their trousers, were worn-out, + shrivelled-up, and puckered. As for the others, the general negligence of + their dress, which was incomplete and wanting in freshness,—like the + toilet of all country places, where insensibly people cease to dress for + others and come to think seriously of the price of a pair of gloves,—was + in keeping with the negligence of the Cruchots. A horror of fashion was + the only point on which the Grassinists and the Cruchotines agreed. + </p> + <p> + When the Parisian took up his eye-glass to examine the strange accessories + of this dwelling,—the joists of the ceiling, the color of the + woodwork, and the specks which the flies had left there in sufficient + number to punctuate the “Moniteur” and the “Encyclopaedia of Sciences,”—the + loto-players lifted their noses and looked at him with as much curiosity + as they might have felt about a giraffe. Monsieur des Grassins and his + son, to whom the appearance of a man of fashion was not wholly unknown, + were nevertheless as much astonished as their neighbors, whether it was + that they fell under the indefinable influence of the general feeling, or + that they really shared it as with satirical glances they seemed to say to + their compatriots,— + </p> + <p> + “That is what you see in Paris!” + </p> + <p> + They were able to examine Charles at their leisure without fearing to + displease the master of the house. Grandet was absorbed in the long letter + which he held in his hand; and to read it he had taken the only candle + upon the card-table, paying no heed to his guests or their pleasure. + Eugenie, to whom such a type of perfection, whether of dress or of person, + was absolutely unknown, thought she beheld in her cousin a being descended + from seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the fragrance wafted from + the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She would have liked to touch + the soft kid of the delicate gloves. She envied Charles his small hands, + his complexion, the freshness and refinement of his features. In short,—if + it is possible to sum up the effect this elegant being produced upon an + ignorant young girl perpetually employed in darning stockings or in + mending her father’s clothes, and whose life flowed on beneath these + unclean rafters, seeing none but occasional passers along the silent + street,—this vision of her cousin roused in her soul an emotion of + delicate desire like that inspired in a young man by the fanciful pictures + of women drawn by Westall for the English “Keepsakes,” and that engraved + by the Findens with so clever a tool that we fear, as we breathe upon the + paper, that the celestial apparitions may be wafted away. Charles drew + from his pocket a handkerchief embroidered by the great lady now + travelling in Scotland. As Eugenie saw this pretty piece of work, done in + the vacant hours which were lost to love, she looked at her cousin to see + if it were possible that he meant to make use of it. The manners of the + young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up his eye-glass, his + affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance at the coffer which had + just given so much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he evidently + regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,—all these things, + which shocked the Cruchots and the des Grassins, pleased Eugenie so deeply + that before she slept she dreamed long dreams of her phoenix cousin. + </p> + <p> + The loto-numbers were drawn very slowly, and presently the game came + suddenly to an end. La Grand Nanon entered and said aloud: “Madame, I want + the sheets for monsieur’s bed.” + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet followed her out. Madame des Grassins said in a low voice: + “Let us keep our sous and stop playing.” Each took his or her two sous + from the chipped saucer in which they had been put; then the party moved + in a body toward the fire. + </p> + <p> + “Have you finished your game?” said Grandet, without looking up from his + letter. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, yes!” replied Madame des Grassins, taking a seat near Charles. + </p> + <p> + Eugenie, prompted by a thought often born in the heart of a young girl + when sentiment enters it for the first time, left the room to go and help + her mother and Nanon. Had an able confessor then questioned her she would, + no doubt, have avowed to him that she thought neither of her mother nor of + Nanon, but was pricked by a poignant desire to look after her cousin’s + room and concern herself with her cousin; to supply what might be needed, + to remedy any forgetfulness, to see that all was done to make it, as far + as possible, suitable and elegant; and, in fact, she arrived in time to + prove to her mother and Nanon that everything still remained to be done. + She put into Nanon’s head the notion of passing a warming-pan between the + sheets. She herself covered the old table with a cloth and requested Nanon + to change it every morning; she convinced her mother that it was necessary + to light a good fire, and persuaded Nanon to bring up a great pile of wood + into the corridor without saying anything to her father. She ran to get, + from one of the corner-shelves of the hall, a tray of old lacquer which + was part of the inheritance of the late Monsieur de la Bertelliere, + catching up at the same time a six-sided crystal goblet, a little + tarnished gilt spoon, an antique flask engraved with cupids, all of which + she put triumphantly on the corner of her cousin’s chimney-piece. More + ideas surged through her head in one quarter of an hour than she had ever + had since she came into the world. + </p> + <p> + “Mamma,” she said, “my cousin will never bear the smell of a tallow + candle; suppose we buy a wax one?” And she darted, swift as a bird, to get + the five-franc piece which she had just received for her monthly expenses. + “Here, Nanon,” she cried, “quick!” + </p> + <p> + “What will your father say?” This terrible remonstrance was uttered by + Madame Grandet as she beheld her daughter armed with an old Sevres + sugar-basin which Grandet had brought home from the chateau of Froidfond. + “And where will you get the sugar? Are you crazy?” + </p> + <p> + “Mamma, Nanon can buy some sugar as well as the candle.” + </p> + <p> + “But your father?” + </p> + <p> + “Surely his nephew ought not to go without a glass of <i>eau sucree</i>? + Besides, he will not notice it.” + </p> + <p> + “Your father sees everything,” said Madame Grandet, shaking her head. + </p> + <p> + Nanon hesitated; she knew her master. + </p> + <p> + “Come, Nanon, go,—because it is my birthday.” + </p> + <p> + Nanon gave a loud laugh as she heard the first little jest her young + mistress had ever made, and then obeyed her. + </p> + <p> + While Eugenie and her mother were trying to embellish the bedroom assigned + by Monsieur Grandet for his nephew, Charles himself was the object of + Madame des Grassins’ attentions; to all appearances she was setting her + cap at him. + </p> + <p> + “You are very courageous, monsieur,” she said to the young dandy, “to + leave the pleasures of the capital at this season and take up your abode + in Saumur. But if we do not frighten you away, you will find there are + some amusements even here.” + </p> + <p> + She threw him the ogling glance of the provinces, where women put so much + prudence and reserve into their eyes that they impart to them the prudish + concupiscence peculiar to certain ecclesiastics to whom all pleasure is + either a theft or an error. Charles was so completely out of his element + in this abode, and so far from the vast chateau and the sumptuous life + with which his fancy had endowed his uncle, that as he looked at Madame + des Grassins he perceived a dim likeness to Parisian faces. He gracefully + responded to the species of invitation addressed to him, and began very + naturally a conversation, in which Madame des Grassins gradually lowered + her voice so as to bring it into harmony with the nature of the + confidences she was making. With her, as with Charles, there was the need + of conference; so after a few moments spent in coquettish phrases and a + little serious jesting, the clever provincial said, thinking herself + unheard by the others, who were discussing the sale of wines which at that + season filled the heads of every one in Saumur,— + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur if you will do us the honor to come and see us, you will give as + much pleasure to my husband as to myself. Our salon is the only one in + Saumur where you will find the higher business circles mingling with the + nobility. We belong to both societies, who meet at our house simply + because they find it amusing. My husband—I say it with pride—is + as much valued by the one class as by the other. We will try to relieve + the monotony of your visit here. If you stay all the time with Monsieur + Grandet, good heavens! what will become of you? Your uncle is a sordid + miser who thinks of nothing but his vines; your aunt is a pious soul who + can’t put two ideas together; and your cousin is a little fool, without + education, perfectly common, no fortune, who will spend her life in + darning towels.” + </p> + <p> + “She is really very nice, this woman,” thought Charles Grandet as he duly + responded to Madame des Grassins’ coquetries. + </p> + <p> + “It seems to me, wife, that you are taking possession of monsieur,” said + the stout banker, laughing. + </p> + <p> + On this remark the notary and the president said a few words that were + more or less significant; but the abbe, looking at them slyly, brought + their thoughts to a focus by taking a pinch of snuff and saying as he + handed round his snuff-box: “Who can do the honors of Saumur for monsieur + so well as madame?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! what do you mean by that, monsieur l’abbe?” demanded Monsieur des + Grassins. + </p> + <p> + “I mean it in the best possible sense for you, for madame, for the town of + Saumur, and for monsieur,” said the wily old man, turning to Charles. + </p> + <p> + The Abbe Cruchot had guessed the conversation between Charles and Madame + des Grassins without seeming to pay attention to it. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur,” said Adolphe to Charles with an air which he tried to make + free and easy, “I don’t know whether you remember me, but I had the honor + of dancing as your <i>vis-a-vis</i> at a ball given by the Baron de + Nucingen, and—” + </p> + <p> + “Perfectly; I remember perfectly, monsieur,” answered Charles, pleased to + find himself the object of general attention. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur is your son?” he said to Madame des Grassins. + </p> + <p> + The abbe looked at her maliciously. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, monsieur,” she answered. + </p> + <p> + “Then you were very young when you were in Paris?” said Charles, + addressing Adolphe. + </p> + <p> + “You must know, monsieur,” said the abbe, “that we send them to Babylon as + soon as they are weaned.” + </p> + <p> + Madame des Grassins examined the abbe with a glance of extreme + penetration. + </p> + <p> + “It is only in the provinces,” he continued, “that you will find women of + thirty and more years as fresh as madame, here, with a son about to take + his degree. I almost fancy myself back in the days when the young men + stood on chairs in the ball-room to see you dance, madame,” said the abbe, + turning to his female adversary. “To me, your triumphs are but of + yesterday—” + </p> + <p> + “The old rogue!” thought Madame Grassins; “can he have guessed my + intentions?” + </p> + <p> + “It seems that I shall have a good deal of success in Saumur,” thought + Charles as he unbuttoned his great-coat, put a hand into his waistcoat, + and cast a glance into the far distance, to imitate the attitude which + Chantrey has given to Lord Byron. + </p> + <p> + The inattention of Pere Grandet, or, to speak more truly, the + preoccupation of mind into which the reading of the letter had plunged + him, did not escape the vigilance of the notary and the president, who + tried to guess the contents of the letter by the almost imperceptible + motions of the miser’s face, which was then under the full light of the + candle. He maintained the habitual calm of his features with evident + difficulty; we may, in fact, picture to ourselves the countenance such a + man endeavored to preserve as he read the fatal letter which here follows:— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + My Brother,—It is almost twenty-three years since we have seen + each other. My marriage was the occasion of our last interview, + after which we parted, and both of us were happy. Assuredly I + could not then foresee that you would one day be the prop of the + family whose prosperity you then predicted. + + When you hold this letter within your hands I shall be no longer + living. In the position I now hold I cannot survive the disgrace + of bankruptcy. I have waited on the edge of the gulf until the + last moment, hoping to save myself. The end has come, I must sink + into it. The double bankruptcies of my broker and of Roguin, my + notary, have carried off my last resources and left me nothing. I + have the bitterness of owing nearly four millions, with assets not + more than twenty-five per cent in value to pay them. The wines in + my warehouses suffer from the fall in prices caused by the + abundance and quality of your vintage. In three days Paris will + cry out: “Monsieur Grandet was a knave!” and I, an honest man, + shall be lying in my winding-sheet of infamy. I deprive my son of + a good name, which I have stained, and the fortune of his mother, + which I have lost. He knows nothing of all this,—my unfortunate + child whom I idolize! We parted tenderly. He was ignorant, + happily, that the last beatings of my heart were spent in that + farewell. Will he not some day curse me? My brother, my brother! + the curses of our children are horrible; they can appeal against + ours, but theirs are irrevocable. Grandet, you are my elder + brother, you owe me your protection; act for me so that Charles + may cast no bitter words upon my grave! My brother, if I were + writing with my blood, with my tears, no greater anguish could I + put into this letter,—nor as great, for then I should weep, I + should bleed, I should die, I should suffer no more, but now I + suffer and look at death with dry eyes. + + From henceforth you are my son’s father; he has no relations, as + you well know, on his mother’s side. Why did I not consider social + prejudices? Why did I yield to love? Why did I marry the natural + daughter of a great lord? Charles has no family. Oh, my unhappy + son! my son! Listen, Grandet! I implore nothing for myself, + —besides, your property may not be large enough to carry a mortgage + of three millions,—but for my son! Brother, my suppliant hands + are clasped as I think of you; behold them! Grandet, I confide my + son to you in dying, and I look at the means of death with less + pain as I think that you will be to him a father. He loved me + well, my Charles; I was good to him, I never thwarted him; he will + not curse me. Ah, you see! he is gentle, he is like his mother, he + will cause you no grief. Poor boy! accustomed to all the + enjoyments of luxury, he knows nothing of the privations to which + you and I were condemned by the poverty of our youth. And I leave + him ruined! alone! Yes, all my friends will avoid him, and it is I + who have brought this humiliation upon him! Would that I had the + force to send him with one thrust into the heavens to his mother’s + side! Madness! I come back to my disaster—to his. I send him to + you that you may tell him in some fitting way of my death, of his + future fate. Be a father to him, but a good father. Do not tear + him all at once from his idle life, it would kill him. I beg him + on my knees to renounce all rights that, as his mother’s heir, he + may have on my estate. But the prayer is superfluous; he is + honorable, and he will feel that he must not appear among my + creditors. Bring him to see this at the right time; reveal to him + the hard conditions of the life I have made for him: and if he + still has tender thoughts of me, tell him in my name that all is + not lost for him. Yes, work, labor, which saved us both, may give + him back the fortune of which I have deprived him; and if he + listens to his father’s voice as it reaches him from the grave, he + will go the Indies. My brother, Charles is an upright and + courageous young man; give him the wherewithal to make his + venture; he will die sooner than not repay you the funds which you + may lend him. Grandet! if you will not do this, you will lay up + for yourself remorse. Ah, should my child find neither tenderness + nor succor in you, I would call down the vengeance of God upon + your cruelty! + + If I had been able to save something from the wreck, I might have + had the right to leave him at least a portion of his mother’s + property; but my last monthly payments have absorbed everything. I + did not wish to die uncertain of my child’s fate; I hoped to feel + a sacred promise in a clasp of your hand which might have warmed + my heart: but time fails me. While Charles is journeying to you I + shall be preparing my assignment. I shall endeavor to show by the + order and good faith of my accounts that my disaster comes neither + from a faulty life nor from dishonesty. It is for my son’s sake + that I strive to do this. + + Farewell, my brother! May the blessing of God be yours for the + generous guardianship I lay upon you, and which, I doubt not, you + will accept. A voice will henceforth and forever pray for you in + that world where we must all go, and where I am now as you read + these lines. +</pre> + <p> + Victor-Ange-Guillaume Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “So you are talking?” said Pere Grandet as he carefully folded the letter + in its original creases and put it into his waistcoat-pocket. He looked at + his nephew with a humble, timid air, beneath which he hid his feelings and + his calculations. “Have you warmed yourself?” he said to him. + </p> + <p> + “Thoroughly, my dear uncle.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, where are the women?” said his uncle, already forgetting that his + nephew was to sleep at the house. At this moment Eugenie and Madame + Grandet returned. + </p> + <p> + “Is the room all ready?” said Grandet, recovering his composure. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, father.” + </p> + <p> + “Well then, my nephew, if you are tired, Nanon shall show you your room. + It isn’t a dandy’s room; but you will excuse a poor wine-grower who never + has a penny to spare. Taxes swallow up everything.” + </p> + <p> + “We do not wish to intrude, Grandet,” said the banker; “you may want to + talk to your nephew, and therefore we will bid you good-night.” + </p> + <p> + At these words the assembly rose, and each made a parting bow in keeping + with his or her own character. The old notary went to the door to fetch + his lantern and came back to light it, offering to accompany the des + Grassins on their way. Madame des Grassins had not foreseen the incident + which brought the evening prematurely to an end, her servant therefore had + not arrived. + </p> + <p> + “Will you do me the honor to take my arm, madame?” said the abbe. + </p> + <p> + “Thank you, monsieur l’abbe, but I have my son,” she answered dryly. + </p> + <p> + “Ladies cannot compromise themselves with me,” said the abbe. + </p> + <p> + “Take Monsieur Cruchot’s arm,” said her husband. + </p> + <p> + The abbe walked off with the pretty lady so quickly that they were soon + some distance in advance of the caravan. + </p> + <p> + “That is a good-looking young man, madame,” he said, pressing her arm. + “Good-by to the grapes, the vintage is done. It is all over with us. We + may as well say adieu to Mademoiselle Grandet. Eugenie will belong to the + dandy. Unless this cousin is enamoured of some Parisian woman, your son + Adolphe will find another rival in—” + </p> + <p> + “Not at all, monsieur l’abbe. This young man cannot fail to see that + Eugenie is a little fool,—a girl without the least freshness. Did + you notice her to-night? She was as yellow as a quince.” + </p> + <p> + “Perhaps you made the cousin notice it?” + </p> + <p> + “I did not take the trouble—” + </p> + <p> + “Place yourself always beside Eugenie, madame, and you need never take the + trouble to say anything to the young man against his cousin; he will make + his own comparisons, which—” + </p> + <p> + “Well, he has promised to dine with me the day after to-morrow.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! if you only <i>would</i>, madame—” said the abbe. + </p> + <p> + “What is it that you wish me to do, monsieur l’abbe? Do you mean to offer + me bad advice? I have not reached the age of thirty-nine, without a stain + upon my reputation, thank God! to compromise myself now, even for the + empire of the Great Mogul. You and I are of an age when we both know the + meaning of words. For an ecclesiastic, you certainly have ideas that are + very incongruous. Fie! it is worthy of Faublas!” + </p> + <p> + “You have read Faublas?” + </p> + <p> + “No, monsieur l’abbe; I meant to say the <i>Liaisons dangereuses</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! that book is infinitely more moral,” said the abbe, laughing. “But + you make me out as wicked as a young man of the present day; I only meant—” + </p> + <p> + “Do you dare to tell me you were not thinking of putting wicked things + into my head? Isn’t it perfectly clear? If this young man—who I + admit is very good-looking—were to make love to me, he would not + think of his cousin. In Paris, I know, good mothers do devote themselves + in this way to the happiness and welfare of their children; but we live in + the provinces, monsieur l’abbe.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, madame.” + </p> + <p> + “And,” she continued, “I do not want, and Adolphe himself would not want, + a hundred millions brought at such a price.” + </p> + <p> + “Madame, I said nothing about a hundred millions; that temptation might be + too great for either of us to withstand. Only, I do think that an honest + woman may permit herself, in all honor, certain harmless little + coquetries, which are, in fact, part of her social duty and which—” + </p> + <p> + “Do you think so?” + </p> + <p> + “Are we not bound, madame, to make ourselves agreeable to each other?—Permit + me to blow my nose.—I assure you, madame,” he resumed, “that the + young gentleman ogled you through his glass in a more flattering manner + than he put on when he looked at me; but I forgive him for doing homage to + beauty in preference to old age—” + </p> + <p> + “It is quite apparent,” said the president in his loud voice, “that + Monsieur Grandet of Paris has sent his son to Saumur with extremely + matrimonial intentions.” + </p> + <p> + “But in that case the cousin wouldn’t have fallen among us like a + cannon-ball,” answered the notary. + </p> + <p> + “That doesn’t prove anything,” said Monsieur des Grassins; “the old miser + is always making mysteries.” + </p> + <p> + “Des Grassins, my friend, I have invited the young man to dinner. You must + go and ask Monsieur and Madame de Larsonniere and the du Hautoys, with the + beautiful demoiselle du Hautoy, of course. I hope she will be properly + dressed; that jealous mother of hers does make such a fright of her! + Gentlemen, I trust that you will all do us the honor to come,” she added, + stopping the procession to address the two Cruchots. + </p> + <p> + “Here you are at home, madame,” said the notary. + </p> + <p> + After bowing to the three des Grassins, the three Cruchots returned home, + applying their provincial genius for analysis to studying, under all its + aspects, the great event of the evening, which undoubtedly changed the + respective positions of Grassinists and Cruchotines. The admirable + common-sense which guided all the actions of these great machinators made + each side feel the necessity of a momentary alliance against a common + enemy. Must they not mutually hinder Eugenie from loving her cousin, and + the cousin from thinking of Eugenie? Could the Parisian resist the + influence of treacherous insinuations, soft-spoken calumnies, slanders + full of faint praise and artless denials, which should be made to circle + incessantly about him and deceive him? + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV + </h2> + <p> + When the four relations were left alone, Monsieur Grandet said to his + nephew,— + </p> + <p> + “We must go to bed. It is too late to talk about the matters which have + brought you here; to-morrow we will take a suitable moment. We breakfast + at eight o’clock; at midday we eat a little fruit or a bit of bread, and + drink a glass of white wine; and we dine, like the Parisians, at five + o’clock. That’s the order of the day. If you like to go and see the town + and the environs you are free to do so. You will excuse me if my + occupations do not permit me to accompany you. You may perhaps hear people + say that I am rich,—Monsieur Grandet this, Monsieur Grandet that. I + let them talk; their gossip does not hurt my credit. But I have not a + penny; I work in my old age like an apprentice whose worldly goods are a + bad plane and two good arms. Perhaps you’ll soon know yourself what a + franc costs when you have got to sweat for it. Nanon, where are the + candles?” + </p> + <p> + “I trust, my nephew, that you will find all you want,” said Madame + Grandet; “but if you should need anything else, you can call Nanon.” + </p> + <p> + “My dear aunt, I shall need nothing; I have, I believe, brought everything + with me. Permit me to bid you good-night, and my young cousin also.” + </p> + <p> + Charles took a lighted wax candle from Nanon’s hand,—an Anjou + candle, very yellow in color, and so shopworn that it looked like tallow + and deceived Monsieur Grandet, who, incapable of suspecting its presence + under his roof, did not perceive this magnificence. + </p> + <p> + “I will show you the way,” he said. + </p> + <p> + Instead of leaving the hall by the door which opened under the archway, + Grandet ceremoniously went through the passage which divided the hall from + the kitchen. A swing-door, furnished with a large oval pane of glass, shut + this passage from the staircase, so as to fend off the cold air which + rushed through it. But the north wind whistled none the less keenly in + winter, and, in spite of the sand-bags at the bottom of the doors of the + living-room, the temperature within could scarcely be kept at a proper + height. Nanon went to bolt the outer door; then she closed the hall and + let loose a wolf-dog, whose bark was so strangled that he seemed to have + laryngitis. This animal, noted for his ferocity, recognized no one but + Nanon; the two untutored children of the fields understood each other. + </p> + <p> + When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the + staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall of + his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He fancied + himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned an + inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not guess the + cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an expression of + friendliness, which they answered by a smile that made him desperate. + </p> + <p> + “Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?” he said to himself. + </p> + <p> + When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted in Etruscan + red and without casings,—doors sunk in the dusty walls and provided + with iron bars, which in fact were bolts, each ending with the pattern of + a flame, as did both ends of the long sheath of the lock. The first door + at the top of the staircase, which opened into a room directly above the + kitchen, was evidently walled up. In fact, the only entrance to that room + was through Grandet’s bedchamber; the room itself was his office. The + single window which lighted it, on the side of the court, was protected by + a lattice of strong iron bars. No one, not even Madame Grandet, had + permission to enter it. The old man chose to be alone, like an alchemist + in his laboratory. There, no doubt, some hiding-place had been ingeniously + constructed; there the title-deeds of property were stored; there hung the + scales on which to weigh the louis; there were devised, by night and + secretly, the estimates, the profits, the receipts, so that business men, + finding Grandet prepared at all points, imagined that he got his cue from + fairies or demons; there, no doubt, while Nanon’s loud snoring shook the + rafters, while the wolf-dog watched and yawned in the courtyard, while + Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet were quietly sleeping, came the old cooper + to cuddle, to con over, to caress and clutch and clasp his gold. The walls + were thick, the screens sure. He alone had the key of this laboratory, + where—so people declared—he studied the maps on which his + fruit-trees were marked, and calculated his profits to a vine, and almost + to a twig. + </p> + <p> + The door of Eugenie’s chamber was opposite to the walled-up entrance to + this room. At the other end of the landing were the appartements of the + married pair, which occupied the whole front of the house. Madame Grandet + had a room next to that of Eugenie, which was entered through a glass + door. The master’s chamber was separated from that of his wife by a + partition, and from the mysterious strong-room by a thick wall. Pere + Grandet lodged his nephew on the second floor, in the high mansarde attic + which was above his own bedroom, so that he might hear him if the young + man took it into his head to go and come. When Eugenie and her mother + reached the middle of the landing they kissed each other for good-night; + then with a few words of adieu to Charles, cold upon the lips, but + certainly very warm in the heart of the young girl, they withdrew into + their own chambers. + </p> + <p> + “Here you are in your room, my nephew,” said Pere Grandet as he opened the + door. “If you need to go out, call Nanon; without her, beware! the dog + would eat you up without a word. Sleep well. Good-night. Ha! why, they + have made you a fire!” he cried. + </p> + <p> + At this moment Nanon appeared with the warming pan. + </p> + <p> + “Here’s something more!” said Monsieur Grandet. “Do you take my nephew for + a lying-in woman? Carry off your brazier, Nanon!” + </p> + <p> + “But, monsieur, the sheets are damp, and this gentleman is as delicate as + a woman.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, go on, as you’ve taken it into your head,” said Grandet, pushing + her by the shoulders; “but don’t set things on fire.” So saying, the miser + went down-stairs, grumbling indistinct sentences. + </p> + <p> + Charles stood aghast in the midst of his trunks. After casting his eyes on + the attic-walls covered with that yellow paper sprinkled with bouquets so + well known in dance-houses, on the fireplace of ribbed stone whose very + look was chilling, on the chairs of yellow wood with varnished cane seats + that seemed to have more than the usual four angles, on the open + night-table capacious enough to hold a small sergeant-at-arms, on the + meagre bit of rag-carpet beside the bed, on the tester whose cloth valance + shook as if, devoured by moths, it was about to fall, he turned gravely to + la Grande Nanon and said,— + </p> + <p> + “Look here! my dear woman, just tell me, am I in the house of Monsieur + Grandet, formerly mayor of Saumur, and brother to Monsieur Grandet of + Paris?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, monsieur; and a very good, a very kind, a very perfect gentleman. + Shall I help you to unpack your trunks?” + </p> + <p> + “Faith! yes, if you will, my old trooper. Didn’t you serve in the marines + of the Imperial Guard?” + </p> + <p> + “Ho, ho, ho!” laughed Nanon. “What’s that,—the marines of the guard? + Is it salt? Does it go in the water?” + </p> + <p> + “Here, get me my dressing-gown out of that valise; there’s the key.” + </p> + <p> + Nanon was wonder-struck by the sight of a dressing-gown made of green + silk, brocaded with gold flowers of an antique design. + </p> + <p> + “Are you going to put that on to go to bed with?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “Yes.” + </p> + <p> + “Holy Virgin! what a beautiful altar-cloth it would make for the parish + church! My dear darling monsieur, give it to the church, and you’ll save + your soul; if you don’t, you’ll lose it. Oh, how nice you look in it! I + must call mademoiselle to see you.” + </p> + <p> + “Come, Nanon, if Nanon you are, hold your tongue; let me go to bed. I’ll + arrange my things to-morrow. If my dressing-gown pleases you so much, you + shall save your soul. I’m too good a Christian not to give it to you when + I go away, and you can do what you like with it.” + </p> + <p> + Nanon stood rooted to the ground, gazing at Charles and unable to put + faith into his words. + </p> + <p> + “Good night, Nanon.” + </p> + <p> + “What in the world have I come here for?” thought Charles as he went to + sleep. “My father is not a fool; my journey must have some object. Pshaw! + put off serious thought till the morrow, as some Greek idiot said.” + </p> + <p> + “Blessed Virgin! how charming he is, my cousin!” Eugenie was saying, + interrupting her prayers, which that night at least were never finished. + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet had no thoughts at all as she went to bed. She heard the + miser walking up and down his room through the door of communication which + was in the middle of the partition. Like all timid women, she had studied + the character of her lord. Just as the petrel foresees the storm, she knew + by imperceptible signs when an inward tempest shook her husband; and at + such times, to use an expression of her own, she “feigned dead.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet gazed at the door lined with sheet-iron which he lately put to his + sanctum, and said to himself,— + </p> + <p> + “What a crazy idea of my brother to bequeath his son to me! A fine legacy! + I have not fifty francs to give him. What are fifty francs to a dandy who + looked at my barometer as if he meant to make firewood of it!” + </p> + <p> + In thinking over the consequences of that legacy of anguish Grandet was + perhaps more agitated than his brother had been at the moment of writing + it. + </p> + <p> + “I shall have that golden robe,” thought Nanon, who went to sleep tricked + out in her altar-cloth, dreaming for the first time in her life of + flowers, embroidery, and damask, just as Eugenie was dreaming of love. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + In the pure and monotonous life of young girls there comes a delicious + hour when the sun sheds its rays into their soul, when the flowers express + their thoughts, when the throbbings of the heart send upward to the brain + their fertilizing warmth and melt all thoughts into a vague desire,—day + of innocent melancholy and of dulcet joys! When babes begin to see, they + smile; when a young girl first perceives the sentiment of nature, she + smiles as she smiled when an infant. If light is the first love of life, + is not love a light to the heart? The moment to see within the veil of + earthly things had come for Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + An early riser, like all provincial girls, she was up betimes and said her + prayers, and then began the business of dressing,—a business which + henceforth was to have a meaning. First she brushed and smoothed her + chestnut hair and twisted its heavy masses to the top of her head with the + utmost care, preventing the loose tresses from straying, and giving to her + head a symmetry which heightened the timid candor of her face; for the + simplicity of these accessories accorded well with the innocent sincerity + of its lines. As she washed her hands again and again in the cold water + which hardened and reddened the skin, she looked at her handsome round + arms and asked herself what her cousin did to make his hands so softly + white, his nails so delicately curved. She put on new stockings and her + prettiest shoes. She laced her corset straight, without skipping a single + eyelet. And then, wishing for the first time in her life to appear to + advantage, she felt the joy of having a new gown, well made, which + rendered her attractive. + </p> + <p> + As she finished her toilet the clock of the parish church struck the hour; + to her astonishment, it was only seven. The desire of having plenty of + time for dressing carefully had led her to get up too early. Ignorant of + the art of retouching every curl and studying every effect, Eugenie simply + crossed her arms, sat down by the window, and looked at the court-yard, + the narrow garden, and the high terraced walls that over-topped it: a + dismal, hedged-in prospect, yet not wholly devoid of those mysterious + beauties which belong to solitary or uncultivated nature. Near the kitchen + was a well surrounded by a curb, with a pulley fastened to a bent iron rod + clasped by a vine whose leaves were withered, reddened, and shrivelled by + the season. From thence the tortuous shoots straggled to the wall, + clutched it, and ran the whole length of the house, ending near the + wood-pile, where the logs were ranged with as much precision as the books + in a library. The pavement of the court-yard showed the black stains + produced in time by lichens, herbage, and the absence of all movement or + friction. The thick walls wore a coating of green moss streaked with + waving brown lines, and the eight stone steps at the bottom of the + court-yard which led up to the gate of the garden were disjointed and + hidden beneath tall plants, like the tomb of a knight buried by his widow + in the days of the Crusades. Above a foundation of moss-grown, crumbling + stones was a trellis of rotten wood, half fallen from decay; over them + clambered and intertwined at will a mass of clustering creepers. On each + side of the latticed gate stretched the crooked arms of two stunted + apple-trees. Three parallel walks, gravelled and separated from each other + by square beds, where the earth was held in by box-borders, made the + garden, which terminated, beneath a terrace of the old walls, in a group + of lindens. At the farther end were raspberry-bushes; at the other, near + the house, an immense walnut-tree drooped its branches almost into the + window of the miser’s sanctum. + </p> + <p> + A clear day and the beautiful autumnal sun common to the banks of the + Loire was beginning to melt the hoar-frost which the night had laid on + these picturesque objects, on the walls, and on the plants which swathed + the court-yard. Eugenie found a novel charm in the aspect of things lately + so insignificant to her. A thousand confused thoughts came to birth in her + mind and grew there, as the sunbeams grew without along the wall. She felt + that impulse of delight, vague, inexplicable, which wraps the moral being + as a cloud wraps the physical body. Her thoughts were all in keeping with + the details of this strange landscape, and the harmonies of her heart + blended with the harmonies of nature. When the sun reached an angle of the + wall where the “Venus-hair” of southern climes drooped its thick leaves, + lit with the changing colors of a pigeon’s breast, celestial rays of hope + illumined the future to her eyes, and thenceforth she loved to gaze upon + that piece of wall, on its pale flowers, its blue harebells, its wilting + herbage, with which she mingled memories as tender as those of childhood. + The noise made by each leaf as it fell from its twig in the void of that + echoing court gave answer to the secret questionings of the young girl, + who could have stayed there the livelong day without perceiving the flight + of time. Then came tumultuous heavings of the soul. She rose often, went + to her glass, and looked at herself, as an author in good faith looks at + his work to criticise it and blame it in his own mind. + </p> + <p> + “I am not beautiful enough for him!” Such was Eugenie’s thought,—a + humble thought, fertile in suffering. The poor girl did not do herself + justice; but modesty, or rather fear, is among the first of love’s + virtues. Eugenie belonged to the type of children with sturdy + constitutions, such as we see among the lesser bourgeoisie, whose beauties + always seem a little vulgar; and yet, though she resembled the Venus of + Milo, the lines of her figure were ennobled by the softer Christian + sentiment which purifies womanhood and gives it a distinction unknown to + the sculptors of antiquity. She had an enormous head, with the masculine + yet delicate forehead of the Jupiter of Phidias, and gray eyes, to which + her chaste life, penetrating fully into them, carried a flood of light. + The features of her round face, formerly fresh and rosy, were at one time + swollen by the small-pox, which destroyed the velvet texture of the skin, + though it kindly left no other traces, and her cheek was still so soft and + delicate that her mother’s kiss made a momentary red mark upon it. Her + nose was somewhat too thick, but it harmonized well with the vermilion + mouth, whose lips, creased in many lines, were full of love and kindness. + The throat was exquisitely round. The bust, well curved and carefully + covered, attracted the eye and inspired reverie. It lacked, no doubt, the + grace which a fitting dress can bestow; but to a connoisseur the + non-flexibility of her figure had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and + strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; but + she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and none but + artists truly love. A painter seeking here below for a type of Mary’s + celestial purity, searching womankind for those proud modest eyes which + Raphael divined, for those virgin lines, often due to chances of + conception, which the modesty of Christian life alone can bestow or keep + unchanged,—such a painter, in love with his ideal, would have found + in the face of Eugenie the innate nobleness that is ignorant of itself; he + would have seen beneath the calmness of that brow a world of love; he + would have felt, in the shape of the eyes, in the fall of the eyelids, the + presence of the nameless something that we call divine. Her features, the + contour of her head, which no expression of pleasure had ever altered or + wearied, were like the lines of the horizon softly traced in the far + distance across the tranquil lakes. That calm and rosy countenance, + margined with light like a lovely full-blown flower, rested the mind, held + the eye, and imparted the charm of the conscience that was there + reflected. Eugenie was standing on the shore of life where young illusions + flower, where daisies are gathered with delights ere long to be unknown; + and thus she said, looking at her image in the glass, unconscious as yet + of love: “I am too ugly; he will not notice me.” + </p> + <p> + Then she opened the door of her chamber which led to the staircase, and + stretched out her neck to listen for the household noises. “He is not up,” + she thought, hearing Nanon’s morning cough as the good soul went and came, + sweeping out the halls, lighting her fire, chaining the dog, and speaking + to the beasts in the stable. Eugenie at once went down and ran to Nanon, + who was milking the cow. + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, my good Nanon, make a little cream for my cousin’s breakfast.” + </p> + <p> + “Why, mademoiselle, you should have thought of that yesterday,” said + Nanon, bursting into a loud peal of laughter. “I can’t make cream. Your + cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have seen him + in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He wears linen + as fine as the surplice of monsieur le cure.” + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, please make us a <i>galette</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “And who’ll give me wood for the oven, and flour and butter for the + cakes?” said Nanon, who in her function of prime-minister to Grandet + assumed at times enormous importance in the eyes of Eugenie and her + mother. “Mustn’t rob the master to feast the cousin. You ask him for + butter and flour and wood: he’s your father, perhaps he’ll give you some. + See! there he is now, coming to give out the provisions.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard the + staircase shaking under her father’s step. Already she felt the effects of + that virgin modesty and that special consciousness of happiness which lead + us to fancy, not perhaps without reason, that our thoughts are graven on + our foreheads and are open to the eyes of all. Perceiving for the first + time the cold nakedness of her father’s house, the poor girl felt a sort + of rage that she could not put it in harmony with her cousin’s elegance. + She felt the need of doing something for him,—what, she did not + know. Ingenuous and truthful, she followed her angelic nature without + mistrusting her impressions or her feelings. The mere sight of her cousin + had wakened within her the natural yearnings of a woman,—yearnings + that were the more likely to develop ardently because, having reached her + twenty-third year, she was in the plenitude of her intelligence and her + desires. For the first time in her life her heart was full of terror at + the sight of her father; in him she saw the master of the fate, and she + fancied herself guilty of wrong-doing in hiding from his knowledge certain + thoughts. She walked with hasty steps, surprised to breathe a purer air, + to feel the sun’s rays quickening her pulses, to absorb from their heat a + moral warmth and a new life. As she turned over in her mind some stratagem + by which to get the cake, a quarrel—an event as rare as the sight of + swallows in winter—broke out between la Grande Nanon and Grandet. + Armed with his keys, the master had come to dole out provisions for the + day’s consumption. + </p> + <p> + “Is there any bread left from yesterday?” he said to Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “Not a crumb, monsieur.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet took a large round loaf, well floured and moulded in one of the + flat baskets which they use for baking in Anjou, and was about to cut it, + when Nanon said to him,— + </p> + <p> + “We are five, to-day, monsieur.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s true,” said Grandet, “but your loaves weigh six pounds; there’ll + be some left. Besides, these young fellows from Paris don’t eat bread, + you’ll see.” + </p> + <p> + “Then they must eat <i>frippe</i>?” said Nanon. + </p> + <p> + <i>Frippe</i> is a word of the local lexicon of Anjou, and means any + accompaniment of bread, from butter which is spread upon it, the commonest + kind of <i>frippe</i>, to peach preserve, the most distinguished of all + the <i>frippes</i>; those who in their childhood have licked the <i>frippe</i> + and left the bread, will comprehend the meaning of Nanon’s speech. + </p> + <p> + “No,” answered Grandet, “they eat neither bread nor <i>frippe</i>; they + are something like marriageable girls.” + </p> + <p> + After ordering the meals for the day with his usual parsimony, the + goodman, having locked the closets containing the supplies, was about to + go towards the fruit-garden, when Nanon stopped him to say,— + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur, give me a little flour and some butter, and I’ll make a <i>galette</i> + for the young ones.” + </p> + <p> + “Are you going to pillage the house on account of my nephew?” + </p> + <p> + “I wasn’t thinking any more of your nephew than I was of your dog,—not + more than you think yourself; for, look here, you’ve only forked out six + bits of sugar. I want eight.” + </p> + <p> + “What’s all this, Nanon? I have never seen you like this before. What have + you got in your head? Are you the mistress here? You sha’n’t have more + than six pieces of sugar.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, then, how is your nephew to sweeten his coffee?” + </p> + <p> + “With two pieces; I’ll go without myself.” + </p> + <p> + “Go without sugar at your age! I’d rather buy you some out of my own + pocket.” + </p> + <p> + “Mind your own business.” + </p> + <p> + In spite of the recent fall in prices, sugar was still in Grandet’s eyes + the most valuable of all the colonial products; to him it was always six + francs a pound. The necessity of economizing it, acquired under the + Empire, had grown to be the most inveterate of his habits. All women, even + the greatest ninnies, know how to dodge and dodge to get their ends; Nanon + abandoned the sugar for the sake of getting the <i>galette</i>. + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle!” she called through the window, “do you want some <i>galette</i>?” + </p> + <p> + “No, no,” answered Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “Come, Nanon,” said Grandet, hearing his daughter’s voice. “See here.” He + opened the cupboard where the flour was kept, gave her a cupful, and added + a few ounces of butter to the piece he had already cut off. + </p> + <p> + “I shall want wood for the oven,” said the implacable Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “Well, take what you want,” he answered sadly; “but in that case you must + make us a fruit-tart, and you’ll cook the whole dinner in the oven. In + that way you won’t need two fires.” + </p> + <p> + “Goodness!” cried Nanon, “you needn’t tell me that.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet cast a look that was well-nigh paternal upon his faithful deputy. + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle,” she cried, when his back was turned, “we shall have the <i>galette</i>.” + </p> + <p> + Pere Grandet returned from the garden with the fruit and arranged a + plateful on the kitchen-table. + </p> + <p> + “Just see, monsieur,” said Nanon, “what pretty boots your nephew has. What + leather! why it smells good! What does he clean it with, I wonder? Am I to + put your egg-polish on it?” + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, I think eggs would injure that kind of leather. Tell him you don’t + know how to black morocco; yes, that’s morocco. He will get you something + himself in Saumur to polish those boots with. I have heard that they put + sugar into the blacking to make it shine.” + </p> + <p> + “They look good to eat,” said the cook, putting the boots to her nose. + “Bless me! if they don’t smell like madame’s eau-de-cologne. Ah! how + funny!” + </p> + <p> + “Funny!” said her master. “Do you call it funny to put more money into + boots than the man who stands in them is worth?” + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur,” she said, when Grandet returned the second time, after locking + the fruit-garden, “won’t you have the <i>pot-au-feu</i> put on once or + twice a week on account of your nephew?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes.” + </p> + <p> + “Am I to go to the butcher’s?” + </p> + <p> + “Certainly not. We will make the broth of fowls; the farmers will bring + them. I shall tell Cornoiller to shoot some crows; they make the best soup + in the world.” + </p> + <p> + “Isn’t it true, monsieur, that crows eat the dead?” + </p> + <p> + “You are a fool, Nanon. They eat what they can get, like the rest of the + world. Don’t we all live on the dead? What are legacies?” + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Grandet, having no further orders to give, drew out his watch, + and seeing that he had half an hour to dispose of before breakfast, he + took his hat, went and kissed his daughter, and said to her: + </p> + <p> + “Do you want to come for a walk in the fields, down by the Loire? I have + something to do there.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the father + and daughter went down the winding street to the shore. + </p> + <p> + “Where are you going at this early hour?” said Cruchot, the notary, + meeting them. + </p> + <p> + “To see something,” answered Grandet, not duped by the matutinal + appearance of his friend. + </p> + <p> + When Pere Grandet went to “see something,” the notary knew by experience + there was something to be got by going with him; so he went. + </p> + <p> + “Come, Cruchot,” said Grandet, “you are one of my friends. I’ll show you + what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good ground.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for those that + were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?” said Maitre Cruchot, + opening his eyes with amazement. “What luck you have had! To cut down your + trees at the very time they ran short of white-wood at Nantes, and to sell + them at thirty francs!” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most solemn + moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to bring down upon + her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet had now reached the + magnificent fields which he owned on the banks of the Loire, where thirty + workmen were employed in clearing away, filling up, and levelling the + spots formerly occupied by the poplars. + </p> + <p> + “Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! Jean,” he + cried to a laborer, “m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, b-both ways.” + </p> + <p> + “Four times eight feet,” said the man. + </p> + <p> + “Thirty-two feet lost,” said Grandet to Cruchot. “I had three hundred + poplars in this one line, isn’t that so? Well, then, three h-h-hundred + times thir-thirty-two lost m-m-me five hundred in h-h-hay; add twice as + much for the side rows,—fifteen hundred; the middle rows as much + more. So we may c-c-call it a th-thousand b-b-bales of h-h-hay—” + </p> + <p> + “Very good,” said Cruchot, to help out his friend; “a thousand bales are + worth about six hundred francs.” + </p> + <p> + “Say t-t-twelve hundred, be-c-cause there’s three or four hundred francs + on the second crop. Well, then, c-c-calculate that t-twelve thousand + francs a year for f-f-forty years with interest c-c-comes to—” + </p> + <p> + “Say sixty thousand francs,” said the notary. + </p> + <p> + “I am willing; c-c-comes t-t-to sixty th-th-thousand. Very good,” + continued Grandet, without stuttering: “two thousand poplars forty years + old will only yield me fifty thousand francs. There’s a loss. I have found + that myself,” said Grandet, getting on his high horse. “Jean, fill up all + the holes except those at the bank of the river; there you are to plant + the poplars I have bought. Plant ‘em there, and they’ll get nourishment + from the government,” he said, turning to Cruchot, and giving a slight + motion to the wen on his nose, which expressed more than the most ironical + of smiles. + </p> + <p> + “True enough; poplars should only be planted on poor soil,” said Cruchot, + amazed at Grandet’s calculations. + </p> + <p> + “Y-y-yes, monsieur,” answered the old man satirically. + </p> + <p> + Eugenie, who was gazing at the sublime scenery of the Loire, and paying no + attention to her father’s reckonings, presently turned an ear to the + remarks of Cruchot when she heard him say,— + </p> + <p> + “So you have brought a son-in-law from Paris. All Saumur is talking about + your nephew. I shall soon have the marriage-contract to draw up, hey! Pere + Grandet?” + </p> + <p> + “You g-g-got up very early to t-t-tell me that,” said Grandet, + accompanying the remark with a motion of his wen. “Well, old c-c-comrade, + I’ll be frank, and t-t-tell you what you want t-t-to know. I would rather, + do you see, f-f-fling my daughter into the Loire than g-g-give her to her + c-c-cousin. You may t-t-tell that everywhere,—no, never mind; let + the world t-t-talk.” + </p> + <p> + This answer dazzled and blinded the young girl with sudden light. The + distant hopes upspringing in her heart bloomed suddenly, became real, + tangible, like a cluster of flowers, and she saw them cut down and wilting + on the earth. Since the previous evening she had attached herself to + Charles by those links of happiness which bind soul to soul; from + henceforth suffering was to rivet them. Is it not the noble destiny of + women to be more moved by the dark solemnities of grief than by the + splendors of fortune? How was it that fatherly feeling had died out of her + father’s heart? Of what crime had Charles been guilty? Mysterious + questions! Already her dawning love, a mystery so profound, was wrapping + itself in mystery. She walked back trembling in all her limbs; and when + she reached the gloomy street, lately so joyous to her, she felt its + sadness, she breathed the melancholy which time and events had printed + there. None of love’s lessons lacked. A few steps from their own door she + went on before her father and waited at the threshold. But Grandet, who + saw a newspaper in the notary’s hand, stopped short and asked,— + </p> + <p> + “How are the Funds?” + </p> + <p> + “You never listen to my advice, Grandet,” answered Cruchot. “Buy soon; you + will still make twenty per cent in two years, besides getting an excellent + rate of interest,—five thousand a year for eighty thousand francs + fifty centimes.” + </p> + <p> + “We’ll see about that,” answered Grandet, rubbing his chin. + </p> + <p> + “Good God!” exclaimed the notary. + </p> + <p> + “Well, what?” cried Grandet; and at the same moment Cruchot put the + newspaper under his eyes and said: + </p> + <p> + “Read that!” + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Monsieur Grandet, one of the most respected merchants in Paris, + blew his brains out yesterday, after making his usual appearance + at the Bourse. He had sent his resignation to the president of the + Chamber of Deputies, and had also resigned his functions as a + judge of the commercial courts. The failures of Monsieur Roguin + and Monsieur Souchet, his broker and his notary, had ruined him. + The esteem felt for Monsieur Grandet and the credit he enjoyed + were nevertheless such that he might have obtained the necessary + assistance from other business houses. It is much to be regretted + that so honorable a man should have yielded to momentary despair,” + etc. +</pre> + <p> + “I knew it,” said the old wine-grower to the notary. + </p> + <p> + The words sent a chill of horror through Maitre Cruchot, who, + notwithstanding his impassibility as a notary, felt the cold running down + his spine as he thought that Grandet of Paris had possibly implored in + vain the millions of Grandet of Saumur. + </p> + <p> + “And his son, so joyous yesterday—” + </p> + <p> + “He knows nothing as yet,” answered Grandet, with the same composure. + </p> + <p> + “Adieu! Monsieur Grandet,” said Cruchot, who now understood the state of + the case, and went off to reassure Monsieur de Bonfons. + </p> + <p> + On entering, Grandet found breakfast ready. Madame Grandet, round whose + neck Eugenie had flung her arms, kissing her with the quick effusion of + feeling often caused by secret grief, was already seated in her chair on + castors, knitting sleeves for the coming winter. + </p> + <p> + “You can begin to eat,” said Nanon, coming downstairs four steps at a + time; “the young one is sleeping like a cherub. Isn’t he a darling with + his eyes shut? I went in and I called him: no answer.” + </p> + <p> + “Let him sleep,” said Grandet; “he’ll wake soon enough to hear + ill-tidings.” + </p> + <p> + “What is it?” asked Eugenie, putting into her coffee the two little bits + of sugar weighing less than half an ounce which the old miser amused + himself by cutting up in his leisure hours. Madame Grandet, who did not + dare to put the question, gazed at her husband. + </p> + <p> + “His father has blown his brains out.” + </p> + <p> + “My uncle?” said Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “Poor young man!” exclaimed Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “Poor indeed!” said Grandet; “he isn’t worth a sou!” + </p> + <p> + “Eh! poor boy, and he’s sleeping like the king of the world!” said Nanon + in a gentle voice. + </p> + <p> + Eugenie stopped eating. Her heart was wrung, as the young heart is wrung + when pity for the suffering of one she loves overflows, for the first + time, the whole being of a woman. The poor girl wept. + </p> + <p> + “What are you crying about? You didn’t know your uncle,” said her father, + giving her one of those hungry tigerish looks he doubtless threw upon his + piles of gold. + </p> + <p> + “But, monsieur,” said Nanon, “who wouldn’t feel pity for the poor young + man, sleeping there like a wooden shoe, without knowing what’s coming?” + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t speak to you, Nanon. Hold your tongue!” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie learned at that moment that the woman who loves must be able to + hide her feelings. She did not answer. + </p> + <p> + “You will say nothing to him about it, Ma’ame Grandet, till I return,” + said the old man. “I have to go and straighten the line of my hedge along + the high-road. I shall be back at noon, in time for the second breakfast, + and then I will talk with my nephew about his affairs. As for you, + Mademoiselle Eugenie, if it is for that dandy you are crying, that’s + enough, child. He’s going off like a shot to the Indies. You will never + see him again.” + </p> + <p> + The father took his gloves from the brim of his hat, put them on with his + usual composure, pushed them in place by shoving the fingers of both hands + together, and went out. + </p> + <p> + “Mamma, I am suffocating!” cried Eugenie when she was alone with her + mother; “I have never suffered like this.” + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet, seeing that she turned pale, opened the window and let her + breathe fresh air. + </p> + <p> + “I feel better!” said Eugenie after a moment. + </p> + <p> + This nervous excitement in a nature hitherto, to all appearance, calm and + cold, reacted on Madame Grandet; she looked at her daughter with the + sympathetic intuition with which mothers are gifted for the objects of + their tenderness, and guessed all. In truth the life of the Hungarian + sisters, bound together by a freak of nature, could scarcely have been + more intimate than that of Eugenie and her mother,—always together + in the embrasure of that window, and sleeping together in the same + atmosphere. + </p> + <p> + “My poor child!” said Madame Grandet, taking Eugenie’s head and laying it + upon her bosom. + </p> + <p> + At these words the young girl raised her head, questioned her mother by a + look, and seemed to search out her inmost thought. + </p> + <p> + “Why send him to the Indies?” she said. “If he is unhappy, ought he not to + stay with us? Is he not our nearest relation?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, my child, it seems natural; but your father has his reasons: we must + respect them.” + </p> + <p> + The mother and daughter sat down in silence, the former upon her raised + seat, the latter in her little armchair, and both took up their work. + Swelling with gratitude for the full heart-understanding her mother had + given her, Eugenie kissed the dear hand, saying,— + </p> + <p> + “How good you are, my kind mamma!” + </p> + <p> + The words sent a glow of light into the motherly face, worn and blighted + as it was by many sorrows. + </p> + <p> + “You like him?” asked Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet only smiled in reply. Then, after a moment’s silence, she + said in a low voice: “Do you love him already? That is wrong.” + </p> + <p> + “Wrong?” said Eugenie. “Why is it wrong? You are pleased with him, Nanon + is pleased with him; why should he not please me? Come, mamma, let us set + the table for his breakfast.” + </p> + <p> + She threw down her work, and her mother did the same, saying, “Foolish + child!” But she sanctioned the child’s folly by sharing it. Eugenie called + Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “What do you want now, mademoiselle?” + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, can we have cream by midday?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! midday, to be sure you can,” answered the old servant. + </p> + <p> + “Well, let him have his coffee very strong; I heard Monsieur des Grassins + say that they make the coffee very strong in Paris. Put in a great deal.” + </p> + <p> + “Where am I to get it?” + </p> + <p> + “Buy some.” + </p> + <p> + “Suppose monsieur meets me?” + </p> + <p> + “He has gone to his fields.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll run, then. But Monsieur Fessard asked me yesterday if the Magi had + come to stay with us when I bought the wax candle. All the town will know + our goings-on.” + </p> + <p> + “If your father finds it out,” said Madame Grandet, “he is capable of + beating us.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, let him beat us; we will take his blows on our knees.” + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet for all answer raised her eyes to heaven. Nanon put on her + hood and went off. Eugenie got out some clean table-linen, and went to + fetch a few bunches of grapes which she had amused herself by hanging on a + string across the attic; she walked softly along the corridor, so as not + to waken her cousin, and she could not help listening at the door to his + quiet breathing. + </p> + <p> + “Sorrow is watching while he sleeps,” she thought. + </p> + <p> + She took the freshest vine-leaves and arranged her dish of grapes as + coquettishly as a practised house-keeper might have done, and placed it + triumphantly on the table. She laid hands on the pears counted out by her + father, and piled them in a pyramid mixed with leaves. She went and came, + and skipped and ran. She would have liked to lay under contribution + everything in her father’s house; but the keys were in his pocket. Nanon + came back with two fresh eggs. At sight of them Eugenie almost hugged her + round the neck. + </p> + <p> + “The farmer from Lande had them in his basket. I asked him for them, and + he gave them to me, the darling, for nothing, as an attention!” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V + </h2> + <p> + After two hours’ thought and care, during which Eugenie jumped up twenty + times from her work to see if the coffee were boiling, or to go and listen + to the noise her cousin made in dressing, she succeeded in preparing a + simple little breakfast, very inexpensive, but which, nevertheless, + departed alarmingly from the inveterate customs of the house. The midday + breakfast was always taken standing. Each took a slice of bread, a little + fruit or some butter, and a glass of wine. As Eugenie looked at the table + drawn up near the fire with an arm-chair placed before her cousin’s plate, + at the two dishes of fruit, the egg-cup, the bottle of white wine, the + bread, and the sugar heaped up in a saucer, she trembled in all her limbs + at the mere thought of the look her father would give her if he should + come in at that moment. She glanced often at the clock to see if her + cousin could breakfast before the master’s return. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t be troubled, Eugenie; if your father comes in, I will take it all + upon myself,” said Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + Eugenie could not repress a tear. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, my good mother!” she cried, “I have never loved you enough.” + </p> + <p> + Charles, who had been tramping about his room for some time, singing to + himself, now came down. Happily, it was only eleven o’clock. The true + Parisian! he had put as much dandyism into his dress as if he were in the + chateau of the noble lady then travelling in Scotland. He came into the + room with the smiling, courteous manner so becoming to youth, which made + Eugenie’s heart beat with mournful joy. He had taken the destruction of + his castles in Anjou as a joke, and came up to his aunt gaily. + </p> + <p> + “Have you slept well, dear aunt? and you, too, my cousin?” + </p> + <p> + “Very well, monsieur; did you?” said Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “I? perfectly.” + </p> + <p> + “You must be hungry, cousin,” said Eugenie; “will you take your seat?” + </p> + <p> + “I never breakfast before midday; I never get up till then. However, I + fared so badly on the journey that I am glad to eat something at once. + Besides—” here he pulled out the prettiest watch Breguet ever made. + “Dear me! I am early, it is only eleven o’clock!” + </p> + <p> + “Early?” said Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “Yes; but I wanted to put my things in order. Well, I shall be glad to + have anything to eat,—anything, it doesn’t matter what, a chicken, a + partridge.” + </p> + <p> + “Holy Virgin!” exclaimed Nanon, overhearing the words. + </p> + <p> + “A partridge!” whispered Eugenie to herself; she would gladly have given + the whole of her little hoard for a partridge. + </p> + <p> + “Come and sit down,” said his aunt. + </p> + <p> + The young dandy let himself drop into an easy-chair, just as a pretty + woman falls gracefully upon a sofa. Eugenie and her mother took ordinary + chairs and sat beside him, near the fire. + </p> + <p> + “Do you always live here?” said Charles, thinking the room uglier by + daylight than it had seemed the night before. + </p> + <p> + “Always,” answered Eugenie, looking at him, “except during the vintage. + Then we go and help Nanon, and live at the Abbaye des Noyers.” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t you ever take walks?” + </p> + <p> + “Sometimes on Sunday after vespers, when the weather is fine,” said Madame + Grandet, “we walk on the bridge, or we go and watch the haymakers.” + </p> + <p> + “Have you a theatre?” + </p> + <p> + “Go to the theatre!” exclaimed Madame Grandet, “see a play! Why, monsieur, + don’t you know it is a mortal sin?” + </p> + <p> + “See here, monsieur,” said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, “here are your + chickens,—in the shell.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! fresh eggs,” said Charles, who, like all people accustomed to luxury, + had already forgotten about his partridge, “that is delicious: now, if you + will give me the butter, my good girl.” + </p> + <p> + “Butter! then you can’t have the <i>galette</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, bring the butter,” cried Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + The young girl watched her cousin as he cut his sippets, with as much + pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where innocence and virtue + triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming mother, improved, and trained + by a woman of fashion, had the elegant, dainty, foppish movements of a + coxcomb. The compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a young girl possess + a power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles, finding himself the + object of the attentions of his aunt and cousin, could not escape the + influence of feelings which flowed towards him, as it were, and inundated + him. He gave Eugenie a bright, caressing look full of kindness,—a + look which seemed itself a smile. He perceived, as his eyes lingered upon + her, the exquisite harmony of features in the pure face, the grace of her + innocent attitude, the magic clearness of the eyes, where young love + sparkled and desire shone unconsciously. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! my dear cousin, if you were in full dress at the Opera, I assure you + my aunt’s words would come true,—you would make the men commit the + mortal sin of envy, and the women the sin of jealousy.” + </p> + <p> + The compliment went to Eugenie’s heart and set it beating, though she did + not understand its meaning. + </p> + <p> + “Oh! cousin,” she said, “you are laughing at a poor little country girl.” + </p> + <p> + “If you knew me, my cousin, you would know that I abhor ridicule; it + withers the heart and jars upon all my feelings.” Here he swallowed his + buttered sippet very gracefully. “No, I really have not enough mind to + make fun of others; and doubtless it is a great defect. In Paris, when + they want to disparage a man, they say: ‘He has a good heart.’ The phrase + means: ‘The poor fellow is as stupid as a rhinoceros.’ But as I am rich, + and known to hit the bull’s-eye at thirty paces with any kind of pistol, + and even in the open fields, ridicule respects me.” + </p> + <p> + “My dear nephew, that bespeaks a good heart.” + </p> + <p> + “You have a very pretty ring,” said Eugenie; “is there any harm in asking + to see it?” + </p> + <p> + Charles held out his hand after loosening the ring, and Eugenie blushed as + she touched the pink nails of her cousin with the tips of her fingers. + </p> + <p> + “See, mamma, what beautiful workmanship.” + </p> + <p> + “My! there’s a lot of gold!” said Nanon, bringing in the coffee. + </p> + <p> + “What is that?” exclaimed Charles, laughing, as he pointed to an oblong + pot of brown earthenware, glazed on the inside, and edged with a fringe of + ashes, from the bottom of which the coffee-grounds were bubbling up and + falling in the boiling liquid. + </p> + <p> + “It is boiled coffee,” said Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! my dear aunt, I shall at least leave one beneficent trace of my visit + here. You are indeed behind the age! I must teach you to make good coffee + in a Chaptal coffee-pot.” + </p> + <p> + He tried to explain the process of a Chaptal coffee-pot. + </p> + <p> + “Gracious! if there are so many things as all that to do,” said Nanon, “we + may as well give up our lives to it. I shall never make coffee that way; I + know that! Pray, who is to get the fodder for the cow while I make the + coffee?” + </p> + <p> + “I will make it,” said Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “Child!” said Madame Grandet, looking at her daughter. + </p> + <p> + The word recalled to their minds the sorrow that was about to fall upon + the unfortunate young man; the three women were silent, and looked at him + with an air of commiseration that caught his attention. + </p> + <p> + “Is anything the matter, my cousin?” he said. + </p> + <p> + “Hush!” said Madame Grandet to Eugenie, who was about to answer; “you + know, my daughter, that your father charged us not to speak to monsieur—” + </p> + <p> + “Say Charles,” said young Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! you are called Charles? What a beautiful name!” cried Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + Presentiments of evil are almost always justified. At this moment Nanon, + Madame Grandet, and Eugenie, who had all three been thinking with a + shudder of the old man’s return, heard the knock whose echoes they knew + but too well. + </p> + <p> + “There’s papa!” said Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + She removed the saucer filled with sugar, leaving a few pieces on the + table-cloth; Nanon carried off the egg-cup; Madame Grandet sat up like a + frightened hare. It was evidently a panic, which amazed Charles, who was + wholly unable to understand it. + </p> + <p> + “Why! what is the matter?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “My father has come,” answered Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “Well, what of that?” + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Grandet entered the room, threw his keen eye upon the table, upon + Charles, and saw the whole thing. + </p> + <p> + “Ha! ha! so you have been making a feast for your nephew; very good, very + good, very good indeed!” he said, without stuttering. “When the cat’s + away, the mice will play.” + </p> + <p> + “Feast!” thought Charles, incapable of suspecting or imagining the rules + and customs of the household. + </p> + <p> + “Give me my glass, Nanon,” said the master + </p> + <p> + Eugenie brought the glass. Grandet drew a horn-handled knife with a big + blade from his breeches’ pocket, cut a slice of bread, took a small bit of + butter, spread it carefully on the bread, and ate it standing. At this + moment Charlie was sweetening his coffee. Pere Grandet saw the bits of + sugar, looked at his wife, who turned pale, and made three steps forward; + he leaned down to the poor woman’s ear and said,— + </p> + <p> + “Where did you get all that sugar?” + </p> + <p> + “Nanon fetched it from Fessard’s; there was none.” + </p> + <p> + It is impossible to picture the profound interest the three women took in + this mute scene. Nanon had left her kitchen and stood looking into the + room to see what would happen. Charles, having tasted his coffee, found it + bitter and glanced about for the sugar, which Grandet had already put + away. + </p> + <p> + “What do you want?” said his uncle. + </p> + <p> + “The sugar.” + </p> + <p> + “Put in more milk,” answered the master of the house; “your coffee will + taste sweeter.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie took the saucer which Grandet had put away and placed it on the + table, looking calmly at her father as she did so. Most assuredly, the + Parisian woman who held a silken ladder with her feeble arms to facilitate + the flight of her lover, showed no greater courage than Eugenie displayed + when she replaced the sugar upon the table. The lover rewarded his + mistress when she proudly showed him her beautiful bruised arm, and bathed + every swollen vein with tears and kisses till it was cured with happiness. + Charles, on the other hand, never so much as knew the secret of the cruel + agitation that shook and bruised the heart of his cousin, crushed as it + was by the look of the old miser. + </p> + <p> + “You are not eating your breakfast, wife.” + </p> + <p> + The poor helot came forward with a piteous look, cut herself a piece of + bread, and took a pear. Eugenie boldly offered her father some grapes, + saying,— + </p> + <p> + “Taste my preserves, papa. My cousin, you will eat some, will you not? I + went to get these pretty grapes expressly for you.” + </p> + <p> + “If no one stops them, they will pillage Saumur for you, nephew. When you + have finished, we will go into the garden; I have something to tell you + which can’t be sweetened.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie and her mother cast a look on Charles whose meaning the young man + could not mistake. + </p> + <p> + “What is it you mean, uncle? Since the death of my poor mother”—at + these words his voice softened—“no other sorrow can touch me.” + </p> + <p> + “My nephew, who knows by what afflictions God is pleased to try us?” said + his aunt. + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta,” said Grandet, “there’s your nonsense beginning. I am + sorry to see those white hands of yours, nephew”; and he showed the + shoulder-of-mutton fists which Nature had put at the end of his own arms. + “There’s a pair of hands made to pick up silver pieces. You’ve been + brought up to put your feet in the kid out of which we make the purses we + keep our money in. A bad look-out! Very bad!” + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean, uncle? I’ll be hanged if I understand a single word of + what you are saying.” + </p> + <p> + “Come!” said Grandet. + </p> + <p> + The miser closed the blade of his knife with a snap, drank the last of his + wine, and opened the door. + </p> + <p> + “My cousin, take courage!” + </p> + <p> + The tone of the young girl struck terror to Charles’s heart, and he + followed his terrible uncle, a prey to disquieting thoughts. Eugenie, her + mother, and Nanon went into the kitchen, moved by irresistible curiosity + to watch the two actors in the scene which was about to take place in the + garden, where at first the uncle walked silently ahead of the nephew. + Grandet was not at all troubled at having to tell Charles of the death of + his father; but he did feel a sort of compassion in knowing him to be + without a penny, and he sought for some phrase or formula by which to + soften the communication of that cruel truth. “You have lost your father,” + seemed to him a mere nothing to say; fathers die before their children. + But “you are absolutely without means,”—all the misfortunes of life + were summed up in those words! Grandet walked round the garden three + times, the gravel crunching under his heavy step. + </p> + <p> + In the crucial moments of life our minds fasten upon the locality where + joys or sorrows overwhelm us. Charles noticed with minute attention the + box-borders of the little garden, the yellow leaves as they fluttered + down, the dilapidated walls, the gnarled fruit-trees,—picturesque + details which were destined to remain forever in his memory, blending + eternally, by the mnemonics that belong exclusively to the passions, with + the recollections of this solemn hour. + </p> + <p> + “It is very fine weather, very warm,” said Grandet, drawing a long breath. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, uncle; but why—” + </p> + <p> + “Well, my lad,” answered his uncle, “I have some bad news to give you. + Your father is ill—” + </p> + <p> + “Then why am I here?” said Charles. “Nanon,” he cried, “order post-horses! + I can get a carriage somewhere?” he added, turning to his uncle, who stood + motionless. + </p> + <p> + “Horses and carriages are useless,” answered Grandet, looking at Charles, + who remained silent, his eyes growing fixed. “Yes, my poor boy, you guess + the truth,—he is dead. But that’s nothing; there is something worse: + he blew out his brains.” + </p> + <p> + “My father!” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, but that’s not the worst; the newspapers are all talking about it. + Here, read that.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet, who had borrowed the fatal article from Cruchot, thrust the paper + under his nephew’s eyes. The poor young man, still a child, still at an + age when feelings wear no mask, burst into tears. + </p> + <p> + “That’s good!” thought Grandet; “his eyes frightened me. He’ll be all + right if he weeps,—That is not the worst, my poor nephew,” he said + aloud, not noticing whether Charles heard him, “that is nothing; you will + get over it: but—” + </p> + <p> + “Never, never! My father! Oh, my father!” + </p> + <p> + “He has ruined you, you haven’t a penny.” + </p> + <p> + “What does that matter? My father! Where is my father?” + </p> + <p> + His sobs resounded horribly against those dreary walls and reverberated in + the echoes. The three women, filled with pity, wept also; for tears are + often as contagious as laughter. Charles, without listening further to his + uncle, ran through the court and up the staircase to his chamber, where he + threw himself across the bed and hid his face in the sheets, to weep in + peace for his lost parents. + </p> + <p> + “The first burst must have its way,” said Grandet, entering the + living-room, where Eugenie and her mother had hastily resumed their seats + and were sewing with trembling hands, after wiping their eyes. “But that + young man is good for nothing; his head is more taken up with the dead + than with his money.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie shuddered as she heard her father’s comment on the most sacred of + all griefs. From that moment she began to judge him. Charles’s sobs, + though muffled, still sounded through the sepulchral house; and his deep + groans, which seemed to come from the earth beneath, only ceased towards + evening, after growing gradually feebler. + </p> + <p> + “Poor young man!” said Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + Fatal exclamation! Pere Grandet looked at his wife, at Eugenie, and at the + sugar-bowl. He recollected the extraordinary breakfast prepared for the + unfortunate youth, and he took a position in the middle of the room. + </p> + <p> + “Listen to me,” he said, with his usual composure. “I hope that you will + not continue this extravagance, Madame Grandet. I don’t give you MY money + to stuff that young fellow with sugar.” + </p> + <p> + “My mother had nothing to do with it,” said Eugenie; “it was I who—” + </p> + <p> + “Is it because you are of age,” said Grandet, interrupting his daughter, + “that you choose to contradict me? Remember, Eugenie—” + </p> + <p> + “Father, the son of your brother ought to receive from us—” + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta!” exclaimed the cooper on four chromatic tones; “the son + of my brother this, my nephew that! Charles is nothing at all to us; he + hasn’t a farthing, his father has failed; and when this dandy has cried + his fill, off he goes from here. I won’t have him revolutionize my + household.” + </p> + <p> + “What is ‘failing,’ father?” asked Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “To fail,” answered her father, “is to commit the most dishonorable action + that can disgrace a man.” + </p> + <p> + “It must be a great sin,” said Madame Grandet, “and our brother may be + damned.” + </p> + <p> + “There, there, don’t begin with your litanies!” said Grandet, shrugging + his shoulders. “To fail, Eugenie,” he resumed, “is to commit a theft which + the law, unfortunately, takes under its protection. People have given + their property to Guillaume Grandet trusting to his reputation for honor + and integrity; he has made away with it all, and left them nothing but + their eyes to weep with. A highway robber is better than a bankrupt: the + one attacks you and you can defend yourself, he risks his own life; but + the other—in short, Charles is dishonored.” + </p> + <p> + The words rang in the poor girl’s heart and weighed it down with their + heavy meaning. Upright and delicate as a flower born in the depths of a + forest, she knew nothing of the world’s maxims, of its deceitful arguments + and specious sophisms; she therefore believed the atrocious explanation + which her father gave her designedly, concealing the distinction which + exists between an involuntary failure and an intentional one. + </p> + <p> + “Father, could you not have prevented such a misfortune?” + </p> + <p> + “My brother did not consult me. Besides, he owes four millions.” + </p> + <p> + “What is a ‘million,’ father?” she asked, with the simplicity of a child + which thinks it can find out at once all that it wants to know. + </p> + <p> + “A million?” said Grandet, “why, it is a million pieces of twenty sous + each, and it takes five twenty sous pieces to make five francs.” + </p> + <p> + “Dear me!” cried Eugenie, “how could my uncle possibly have had four + millions? Is there any one else in France who ever had so many millions?” + Pere Grandet stroked his chin, smiled, and his wen seemed to dilate. “But + what will become of my cousin Charles?” + </p> + <p> + “He is going off to the West Indies by his father’s request, and he will + try to make his fortune there.” + </p> + <p> + “Has he got the money to go with?” + </p> + <p> + “I shall pay for his journey as far as—yes, as far as Nantes.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie sprang into his arms. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, father, how good you are!” + </p> + <p> + She kissed him with a warmth that almost made Grandet ashamed of himself, + for his conscience galled him a little. + </p> + <p> + “Will it take much time to amass a million?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “Look here!” said the old miser, “you know what a napoleon is? Well, it + takes fifty thousand napoleons to make a million.” + </p> + <p> + “Mamma, we must say a great many <i>neuvaines</i> for him.” + </p> + <p> + “I was thinking so,” said Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “That’s the way, always spending my money!” cried the father. “Do you + think there are francs on every bush?” + </p> + <p> + At this moment a muffled cry, more distressing than all the others, echoed + through the garrets and struck a chill to the hearts of Eugenie and her + mother. + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, go upstairs and see that he does not kill himself,” said Grandet. + “Now, then,” he added, looking at his wife and daughter, who had turned + pale at his words, “no nonsense, you two! I must leave you; I have got to + see about the Dutchmen who are going away to-day. And then I must find + Cruchot, and talk with him about all this.” + </p> + <p> + He departed. As soon as he had shut the door Eugenie and her mother + breathed more freely. Until this morning the young girl had never felt + constrained in the presence of her father; but for the last few hours + every moment wrought a change in her feelings and ideas. + </p> + <p> + “Mamma, how many louis are there in a cask of wine?” + </p> + <p> + “Your father sells his from a hundred to a hundred and fifty francs, + sometimes two hundred,—at least, so I’ve heard say.” + </p> + <p> + “Then papa must be rich?” + </p> + <p> + “Perhaps he is. But Monsieur Cruchot told me he bought Froidfond two years + ago; that may have pinched him.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie, not being able to understand the question of her father’s + fortune, stopped short in her calculations. + </p> + <p> + “He didn’t even see me, the darling!” said Nanon, coming back from her + errand. “He’s stretched out like a calf on his bed and crying like the + Madeleine, and that’s a blessing! What’s the matter with the poor dear + young man!” + </p> + <p> + “Let us go and console him, mamma; if any one knocks, we can come down.” + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet was helpless against the sweet persuasive tones of her + daughter’s voice. Eugenie was sublime: she had become a woman. The two, + with beating hearts, went up to Charles’s room. The door was open. The + young man heard and saw nothing; plunged in grief, he only uttered + inarticulate cries. + </p> + <p> + “How he loves his father!” said Eugenie in a low voice. + </p> + <p> + In the utterance of those words it was impossible to mistake the hopes of + a heart that, unknown to itself, had suddenly become passionate. Madame + Grandet cast a mother’s look upon her daughter, and then whispered in her + ear,— + </p> + <p> + “Take care, you will love him!” + </p> + <p> + “Love him!” answered Eugenie. “Ah! if you did but know what my father said + to Monsieur Cruchot.” + </p> + <p> + Charles turned over, and saw his aunt and cousin. + </p> + <p> + “I have lost my father, my poor father! If he had told me his secret + troubles we might have worked together to repair them. My God! my poor + father! I was so sure I should see him again that I think I kissed him + quite coldly—” + </p> + <p> + Sobs cut short the words. + </p> + <p> + “We will pray for him,” said Madame Grandet. “Resign yourself to the will + of God.” + </p> + <p> + “Cousin,” said Eugenie, “take courage! Your loss is irreparable; therefore + think only of saving your honor.” + </p> + <p> + With the delicate instinct of a woman who intuitively puts her mind into + all things, even at the moment when she offers consolation, Eugenie sought + to cheat her cousin’s grief by turning his thoughts inward upon himself. + </p> + <p> + “My honor?” exclaimed the young man, tossing aside his hair with an + impatient gesture as he sat up on his bed and crossed his arms. “Ah! that + is true. My uncle said my father had failed.” He uttered a heart-rending + cry, and hid his face in his hands. “Leave me, leave me, cousin! My God! + my God! forgive my father, for he must have suffered sorely!” + </p> + <p> + There was something terribly attractive in the sight of this young sorrow, + sincere without reasoning or afterthought. It was a virgin grief which the + simple hearts of Eugenie and her mother were fitted to comprehend, and + they obeyed the sign Charles made them to leave him to himself. They went + downstairs in silence and took their accustomed places by the window and + sewed for nearly an hour without exchanging a word. Eugenie had seen in + the furtive glance that she cast about the young man’s room—that + girlish glance which sees all in the twinkling of an eye—the pretty + trifles of his dressing-case, his scissors, his razors embossed with gold. + This gleam of luxury across her cousin’s grief only made him the more + interesting to her, possibly by way of contrast. Never before had so + serious an event, so dramatic a sight, touched the imaginations of these + two passive beings, hitherto sunk in the stillness and calm of solitude. + </p> + <p> + “Mamma,” said Eugenie, “we must wear mourning for my uncle.” + </p> + <p> + “Your father will decide that,” answered Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + They relapsed into silence. Eugenie drew her stitches with a uniform + motion which revealed to an observer the teeming thoughts of her + meditation. The first desire of the girl’s heart was to share her cousin’s + mourning. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI + </h2> + <p> + About four o’clock an abrupt knock at the door struck sharply on the heart + of Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “What can have happened to your father?” she said to her daughter. + </p> + <p> + Grandet entered joyously. After taking off his gloves, he rubbed his hands + hard enough to take off their skin as well, if his epidermis had not been + tanned and cured like Russia leather,—saving, of course, the perfume + of larch-trees and incense. Presently his secret escaped him. + </p> + <p> + “Wife,” he said, without stuttering, “I’ve trapped them all! Our wine is + sold! The Dutch and the Belgians have gone. I walked about the + market-place in front of their inn, pretending to be doing nothing. That + Belgian fellow—you know who I mean—came up to me. The owners + of all the good vineyards have kept back their vintages, intending to + wait; well, I didn’t hinder them. The Belgian was in despair; I saw that. + In a minute the bargain was made. He takes my vintage at two hundred + francs the puncheon, half down. He paid me in gold; the notes are drawn. + Here are six louis for you. In three months wines will have fallen.” + </p> + <p> + These words, uttered in a quiet tone of voice, were nevertheless so + bitterly sarcastic that the inhabitants of Saumur, grouped at this moment + in the market-place and overwhelmed by the news of the sale Grandet had + just effected, would have shuddered had they heard them. Their panic would + have brought the price of wines down fifty per cent at once. + </p> + <p> + “Did you have a thousand puncheons this year, father?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, little one.” + </p> + <p> + That term applied to his daughter was the superlative expression of the + old miser’s joy. + </p> + <p> + “Then that makes two hundred thousand pieces of twenty sous each?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, Mademoiselle Grandet.” + </p> + <p> + “Then, father, you can easily help Charles.” + </p> + <p> + The amazement, the anger, the stupefaction of Belshazzar when he saw the + <i>Mene-Tekel-Upharsin</i> before his eyes is not to be compared with the + cold rage of Grandet, who, having forgotten his nephew, now found him + enshrined in the heart and calculations of his daughter. + </p> + <p> + “What’s this? Ever since that dandy put foot in <i>my</i> house everything + goes wrong! You behave as if you had the right to buy sugar-plums and make + feasts and weddings. I won’t have that sort of thing. I hope I know my + duty at my time of life! I certainly sha’n’t take lessons from my + daughter, or from anybody else. I shall do for my nephew what it is proper + to do, and you have no need to poke your nose into it. As for you, + Eugenie,” he added, facing her, “don’t speak of this again, or I’ll send + you to the Abbaye des Noyers with Nanon, see if I don’t; and no later than + to-morrow either, if you disobey me! Where is that fellow, has he come + down yet?” + </p> + <p> + “No, my friend,” answered Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “What is he doing then?” + </p> + <p> + “He is weeping for his father,” said Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + Grandet looked at his daughter without finding a word to say; after all, + he was a father. He made a couple of turns up and down the room, and then + went hurriedly to his secret den to think over an investment he was + meditating in the public Funds. The thinning out of his two thousand acres + of forest land had yielded him six hundred thousand francs: putting this + sum to that derived from the sale of his poplars and to his other gains + for the last year and for the current year, he had amassed a total of nine + hundred thousand francs, without counting the two hundred thousand he had + got by the sale just concluded. The twenty per cent which Cruchot assured + him would gain in a short time from the Funds, then quoted at seventy, + tempted him. He figured out his calculation on the margin of the newspaper + which gave the account of his brother’s death, all the while hearing the + moans of his nephew, but without listening to them. Nanon came and knocked + on the wall to summon him to dinner. On the last step of the staircase he + was saying to himself as he came down,— + </p> + <p> + “I’ll do it; I shall get eight per cent interest. In two years I shall + have fifteen hundred thousand francs, which I will then draw out in good + gold,—Well, where’s my nephew?” + </p> + <p> + “He says he doesn’t want anything to eat,” answered Nanon; “that’s not + good for him.” + </p> + <p> + “So much saved,” retorted her master. + </p> + <p> + “That’s so,” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Bah! he won’t cry long. Hunger drives the wolves out of the woods.” + </p> + <p> + The dinner was eaten in silence. + </p> + <p> + “My good friend,” said Madame Grandet, when the cloth was removed, “we + must put on mourning.” + </p> + <p> + “Upon my word, Madame Grandet! what will you invent next to spend money + on? Mourning is in the heart, and not in the clothes.” + </p> + <p> + “But mourning for a brother is indispensable; and the Church commands us + to—” + </p> + <p> + “Buy your mourning out of your six louis. Give me a hat-band; that’s + enough for me.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven without uttering a word. Her generous + instincts, slumbering and long repressed but now suddenly and for the + first time awakened, were galled at every turn. The evening passed to all + appearance like a thousand other evenings of their monotonous life, yet it + was certainly the most horrible. Eugenie sewed without raising her head, + and did not use the workbox which Charles had despised the night before. + Madame Grandet knitted her sleeves. Grandet twirled his thumbs for four + hours, absorbed in calculations whose results were on the morrow to + astonish Saumur. No one came to visit the family that day. The whole town + was ringing with the news of the business trick just played by Grandet, + the failure of his brother, and the arrival of his nephew. Obeying the + desire to gossip over their mutual interests, all the upper and + middle-class wine-growers in Saumur met at Monsieur des Grassins, where + terrible imprecations were being fulminated against the ex-mayor. Nanon + was spinning, and the whirr of her wheel was the only sound heard beneath + the gray rafters of that silent hall. + </p> + <p> + “We don’t waste our tongues,” she said, showing her teeth, as large and + white as peeled almonds. + </p> + <p> + “Nothing should be wasted,” answered Grandet, rousing himself from his + reverie. He saw a perspective of eight millions in three years, and he was + sailing along that sheet of gold. “Let us go to bed. I will bid my nephew + good-night for the rest of you, and see if he will take anything.” + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet remained on the landing of the first storey to hear the + conversation that was about to take place between the goodman and his + nephew. Eugenie, bolder than her mother, went up two stairs. + </p> + <p> + “Well, nephew, you are in trouble. Yes, weep, that’s natural. A father is + a father; but we must bear our troubles patiently. I am a good uncle to + you, remember that. Come, take courage! Will you have a little glass of + wine?” (Wine costs nothing in Saumur, and they offer it as tea is offered + in China.) “Why!” added Grandet, “you have got no light! That’s bad, very + bad; you ought to see what you are about,” and he walked to the + chimney-piece. “What’s this?” he cried. “A wax candle! How the devil did + they filch a wax candle? The spendthrifts would tear down the ceilings of + my house to boil the fellow’s eggs.” + </p> + <p> + Hearing these words, mother and daughter slipped back into their rooms and + burrowed in their beds, with the celerity of frightened mice getting back + to their holes. + </p> + <p> + “Madame Grandet, have you found a mine?” said the man, coming into the + chamber of his wife. + </p> + <p> + “My friend, wait; I am saying my prayers,” said the poor mother in a + trembling voice. + </p> + <p> + “The devil take your good God!” growled Grandet in reply. + </p> + <p> + Misers have no belief in a future life; the present is their all in all. + This thought casts a terrible light upon our present epoch, in which, far + more than at any former period, money sways the laws and politics and + morals. Institutions, books, men, and dogmas, all conspire to undermine + belief in a future life,—a belief upon which the social edifice has + rested for eighteen hundred years. The grave, as a means of transition, is + little feared in our day. The future, which once opened to us beyond the + requiems, has now been imported into the present. To obtain <i>per fas et + nefas</i> a terrestrial paradise of luxury and earthly enjoyment, to + harden the heart and macerate the body for the sake of fleeting + possessions, as the martyrs once suffered all things to reach eternal + joys, this is now the universal thought—a thought written + everywhere, even in the very laws which ask of the legislator, “What do + you pay?” instead of asking him, “What do you think?” When this doctrine + has passed down from the bourgeoisie to the populace, where will this + country be? + </p> + <p> + “Madame Grandet, have you done?” asked the old man. + </p> + <p> + “My friend, I am praying for you.” + </p> + <p> + “Very good! Good-night; to-morrow morning we will have a talk.” + </p> + <p> + The poor woman went to sleep like a schoolboy who, not having learned his + lessons, knows he will see his master’s angry face on the morrow. At the + moment when, filled with fear, she was drawing the sheet above her head + that she might stifle hearing, Eugenie, in her night-gown and with naked + feet, ran to her side and kissed her brow. + </p> + <p> + “Oh! my good mother,” she said, “to-morrow I will tell him it was I.” + </p> + <p> + “No; he would send you to Noyers. Leave me to manage it; he cannot eat + me.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you hear, mamma?” + </p> + <p> + “What?” + </p> + <p> + “<i>He</i> is weeping still.” + </p> + <p> + “Go to bed, my daughter; you will take cold in your feet: the floor is + damp.” + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + Thus passed the solemn day which was destined to weight upon the whole + life of the rich and poor heiress, whose sleep was never again to be so + calm, nor yet so pure, as it had been up to this moment. It often happens + that certain actions of human life seem, literally speaking, improbable, + though actual. Is not this because we constantly omit to turn the stream + of psychological light upon our impulsive determinations, and fail to + explain the subtile reasons, mysteriously conceived in our minds, which + impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie’s deep passion should be analyzed in its + most delicate fibres; for it became, scoffers might say, a malady which + influenced her whole existence. Many people prefer to deny results rather + than estimate the force of ties and links and bonds, which secretly join + one fact to another in the moral order. Here, therefore, Eugenie’s past + life will offer to observers of human nature an explanation of her naive + want of reflection and the suddenness of the emotions which overflowed her + soul. The more tranquil her life had been, the more vivid was her womanly + pity, the more simple-minded were the sentiments now developed in her + soul. + </p> + <p> + Made restless by the events of the day, she woke at intervals to listen to + her cousin, thinking she heard the sighs which still echoed in her heart. + Sometimes she saw him dying of his trouble, sometimes she dreamed that he + fainted from hunger. Towards morning she was certain that she heard a + startling cry. She dressed at once and ran, in the dawning light, with a + swift foot to her cousin’s chamber, the door of which he had left open. + The candle had burned down to the socket. Charles, overcome by nature, was + sleeping, dressed and sitting in an armchair beside the bed, on which his + head rested; he dreamed as men dream on an empty stomach. Eugenie might + weep at her ease; she might admire the young and handsome face blotted + with grief, the eyes swollen with weeping, that seemed, sleeping as they + were, to well forth tears. Charles felt sympathetically the young girl’s + presence; he opened his eyes and saw her pitying him. + </p> + <p> + “Pardon me, my cousin,” he said, evidently not knowing the hour nor the + place in which he found himself. + </p> + <p> + “There are hearts who hear you, cousin, and <i>we</i> thought you might + need something. You should go to bed; you tire yourself by sitting thus.” + </p> + <p> + “That is true.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, then, adieu!” + </p> + <p> + She escaped, ashamed and happy at having gone there. Innocence alone can + dare to be so bold. Once enlightened, virtue makes her calculations as + well as vice. Eugenie, who had not trembled beside her cousin, could + scarcely stand upon her legs when she regained her chamber. Her ignorant + life had suddenly come to an end; she reasoned, she rebuked herself with + many reproaches. + </p> + <p> + “What will he think of me? He will think that I love him!” + </p> + <p> + That was what she most wished him to think. An honest love has its own + prescience, and knows that love begets love. What an event for this poor + solitary girl thus to have entered the chamber of a young man! Are there + not thoughts and actions in the life of love which to certain souls bear + the full meaning of the holiest espousals? An hour later she went to her + mother and dressed her as usual. Then they both came down and sat in their + places before the window waiting for Grandet, with that cruel anxiety + which, according to the individual character, freezes the heart or warms + it, shrivels or dilates it, when a scene is feared, a punishment expected,—a + feeling so natural that even domestic animals possess it, and whine at the + slightest pain of punishment, though they make no outcry when they + inadvertently hurt themselves. The goodman came down; but he spoke to his + wife with an absent manner, kissed Eugenie, and sat down to table without + appearing to remember his threats of the night before. + </p> + <p> + “What has become of my nephew? The lad gives no trouble.” + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur, he is asleep,” answered Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “So much the better; he won’t want a wax candle,” said Grandet in a + jeering tone. + </p> + <p> + This unusual clemency, this bitter gaiety, struck Madame Grandet with + amazement, and she looked at her husband attentively. The goodman—here + it may be well to explain that in Touraine, Anjou, Pitou, and Bretagne the + word “goodman,” already used to designate Grandet, is bestowed as often + upon harsh and cruel men as upon those of kindly temperament, when either + have reached a certain age; the title means nothing on the score of + individual gentleness—the goodman took his hat and gloves, saying as + he went out,— + </p> + <p> + “I am going to loiter about the market-place and find Cruchot.” + </p> + <p> + “Eugenie, your father certainly has something on his mind.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet, who was a poor sleeper, employed half his nights in the + preliminary calculations which gave such astonishing accuracy to his views + and observations and schemes, and secured to them the unfailing success at + sight of which his townsmen stood amazed. All human power is a compound of + time and patience. Powerful beings will and wait. The life of a miser is + the constant exercise of human power put to the service of self. It rests + on two sentiments only,—self-love and self-interest; but + self-interest being to a certain extent compact and intelligent self-love, + the visible sign of real superiority, it follows that self-love and + self-interest are two parts of the same whole,—egotism. From this + arises, perhaps, the excessive curiosity shown in the habits of a miser’s + life whenever they are put before the world. Every nature holds by a + thread to those beings who challenge all human sentiments by concentrating + all in one passion. Where is the man without desire? and what social + desire can be satisfied without money? + </p> + <p> + Grandet unquestionably “had something on his mind,” to use his wife’s + expression. There was in him, as in all misers, a persistent craving to + play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally. To + impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual proof + that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who suffer + themselves to be preyed upon in this world. Oh! who has ever truly + understood the lamb lying peacefully at the feet of God?—touching + emblem of all terrestrial victims, myth of their future, suffering and + weakness glorified! This lamb it is which the miser fattens, puts in his + fold, slaughters, cooks, eats, and then despises. The pasture of misers is + compounded of money and disdain. During the night Grandet’s ideas had + taken another course, which was the reason of his sudden clemency. He had + hatched a plot by which to trick the Parisians, to decoy and dupe and + snare them, to drive them into a trap, and make them go and come and sweat + and hope and turn pale,—a plot by which to amuse himself, the old + provincial cooper, sitting there beneath his gloomy rafters, or passing up + and down the rotten staircase of his house in Saumur. His nephew filled + his mind. He wished to save the honor of his dead brother without the cost + of a penny to the son or to himself. His own funds he was about to invest + for three years; he had therefore nothing further to do than to manage his + property in Saumur. He needed some nutriment for his malicious activity, + and he found it suddenly in his brother’s failure. Feeling nothing to + squeeze between his own paws, he resolved to crush the Parisians in behalf + of Charles, and to play the part of a good brother on the cheapest terms. + The honor of the family counted for so little in this scheme that his good + intentions might be likened to the interest a gambler takes in seeing a + game well played in which he has no stake. The Cruchots were a necessary + part of his plan; but he would not seek them,—he resolved to make + them come to him, and to lead up that very evening to a comedy whose plot + he had just conceived, which should make him on the morrow an object of + admiration to the whole town without its costing him a single penny. + </p> + <p> + In her father’s absence Eugenie had the happiness of busying herself + openly with her much-loved cousin, of spending upon him fearlessly the + treasures of her pity,—woman’s sublime superiority, the sole she + desires to have recognized, the sole she pardons man for letting her + assume. Three or four times the young girl went to listen to her cousin’s + breathing, to know if he were sleeping or awake; then, when he had risen, + she turned her thoughts to the cream, the eggs, the fruits, the plates, + the glasses,—all that was a part of his breakfast became the object + of some special care. At length she ran lightly up the old staircase to + listen to the noise her cousin made. Was he dressing? Did he still weep? + She reached the door. + </p> + <p> + “My cousin!” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, cousin.” + </p> + <p> + “Will you breakfast downstairs, or in your room?” + </p> + <p> + “Where you like.” + </p> + <p> + “How do you feel?” + </p> + <p> + “Dear cousin, I am ashamed of being hungry.” + </p> + <p> + This conversation, held through the closed door, was like an episode in a + poem to Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “Well, then, we will bring your breakfast to your own room, so as not to + annoy my father.” + </p> + <p> + She ran to the kitchen with the swiftness and lightness of a bird. + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, go and do his room!” + </p> + <p> + That staircase, so often traversed, which echoed to the slightest noise, + now lost its decaying aspect in the eyes of Eugenie. It grew luminous; it + had a voice and spoke to her; it was young like herself,—young like + the love it was now serving. Her mother, her kind, indulgent mother, lent + herself to the caprices of the child’s love, and after the room was put in + order, both went to sit with the unhappy youth and keep him company. Does + not Christian charity make consolation a duty? The two women drew a goodly + number of little sophistries from their religion wherewith to justify + their conduct. Charles was made the object of the tenderest and most + loving care. His saddened heart felt the sweetness of the gentle + friendship, the exquisite sympathy which these two souls, crushed under + perpetual restraint, knew so well how to display when, for an instant, + they were left unfettered in the regions of suffering, their natural + sphere. + </p> + <p> + Claiming the right of relationship, Eugenie began to fold the linen and + put in order the toilet articles which Charles had brought; thus she could + marvel at her ease over each luxurious bauble and the various knick-knacks + of silver or chased gold, which she held long in her hand under a pretext + of examining them. Charles could not see without emotion the generous + interest his aunt and cousin felt in him; he knew society in Paris well + enough to feel assured that, placed as he now was, he would find all + hearts indifferent or cold. Eugenie thus appeared to him in the splendor + of a special beauty, and from thenceforth he admired the innocence of life + and manners which the previous evening he had been inclined to ridicule. + So when Eugenie took from Nanon the bowl of coffee and cream, and began to + pour it out for her cousin with the simplicity of real feeling, giving him + a kindly glance, the eyes of the Parisian filled with tears; he took her + hand and kissed it. + </p> + <p> + “What troubles you?” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Oh! these are tears of gratitude,” he answered. + </p> + <p> + Eugenie turned abruptly to the chimney-piece to take the candlesticks. + </p> + <p> + “Here, Nanon, carry them away!” she said. + </p> + <p> + When she looked again towards her cousin she was still blushing, but her + looks could at least deceive, and did not betray the excess of joy which + innundated her heart; yet the eyes of both expressed the same sentiment as + their souls flowed together in one thought,—the future was theirs. + This soft emotion was all the more precious to Charles in the midst of his + heavy grief because it was wholly unexpected. The sound of the knocker + recalled the women to their usual station. Happily they were able to run + downstairs with sufficient rapidity to be seated at their work when + Grandet entered; had he met them under the archway it would have been + enough to rouse his suspicions. After breakfast, which the goodman took + standing, the keeper from Froidfond, to whom the promised indemnity had + never yet been paid, made his appearance, bearing a hare and some + partridges shot in the park, with eels and two pike sent as tribute by the + millers. + </p> + <p> + “Ha, ha! poor Cornoiller; here he comes, like fish in Lent. Is all that + fit to eat?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, my dear, generous master; it has been killed two days.” + </p> + <p> + “Come, Nanon, bestir yourself,” said Grandet; “take these things, they’ll + do for dinner. I have invited the two Cruchots.” + </p> + <p> + Nanon opened her eyes, stupid with amazement, and looked at everybody in + the room. + </p> + <p> + “Well!” she said, “and how am I to get the lard and the spices?” + </p> + <p> + “Wife,” said Grandet, “give Nanon six francs, and remind me to get some of + the good wine out of the cellar.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, then, Monsieur Grandet,” said the keeper, who had come prepared + with an harangue for the purpose of settling the question of the + indemnity, “Monsieur Grandet—” + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta!” said Grandet; “I know what you want to say. You are a + good fellow; we will see about it to-morrow, I’m too busy to-day. Wife, + give him five francs,” he added to Madame Grandet as he decamped. + </p> + <p> + The poor woman was only too happy to buy peace at the cost of eleven + francs. She knew that Grandet would let her alone for a fortnight after he + had thus taken back, franc by franc, the money he had given her. + </p> + <p> + “Here, Cornoiller,” she said, slipping ten francs into the man’s hand, + “some day we will reward your services.” + </p> + <p> + Cornoiller could say nothing, so he went away. + </p> + <p> + “Madame,” said Nanon, who had put on her black coif and taken her basket, + “I want only three francs. You keep the rest; it’ll go fast enough + somehow.” + </p> + <p> + “Have a good dinner, Nanon; my cousin will come down,” said Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “Something very extraordinary is going on, I am certain of it,” said + Madame Grandet. “This is only the third time since our marriage that your + father has given a dinner.” + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + About four o’clock, just as Eugenie and her mother had finished setting + the table for six persons, and after the master of the house had brought + up a few bottles of the exquisite wine which provincials cherish with true + affection, Charles came down into the hall. The young fellow was pale; his + gestures, the expression of his face, his glance, and the tones of his + voice, all had a sadness which was full of grace. He was not pretending + grief, he truly suffered; and the veil of pain cast over his features gave + him an interesting air dear to the heart of women. Eugenie loved him the + more for it. Perhaps she felt that sorrow drew him nearer to her. Charles + was no longer the rich and distinguished young man placed in a sphere far + above her, but a relation plunged into frightful misery. Misery begets + equality. Women have this in common with the angels,—suffering + humanity belongs to them. Charles and Eugenie understood each other and + spoke only with their eyes; for the poor fallen dandy, orphaned and + impoverished, sat apart in a corner of the room, and was proudly calm and + silent. Yet, from time to time, the gentle and caressing glance of the + young girl shone upon him and constrained him away from his sad thoughts, + drawing him with her into the fields of hope and of futurity, where she + loved to hold him at her side. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VII + </h2> + <p> + At this moment the town of Saumur was more excited about the dinner given + by Grandet to the Cruchots than it had been the night before at the sale + of his vintage, though that constituted a crime of high-treason against + the whole wine-growing community. If the politic old miser had given his + dinner from the same idea that cost the dog of Alcibiades his tail, he + might perhaps have been called a great man; but the fact is, considering + himself superior to a community which he could trick on all occasions, he + paid very little heed to what Saumur might say. + </p> + <p> + The des Grassins soon learned the facts of the failure and the violent + death of Guillaume Grandet, and they determined to go to their client’s + house that very evening to commiserate his misfortune and show him some + marks of friendship, with a view of ascertaining the motives which had led + him to invite the Cruchots to dinner. At precisely five o’clock Monsieur + C. de Bonfons and his uncle the notary arrived in their Sunday clothes. + The party sat down to table and began to dine with good appetites. Grandet + was grave, Charles silent, Eugenie dumb, and Madame Grandet did not say + more than usual; so that the dinner was, very properly, a repast of + condolence. When they rose from table Charles said to his aunt and uncle,— + </p> + <p> + “Will you permit me to retire? I am obliged to undertake a long and + painful correspondence.” + </p> + <p> + “Certainly, nephew.” + </p> + <p> + As soon as the goodman was certain that Charles could hear nothing and was + probably deep in his letter-writing, he said, with a dissimulating glance + at his wife,— + </p> + <p> + “Madame Grandet, what we have to talk about will be Latin to you; it is + half-past seven; you can go and attend to your household accounts. + Good-night, my daughter.” + </p> + <p> + He kissed Eugenie, and the two women departed. A scene now took place in + which Pere Grandet brought to bear, more than at any other moment of his + life, the shrewd dexterity he had acquired in his intercourse with men, + and which had won him from those whose flesh he sometimes bit too sharply + the nickname of “the old dog.” If the mayor of Saumur had carried his + ambition higher still, if fortunate circumstances, drawing him towards the + higher social spheres, had sent him into congresses where the affairs of + nations were discussed, and had he there employed the genius with which + his personal interests had endowed him, he would undoubtedly have proved + nobly useful to his native land. Yet it is perhaps equally certain that + outside of Saumur the goodman would have cut a very sorry figure. Possibly + there are minds like certain animals which cease to breed when + transplanted from the climates in which they are born. + </p> + <p> + “M-m-mon-sieur le p-p-president, you said t-t-that b-b-bankruptcy—” + </p> + <p> + The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited him, + and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes complained in + rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural defect, became at + this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that while they listened they + unconsciously made faces and moved their lips, as if pronouncing the words + over which he was hesitating and stuttering at will. Here it may be well + to give the history of this impediment of the speech and hearing of + Monsieur Grandet. No one in Anjou heard better, or could pronounce more + crisply the French language (with an Angevin accent) than the wily old + cooper. Some years earlier, in spite of his shrewdness, he had been taken + in by an Israelite, who in the course of the discussion held his hand + behind his ear to catch sounds, and mangled his meaning so thoroughly in + trying to utter his words that Grandet fell a victim to his humanity and + was compelled to prompt the wily Jew with the words and ideas he seemed to + seek, to complete himself the arguments of the said Jew, to say what that + cursed Jew ought to have said for himself; in short, to be the Jew instead + of being Grandet. When the cooper came out of this curious encounter he + had concluded the only bargain of which in the course of a long commercial + life he ever had occasion to complain. But if he lost at the time + pecuniarily, he gained morally a valuable lesson; later, he gathered its + fruits. Indeed, the goodman ended by blessing that Jew for having taught + him the art of irritating his commercial antagonist and leading him to + forget his own thoughts in his impatience to suggest those over which his + tormentor was stuttering. No affair had ever needed the assistance of + deafness, impediments of speech, and all the incomprehensible + circumlocutions with which Grandet enveloped his ideas, as much as the + affair now in hand. In the first place, he did not mean to shoulder the + responsibility of his own scheme; in the next, he was determined to remain + master of the conversation and to leave his real intentions in doubt. + </p> + <p> + “M-m-monsieur de B-B-Bonfons,”—for the second time in three years + Grandet called the Cruchot nephew Monsieur de Bonfons; the president felt + he might consider himself the artful old fellow’s son-in-law,—“you-ou + said th-th-that b-b-bankruptcy c-c-could, in some c-c-cases, b-b-be + p-p-prevented b-b-by—” + </p> + <p> + “By the courts of commerce themselves. It is done constantly,” said + Monsieur C. de Bonfons, bestriding Grandet’s meaning, or thinking he + guessed it, and kindly wishing to help him out with it. “Listen.” + </p> + <p> + “Y-yes,” said Grandet humbly, with the mischievous expression of a boy who + is inwardly laughing at his teacher while he pays him the greatest + attention. + </p> + <p> + “When a man so respected and important as, for example, your late brother—” + </p> + <p> + “M-my b-b-brother, yes.” + </p> + <p> + “—is threatened with insolvency—” + </p> + <p> + “They c-c-call it in-ins-s-solvency?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes; when his failure is imminent, the court of commerce, to which he is + amenable (please follow me attentively), has the power, by a decree, to + appoint a receiver. Liquidation, you understand, is not the same as + failure. When a man fails, he is dishonored; but when he merely + liquidates, he remains an honest man.” + </p> + <p> + “T-t-that’s very d-d-different, if it d-d-doesn’t c-c-cost m-m-more,” said + Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “But a liquidation can be managed without having recourse to the courts at + all. For,” said the president, sniffing a pinch of snuff, “don’t you know + how failures are declared?” + </p> + <p> + “N-n-no, I n-n-never t-t-thought,” answered Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “In the first place,” resumed the magistrate, “by filing the schedule in + the record office of the court, which the merchant may do himself, or his + representative for him with a power of attorney duly certified. In the + second place, the failure may be declared under compulsion from the + creditors. Now if the merchant does not file his schedule, and if no + creditor appears before the courts to obtain a decree of insolvency + against the merchant, what happens?” + </p> + <p> + “W-w-what h-h-happens?” + </p> + <p> + “Why, the family of the deceased, his representatives, his heirs, or the + merchant himself, if he is not dead, or his friends if he is only hiding, + liquidate his business. Perhaps you would like to liquidate your brother’s + affairs?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! Grandet,” said the notary, “that would be the right thing to do. + There is honor down here in the provinces. If you save your name—for + it is your name—you will be a man—” + </p> + <p> + “A noble man!” cried the president, interrupting his uncle. + </p> + <p> + “Certainly,” answered the old man, “my b-b-brother’s name was G-G-Grandet, + like m-m-mine. Th-that’s c-c-certain; I d-d-don’t d-d-deny it. And + th-th-this l-l-liquidation might be, in m-m-many ways, v-v-very + advan-t-t-tageous t-t-to the interests of m-m-my n-n-nephew, whom I + l-l-love. But I must consider. I don’t k-k-know the t-t-tricks of + P-P-Paris. I b-b-belong to Sau-m-mur, d-d-don’t you see? M-m-my vines, my + d-d-drains—in short, I’ve my own b-b-business. I never g-g-give + n-n-notes. What are n-n-notes? I t-t-take a good m-m-many, but I have + never s-s-signed one. I d-d-don’t understand such things. I have h-h-heard + say that n-n-notes c-c-can be b-b-bought up.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course,” said the president. “Notes can be bought in the market, less + so much per cent. Don’t you understand?” + </p> + <p> + Grandet made an ear-trumpet of his hand, and the president repeated his + words. + </p> + <p> + “Well, then,” replied the man, “there’s s-s-something to be g-g-got out of + it? I k-know n-nothing at my age about such th-th-things. I l-l-live here + and l-l-look after the v-v-vines. The vines g-g-grow, and it’s the + w-w-wine that p-p-pays. L-l-look after the v-v-vintage, t-t-that’s my + r-r-rule. My c-c-chief interests are at Froidfond. I c-c-can’t l-l-leave + my h-h-house to m-m-muddle myself with a d-d-devilish b-b-business I + kn-know n-n-nothing about. You say I ought to l-l-liquidate my + b-b-brother’s af-f-fairs, to p-p-prevent the f-f-failure. I c-c-can’t be + in two p-p-places at once, unless I were a little b-b-bird, and—” + </p> + <p> + “I understand,” cried the notary. “Well, my old friend, you have friends, + old friends, capable of devoting themselves to your interests.” + </p> + <p> + “All right!” thought Grandet, “make haste and come to the point!” + </p> + <p> + “Suppose one of them went to Paris and saw your brother Guillaume’s chief + creditor and said to him—” + </p> + <p> + “One m-m-moment,” interrupted the goodman, “said wh-wh-what? Something + l-l-like this. Monsieur Gr-Grandet of Saumur this, Monsieur Grandet of + Saumur that. He l-loves his b-b-brother, he loves his n-nephew. Grandet is + a g-g-good uncle; he m-m-means well. He has sold his v-v-vintage. + D-d-don’t declare a f-f-failure; c-c-call a meeting; l-l-liquidate; and + then Gr-Gr-Grandet will see what he c-c-can do. B-b-better liquidate than + l-let the l-l-law st-st-stick its n-n-nose in. Hein? isn’t it so?” + </p> + <p> + “Exactly so,” said the president. + </p> + <p> + “B-because, don’t you see, Monsieur de B-Bonfons, a man must l-l-look + b-b-before he l-leaps. If you c-c-can’t, you c-c-can’t. M-m-must know all + about the m-m-matter, all the resources and the debts, if you d-d-don’t + want to be r-r-ruined. Hein? isn’t it so?” + </p> + <p> + “Certainly,” said the president. “I’m of opinion that in a few months the + debts might be bought up for a certain sum, and then paid in full by an + agreement. Ha! ha! you can coax a dog a long way if you show him a bit of + lard. If there has been no declaration of failure, and you hold a lien on + the debts, you come out of the business as white as the driven snow.” + </p> + <p> + “Sn-n-now,” said Grandet, putting his hand to his ear, “wh-wh-what about + s-now?” + </p> + <p> + “But,” cried the president, “do pray attend to what I am saying.” + </p> + <p> + “I am at-t-tending.” + </p> + <p> + “A note is merchandise,—an article of barter which rises and falls + in prices. That is a deduction from Jeremy Bentham’s theory about usury. + That writer has proved that the prejudice which condemned usurers to + reprobation was mere folly.” + </p> + <p> + “Whew!” ejaculated the goodman. + </p> + <p> + “Allowing that money, according to Bentham, is an article of merchandise, + and that whatever represents money is equally merchandise,” resumed the + president; “allowing also that it is notorious that the commercial note, + bearing this or that signature, is liable to the fluctuation of all + commercial values, rises or falls in the market, is dear at one moment, + and is worth nothing at another, the courts decide—ah! how stupid I + am, I beg your pardon—I am inclined to think you could buy up your + brother’s debts for twenty-five per cent.” + </p> + <p> + “D-d-did you c-c-call him Je-Je-Jeremy B-Ben?” + </p> + <p> + “Bentham, an Englishman.’ + </p> + <p> + “That’s a Jeremy who might save us a lot of lamentations in business,” + said the notary, laughing. + </p> + <p> + “Those Englishmen s-sometimes t-t-talk sense,” said Grandet. “So, + ac-c-cording to Ben-Bentham, if my b-b-brother’s n-notes are worth + n-n-nothing; if Je-Je—I’m c-c-correct, am I not? That seems + c-c-clear to my m-m-mind—the c-c-creditors would be—No, would + not be; I understand.” + </p> + <p> + “Let me explain it all,” said the president. “Legally, if you acquire a + title to all the debts of the Maison Grandet, your brother or his heirs + will owe nothing to any one. Very good.” + </p> + <p> + “Very g-good,” repeated Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “In equity, if your brother’s notes are negotiated—negotiated, do + you clearly understand the term?—negotiated in the market at a + reduction of so much per cent in value, and if one of your friends + happening to be present should buy them in, the creditors having sold them + of their own free-will without constraint, the estate of the late Grandet + is honorably released.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s t-true; b-b-business is b-business,” said the cooper. “B-b-but, + st-still, you know, it is d-d-difficult. I h-have n-no m-m-money and n-no + t-t-time.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, but you need not undertake it. I am quite ready to go to Paris (you + may pay my expenses, they will only be a trifle). I will see the creditors + and talk with them and get an extension of time, and everything can be + arranged if you will add something to the assets so as to buy up all title + to the debts.” + </p> + <p> + “We-we’ll see about th-that. I c-c-can’t and I w-w-won’t bind myself + without—He who c-c-can’t, can’t; don’t you see?” + </p> + <p> + “That’s very true.” + </p> + <p> + “I’m all p-p-put ab-b-bout by what you’ve t-t-told me. This is the f-first + t-t-time in my life I have b-been obliged to th-th-think—” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, you are not a lawyer.” + </p> + <p> + “I’m only a p-p-poor wine-g-grower, and know n-nothing about wh-what you + have just t-told me; I m-m-must th-think about it.” + </p> + <p> + “Very good,” said the president, preparing to resume his argument. + </p> + <p> + “Nephew!” said the notary, interrupting him in a warning tone. + </p> + <p> + “Well, what, uncle?” answered the president. + </p> + <p> + “Let Monsieur Grandet explain his own intentions. The matter in question + is of the first importance. Our good friend ought to define his meaning + clearly, and—” + </p> + <p> + A loud knock, which announced the arrival of the des Grassins family, + succeeded by their entrance and salutations, hindered Cruchot from + concluding his sentence. The notary was glad of the interruption, for + Grandet was beginning to look suspiciously at him, and the wen gave signs + of a brewing storm. In the first place, the notary did not think it + becoming in a president of the Civil courts to go to Paris and manipulate + creditors and lend himself to an underhand job which clashed with the laws + of strict integrity; moreover, never having known old Grandet to express + the slightest desire to pay anything, no matter what, he instinctively + feared to see his nephew taking part in the affair. He therefore profited + by the entrance of the des Grassins to take the nephew by the arm and lead + him into the embrasure of the window,— + </p> + <p> + “You have said enough, nephew; you’ve shown enough devotion. Your desire + to win the girl blinds you. The devil! you mustn’t go at it tooth and + nail. Let me sail the ship now; you can haul on the braces. Do you think + it right to compromise your dignity as a magistrate in such a—” + </p> + <p> + He stopped, for he heard Monsieur des Grassins saying to the old cooper as + they shook hands,— + </p> + <p> + “Grandet, we have heard of the frightful misfortunes which have just + befallen your family,—the failure of the house of Guillaume Grandet + and the death of your brother. We have come to express our grief at these + sad events.” + </p> + <p> + “There is but one sad event,” said the notary, interrupting the banker,—“the + death of Monsieur Grandet, junior; and he would never have killed himself + had he thought in time of applying to his brother for help. Our old + friend, who is honorable to his finger-nails, intends to liquidate the + debts of the Maison Grandet of Paris. To save him the worry of legal + proceedings, my nephew, the president, has just offered to go to Paris and + negotiate with the creditors for a satisfactory settlement.” + </p> + <p> + These words, corroborated by Grandet’s attitude as he stood silently + nursing his chin, astonished the three des Grassins, who had been + leisurely discussing the old man’s avarice as they came along, very nearly + accusing him of fratricide. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! I was sure of it,” cried the banker, looking at his wife. “What did I + tell you just now, Madame des Grassins? Grandet is honorable to the + backbone, and would never allow his name to remain under the slightest + cloud! Money without honor is a disease. There is honor in the provinces! + Right, very right, Grandet. I’m an old soldier, and I can’t disguise my + thoughts; I speak roughly. Thunder! it is sublime!” + </p> + <p> + “Th-then s-s-sublime th-things c-c-cost d-dear,” answered the goodman, as + the banker warmly wrung his hand. + </p> + <p> + “But this, my dear Grandet,—if the president will excuse me,—is + a purely commercial matter, and needs a consummate business man. Your + agent must be some one fully acquainted with the markets,—with + disbursements, rebates, interest calculations, and so forth. I am going to + Paris on business of my own, and I can take charge of—” + </p> + <p> + “We’ll see about t-t-trying to m-m-manage it b-b-between us, under the + p-p-peculiar c-c-circumstances, b-b-but without b-b-binding m-m-myself to + anything th-that I c-c-could not do,” said Grandet, stuttering; “because, + you see, monsieur le president naturally expects me to pay the expenses of + his journey.” + </p> + <p> + The goodman did not stammer over the last words. + </p> + <p> + “Eh!” cried Madame des Grassins, “why it is a pleasure to go to Paris. I + would willingly pay to go myself.” + </p> + <p> + She made a sign to her husband, as if to encourage him in cutting the + enemy out of the commission, <i>coute que coute</i>; then she glanced + ironically at the two Cruchots, who looked chap-fallen. Grandet seized the + banker by a button and drew him into a corner of the room. + </p> + <p> + “I have a great deal more confidence in you than in the president,” he + said; “besides, I’ve other fish to fry,” he added, wriggling his wen. “I + want to buy a few thousand francs in the Funds while they are at eighty. + They fall, I’m told, at the end of each month. You know all about these + things, don’t you?” + </p> + <p> + “Bless me! then, am I to invest enough to give you a few thousand francs a + year?” + </p> + <p> + “That’s not much to begin with. Hush! I don’t want any one to know I am + going to play that game. You can make the investment by the end of the + month. Say nothing to the Cruchots; that’ll annoy them. If you are really + going to Paris, we will see if there is anything to be done for my poor + nephew.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, it’s all settled. I’ll start to-morrow by the mail-post,” said des + Grassins aloud, “and I will come and take your last directions at—what + hour will suit you?” + </p> + <p> + “Five o’clock, just before dinner,” said Grandet, rubbing his hands. + </p> + <p> + The two parties stayed on for a short time. Des Grassins said, after a + pause, striking Grandet on the shoulder,— + </p> + <p> + “It is a good thing to have a relation like him.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, yes; without making a show,” said Grandet, “I am a g-good relation. + I loved my brother, and I will prove it, unless it c-c-costs—” + </p> + <p> + “We must leave you, Grandet,” said the banker, interrupting him + fortunately before he got to the end of his sentence. “If I hurry my + departure, I must attend to some matters at once.” + </p> + <p> + “Very good, very good! I myself—in c-consequence of what I t-told + you—I must retire to my own room and ‘d-d-deliberate,’ as President + Cruchot says.” + </p> + <p> + “Plague take him! I am no longer Monsieur de Bonfons,” thought the + magistrate ruefully, his face assuming the expression of a judge bored by + an argument. + </p> + <p> + The heads of the two factions walked off together. Neither gave any + further thought to the treachery Grandet had been guilty of in the morning + against the whole wine-growing community; each tried to fathom what the + other was thinking about the real intentions of the wily old man in this + new affair, but in vain. + </p> + <p> + “Will you go with us to Madame Dorsonval’s?” said des Grassins to the + notary. + </p> + <p> + “We will go there later,” answered the president. “I have promised to say + good-evening to Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt, and we will go there first, + if my uncle is willing.” + </p> + <p> + “Farewell for the present!” said Madame des Grassins. + </p> + <p> + When the Cruchots were a few steps off, Adolphe remarked to his father,— + </p> + <p> + “Are not they fuming, hein?” + </p> + <p> + “Hold your tongue, my son!” said his mother; “they might hear you. + Besides, what you say is not in good taste,—law-school language.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, uncle,” cried the president when he saw the des Grassins + disappearing, “I began by being de Bonfons, and I have ended as nothing + but Cruchot.” + </p> + <p> + “I saw that that annoyed you; but the wind has set fair for the des + Grassins. What a fool you are, with all your cleverness! Let them sail off + on Grandet’s ‘We’ll see about it,’ and keep yourself quiet, young man. + Eugenie will none the less be your wife.” + </p> + <p> + In a few moments the news of Grandet’s magnanimous resolve was + disseminated in three houses at the same moment, and the whole town began + to talk of his fraternal devotion. Every one forgave Grandet for the sale + made in defiance of the good faith pledged to the community; they admired + his sense of honor, and began to laud a generosity of which they had never + thought him capable. It is part of the French nature to grow enthusiastic, + or angry, or fervent about some meteor of the moment. Can it be that + collective beings, nationalities, peoples, are devoid of memory? + </p> + <p> + When Pere Grandet had shut the door he called Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t let the dog loose, and don’t go to bed; we have work to do + together. At eleven o’clock Cornoiller will be at the door with the + chariot from Froidfond. Listen for him and prevent his knocking; tell him + to come in softly. Police regulations don’t allow nocturnal racket. + Besides, the whole neighborhood need not know that I am starting on a + journey.” + </p> + <p> + So saying, Grandet returned to his private room, where Nanon heard him + moving about, rummaging, and walking to and fro, though with much + precaution, for he evidently did not wish to wake his wife and daughter, + and above all not to rouse the attention of his nephew, whom he had begun + to anathematize when he saw a thread of light under his door. About the + middle of the night Eugenie, intent on her cousin, fancied she heard a cry + like that of a dying person. It must be Charles, she thought; he was so + pale, so full of despair when she had seen him last,—could he have + killed himself? She wrapped herself quickly in a loose garment,—a + sort of pelisse with a hood,—and was about to leave the room when a + bright light coming through the chinks of her door made her think of fire. + But she recovered herself as she heard Nanon’s heavy steps and gruff voice + mingling with the snorting of several horses. + </p> + <p> + “Can my father be carrying off my cousin?” she said to herself, opening + her door with great precaution lest it should creak, and yet enough to let + her see into the corridor. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly her eye encountered that of her father; and his glance, vague and + unnoticing as it was, terrified her. The goodman and Nanon were yoked + together by a stout stick, each end of which rested on their shoulders; a + stout rope was passed over it, on which was slung a small barrel or keg + like those Pere Grandet still made in his bakehouse as an amusement for + his leisure hours. + </p> + <p> + “Holy Virgin, how heavy it is!” said the voice of Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “What a pity that it is only copper sous!” answered Grandet. “Take care + you don’t knock over the candlestick.” + </p> + <p> + The scene was lighted by a single candle placed between two rails of the + staircase. + </p> + <p> + “Cornoiller,” said Grandet to his keeper <i>in partibus</i>, “have you + brought your pistols?” + </p> + <p> + “No, monsieur. Mercy! what’s there to fear for your copper sous?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! nothing,” said Pere Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “Besides, we shall go fast,” added the man; “your farmers have picked out + their best horses.” + </p> + <p> + “Very good. You did not tell them where I was going?” + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t know where.” + </p> + <p> + “Very good. Is the carriage strong?” + </p> + <p> + “Strong? hear to that, now! Why, it can carry three thousand weight. How + much does that old keg weigh?” + </p> + <p> + “Goodness!” exclaimed Nanon. “I ought to know! There’s pretty nigh + eighteen hundred—” + </p> + <p> + “Will you hold your tongue, Nanon! You are to tell my wife I have gone + into the country. I shall be back to dinner. Drive fast, Cornoiller; I + must get to Angers before nine o’clock.” + </p> + <p> + The carriage drove off. Nanon bolted the great door, let loose the dog, + and went off to bed with a bruised shoulder, no one in the neighborhood + suspecting either the departure of Grandet or the object of his journey. + The precautions of the old miser and his reticence were never relaxed. No + one had ever seen a penny in that house, filled as it was with gold. + Hearing in the morning, through the gossip of the port, that exchange on + gold had doubled in price in consequence of certain military preparations + undertaken at Nantes, and that speculators had arrived at Angers to buy + coin, the old wine-grower, by the simple process of borrowing horses from + his farmers, seized the chance of selling his gold and of bringing back in + the form of treasury notes the sum he intended to put into the Funds, + having swelled it considerably by the exchange. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VIII + </h2> + <p> + “My father has gone,” thought Eugenie, who heard all that took place from + the head of the stairs. Silence was restored in the house, and the distant + rumbling of the carriage, ceasing by degrees, no longer echoed through the + sleeping town. At this moment Eugenie heard in her heart, before the sound + caught her ears, a cry which pierced the partitions and came from her + cousin’s chamber. A line of light, thin as the blade of a sabre, shone + through a chink in the door and fell horizontally on the balusters of the + rotten staircase. + </p> + <p> + “He suffers!” she said, springing up the stairs. A second moan brought her + to the landing near his room. The door was ajar, she pushed it open. + Charles was sleeping; his head hung over the side of the old armchair, and + his hand, from which the pen had fallen, nearly touched the floor. The + oppressed breathing caused by the strained posture suddenly frightened + Eugenie, who entered the room hastily. + </p> + <p> + “He must be very tired,” she said to herself, glancing at a dozen letters + lying sealed upon the table. She read their addresses: “To Messrs. Farry, + Breilmann, & Co., carriage-makers”; “To Monsieur Buisson, tailor,” + etc. + </p> + <p> + “He has been settling all his affairs, so as to leave France at once,” she + thought. Her eyes fell upon two open letters. The words, “My dear + Annette,” at the head of one of them, blinded her for a moment. Her heart + beat fast, her feet were nailed to the floor. + </p> + <p> + “His dear Annette! He loves! he is loved! No hope! What does he say to + her?” + </p> + <p> + These thoughts rushed through her head and heart. She saw the words + everywhere, even on the bricks of the floor, in letters of fire. + </p> + <p> + “Resign him already? No, no! I will not read the letter. I ought to go + away—What if I do read it?” + </p> + <p> + She looked at Charles, then she gently took his head and placed it against + the back of the chair; he let her do so, like a child which, though + asleep, knows its mother’s touch and receives, without awaking, her kisses + and watchful care. Like a mother Eugenie raised the drooping hand, and + like a mother she gently kissed the chestnut hair—“Dear Annette!” a + demon shrieked the words in her ear. + </p> + <p> + “I am doing wrong; but I must read it, that letter,” she said. She turned + away her head, for her noble sense of honor reproached her. For the first + time in her life good and evil struggled together in her heart. Up to that + moment she had never had to blush for any action. Passion and curiosity + triumphed. As she read each sentence her heart swelled more and more, and + the keen glow which filled her being as she did so, only made the joys of + first love still more precious. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + My dear Annette,—Nothing could ever have separated us but the + great misfortune which has now overwhelmed me, and which no human + foresight could have prevented. My father has killed himself; his + fortune and mine are irretrievably lost. I am orphaned at an age + when, through the nature of my education, I am still a child; and + yet I must lift myself as a man out of the abyss into which I am + plunged. I have just spent half the night in facing my position. + If I wish to leave France an honest man,—and there is no doubt of + that,—I have not a hundred francs of my own with which to try my + fate in the Indies or in America. Yes, my poor Anna, I must seek + my fortune in those deadly climates. Under those skies, they tell + me, I am sure to make it. As for remaining in Paris, I cannot do + so. Neither my nature nor my face are made to bear the affronts, + the neglect, the disdain shown to a ruined man, the son of a + bankrupt! Good God! think of owing two millions! I should be + killed in a duel the first week; therefore I shall not return + there. Your love—the most tender and devoted love which ever + ennobled the heart of man—cannot draw me back. Alas! my beloved, + I have no money with which to go to you, to give and receive a + last kiss from which I might derive some strength for my forlorn + enterprise. +</pre> + <p> + “Poor Charles! I did well to read the letter. I have gold; I will give it + to him,” thought Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + She wiped her eyes, and went on reading. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I have never thought of the miseries of poverty. If I have the + hundred louis required for the mere costs of the journey, I have + not a sou for an outfit. But no, I have not the hundred louis, not + even one louis. I don’t know that anything will be left after I + have paid my debts in Paris. If I have nothing, I shall go quietly + to Nantes and ship as a common sailor; and I will begin in the new + world like other men who have started young without a sou and + brought back the wealth of the Indies. During this long day I have + faced my future coolly. It seems more horrible for me than for + another, because I have been so petted by a mother who adored me, + so indulged by the kindest of fathers, so blessed by meeting, on + my entrance into life, with the love of an Anna! The flowers of + life are all I have ever known. Such happiness could not last. + Nevertheless, my dear Annette, I feel more courage than a careless + young man is supposed to feel,—above all a young man used to the + caressing ways of the dearest woman in all Paris, cradled in + family joys, on whom all things smiled in his home, whose wishes + were a law to his father—oh, my father! Annette, he is dead! + + Well, I have thought over my position, and yours as well. I have + grown old in twenty-four hours. Dear Anna, if in order to keep me + with you in Paris you were to sacrifice your luxury, your dress, + your opera-box, we should even then not have enough for the + expenses of my extravagant ways of living. Besides, I would never + accept such sacrifices. No, we must part now and forever— +</pre> + <p> + “He gives her up! Blessed Virgin! What happiness!” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie quivered with joy. Charles made a movement, and a chill of terror + ran through her. Fortunately, he did not wake, and she resumed her + reading. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + When shall I return? I do not know. The climate of the West Indies + ages a European, so they say; especially a European who works + hard. Let us think what may happen ten years hence. In ten years + your daughter will be eighteen; she will be your companion, your + spy. To you society will be cruel, and your daughter perhaps more + cruel still. We have seen cases of the harsh social judgment and + ingratitude of daughters; let us take warning by them. Keep in the + depths of your soul, as I shall in mine, the memory of four years + of happiness, and be faithful, if you can, to the memory of your + poor friend. I cannot exact such faithfulness, because, do you + see, dear Annette, I must conform to the exigencies of my new + life; I must take a commonplace view of them and do the best I + can. Therefore I must think of marriage, which becomes one of the + necessities of my future existence; and I will admit to you that I + have found, here in Saumur, in my uncle’s house, a cousin whose + face, manners, mind, and heart would please you, and who, besides, + seems to me— +</pre> + <p> + “He must have been very weary to have ceased writing to her,” thought + Eugenie, as she gazed at the letter which stopped abruptly in the middle + of the last sentence. + </p> + <p> + Already she defended him. How was it possible that an innocent girl should + perceive the cold-heartedness evinced by this letter? To young girls + religiously brought up, whose minds are ignorant and pure, all is love + from the moment they set their feet within the enchanted regions of that + passion. They walk there bathed in a celestial light shed from their own + souls, which reflects its rays upon their lover; they color all with the + flame of their own emotion and attribute to him their highest thoughts. A + woman’s errors come almost always from her belief in good or her + confidence in truth. In Eugenie’s simple heart the words, “My dear + Annette, my loved one,” echoed like the sweetest language of love; they + caressed her soul as, in childhood, the divine notes of the <i>Venite + adoremus</i>, repeated by the organ, caressed her ear. Moreover, the tears + which still lingered on the young man’s lashes gave signs of that nobility + of heart by which young girls are rightly won. How could she know that + Charles, though he loved his father and mourned him truly, was moved far + more by paternal goodness than by the goodness of his own heart? Monsieur + and Madame Guillaume Grandet, by gratifying every fancy of their son, and + lavishing upon him the pleasures of a large fortune, had kept him from + making the horrible calculations of which so many sons in Paris become + more or less guilty when, face to face with the enjoyments of the world, + they form desires and conceive schemes which they see with bitterness must + be put off or laid aside during the lifetime of their parents. The + liberality of the father in this instance had shed into the heart of the + son a real love, in which there was no afterthought of self-interest. + </p> + <p> + Nevertheless, Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs of + society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already an old man + under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful education of + social life, of that world where in one evening more crimes are committed + in thought and speech than justice ever punishes at the assizes; where + jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest ideas; where no one is + counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and to see clear in that world + is to believe in nothing, neither in feelings, nor in men, nor even in + events,—for events are falsified. There, to “see clear” we must + weigh a friend’s purse daily, learn how to keep ourselves adroitly on the + top of the wave, cautiously admire nothing, neither works of art nor + glorious actions, and remember that self-interest is the mainspring of all + things here below. After committing many follies, the great lady—the + beautiful Annette—compelled Charles to think seriously; with her + perfumed hand among his curls, she talked to him of his future position; + as she rearranged his locks, she taught him lessons of worldly prudence; + she made him effeminate and materialized him,—a double corruption, + but a delicate and elegant corruption, in the best taste. + </p> + <p> + “You are very foolish, Charles,” she would say to him. “I shall have a + great deal of trouble in teaching you to understand the world. You behaved + extremely ill to Monsieur des Lupeaulx. I know very well he is not an + honorable man; but wait till he is no longer in power, then you may + despise him as much as you like. Do you know what Madame Campan used to + tell us?—‘My dears, as long as a man is a minister, adore him; when + he falls, help to drag him in the gutter. Powerful, he is a sort of god; + fallen, he is lower than Marat in the sewer, because he is living, and + Marat is dead. Life is a series of combinations, and you must study them + and understand them if you want to keep yourselves always in good + position.’” + </p> + <p> + Charles was too much a man of the world, his parents had made him too + happy, he had received too much adulation in society, to be possessed of + noble sentiments. The grain of gold dropped by his mother into his heart + was beaten thin in the smithy of Parisian society; he had spread it + superficially, and it was worn away by the friction of life. Charles was + only twenty-one years old. At that age the freshness of youth seems + inseparable from candor and sincerity of soul. The voice, the glance, the + face itself, seem in harmony with the feelings; and thus it happens that + the sternest judge, the most sceptical lawyer, the least complying of + usurers, always hesitate to admit decrepitude of heart or the corruption + of worldly calculation while the eyes are still bathed in purity and no + wrinkles seam the brow. Charles, so far, had had no occasion to apply the + maxims of Parisian morality; up to this time he was still endowed with the + beauty of inexperience. And yet, unknown to himself, he had been + inoculated with selfishness. The germs of Parisian political economy, + latent in his heart, would assuredly burst forth, sooner or later, + whenever the careless spectator became an actor in the drama of real life. + </p> + <p> + Nearly all young girls succumb to the tender promises such an outward + appearance seems to offer: even if Eugenie had been as prudent and + observing as provincial girls are often found to be, she was not likely to + distrust her cousin when his manners, words, and actions were still in + unison with the aspirations of a youthful heart. A mere chance—a + fatal chance—threw in her way the last effusions of real feeling + which stirred the young man’s soul; she heard as it were the last + breathings of his conscience. She laid down the letter—to her so + full of love—and began smilingly to watch her sleeping cousin; the + fresh illusions of life were still, for her at least, upon his face; she + vowed to herself to love him always. Then she cast her eyes on the other + letter, without attaching much importance to this second indiscretion; and + though she read it, it was only to obtain new proofs of the noble + qualities which, like all women, she attributed to the man her heart had + chosen. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + My dear Alphonse,—When you receive this letter I shall be without + friends; but let me assure you that while I doubt the friendship + of the world, I have never doubted yours. I beg you therefore to + settle all my affairs, and I trust to you to get as much as you + can out of my possessions. By this time you know my situation. I + have nothing left, and I intend to go at once to the Indies. I + have just written to all the people to whom I think I owe money, + and you will find enclosed a list of their names, as correct as I + can make it from memory. My books, my furniture, my pictures, my + horses, etc., ought, I think, to pay my debts. I do not wish to + keep anything, except, perhaps, a few baubles which might serve as + the beginning of an outfit for my enterprise. My dear Alphonse, I + will send you a proper power of attorney under which you can make + these sales. Send me all my weapons. Keep Briton for yourself; + nobody would pay the value of that noble beast, and I would rather + give him to you—like a mourning-ring bequeathed by a dying man to + his executor. Farry, Breilmann, & Co. built me a very comfortable + travelling-carriage, which they have not yet delivered; persuade + them to keep it and not ask for any payment on it. If they refuse, + do what you can in the matter, and avoid everything that might + seem dishonorable in me under my present circumstances. I owe the + British Islander six louis, which I lost at cards; don’t fail to + pay him— +</pre> + <p> + “Dear cousin!” whispered Eugenie, throwing down the letter and running + softly back to her room, carrying one of the lighted candles. A thrill of + pleasure passed over her as she opened the drawer of an old oak cabinet, a + fine specimen of the period called the Renaissance, on which could still + be seen, partly effaced, the famous royal salamander. She took from the + drawer a large purse of red velvet with gold tassels, edged with a + tarnished fringe of gold wire,—a relic inherited from her + grandmother. She weighed it proudly in her hand, and began with delight to + count over the forgotten items of her little hoard. First she took out + twenty <i>portugaises</i>, still new, struck in the reign of John V., + 1725, worth by exchange, as her father told her, five <i>lisbonnines</i>, + or a hundred and sixty-eight francs, sixty-four centimes each; their + conventional value, however, was a hundred and eighty francs apiece, on + account of the rarity and beauty of the coins, which shone like little + suns. Item, five <i>genovines</i>, or five hundred-franc pieces of Genoa; + another very rare coin worth eighty-seven francs on exchange, but a + hundred francs to collectors. These had formerly belonged to old Monsieur + de la Bertelliere. Item, three gold <i>quadruples</i>, Spanish, of Philip + V., struck in 1729, given to her one by one by Madame Gentillet, who never + failed to say, using the same words, when she made the gift, “This dear + little canary, this little yellow-boy, is worth ninety-eight francs! Keep + it, my pretty one, it will be the flower of your treasure.” Item (that + which her father valued most of all, the gold of these coins being + twenty-three carats and a fraction), a hundred Dutch ducats, made in the + year 1756, and worth thirteen francs apiece. Item, a great curiosity, a + species of medal precious to the soul of misers,—three rupees with + the sign of the Scales, and five rupees with the sign of the Virgin, all + in pure gold of twenty-four carats; the magnificent money of the Great + Mogul, each of which was worth by mere weight thirty-seven francs, forty + centimes, but at least fifty francs to those connoisseurs who love to + handle gold. Item, the napoleon of forty francs received the day before, + which she had forgotten to put away in the velvet purse. This treasure was + all in virgin coins, true works of art, which Grandet from time to time + inquired after and asked to see, pointing out to his daughter their + intrinsic merits,—such as the beauty of the milled edge, the + clearness of the flat surface, the richness of the lettering, whose angles + were not yet rubbed off. + </p> + <p> + Eugenie gave no thought to these rarities, nor to her father’s mania for + them, nor to the danger she incurred in depriving herself of a treasure so + dear to him; no, she thought only of her cousin, and soon made out, after + a few mistakes of calculation, that she possessed about five thousand + eight hundred francs in actual value, which might be sold for their + additional value to collectors for nearly six thousand. She looked at her + wealth and clapped her hands like a happy child forced to spend its + overflowing joy in artless movements of the body. Father and daughter had + each counted up their fortune this night,—he, to sell his gold; + Eugenie to fling hers into the ocean of affection. She put the pieces back + into the old purse, took it in her hand, and ran upstairs without + hesitation. The secret misery of her cousin made her forget the hour and + conventional propriety; she was strong in her conscience, in her devotion, + in her happiness. + </p> + <p> + As she stood upon the threshold of the door, holding the candle in one + hand and the purse in the other, Charles woke, caught sight of her, and + remained speechless with surprise. Eugenie came forward, put the candle on + the table, and said in a quivering voice: + </p> + <p> + “My cousin, I must beg pardon for a wrong I have done you; but God will + pardon me—if you—will help me to wipe it out.” + </p> + <p> + “What is it?” asked Charles, rubbing his eyes. + </p> + <p> + “I have read those letters.” + </p> + <p> + Charles colored. + </p> + <p> + “How did it happen?” she continued; “how came I here? Truly, I do not + know. I am tempted not to regret too much that I have read them; they have + made me know your heart, your soul, and—” + </p> + <p> + “And what?” asked Charles. + </p> + <p> + “Your plans, your need of a sum—” + </p> + <p> + “My dear cousin—” + </p> + <p> + “Hush, hush! my cousin, not so loud; we must not wake others. See,” she + said, opening her purse, “here are the savings of a poor girl who wants + nothing. Charles, accept them! This morning I was ignorant of the value of + money; you have taught it to me. It is but a means, after all. A cousin is + almost a brother; you can surely borrow the purse of your sister.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie, as much a woman as a young girl, never dreamed of refusal; but + her cousin remained silent. + </p> + <p> + “Oh! you will not refuse?” cried Eugenie, the beatings of whose heart + could be heard in the deep silence. + </p> + <p> + Her cousin’s hesitation mortified her; but the sore need of his position + came clearer still to her mind, and she knelt down. + </p> + <p> + “I will never rise till you have taken that gold!” she said. “My cousin, I + implore you, answer me! let me know if you respect me, if you are + generous, if—” + </p> + <p> + As he heard this cry of noble distress the young man’s tears fell upon his + cousin’s hands, which he had caught in his own to keep her from kneeling. + As the warm tears touched her, Eugenie sprang to the purse and poured its + contents upon the table. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! yes, yes, you consent?” she said, weeping with joy. “Fear nothing, my + cousin, you will be rich. This gold will bring you happiness; some day you + shall bring it back to me,—are we not partners? I will obey all + conditions. But you should not attach such value to the gift.” + </p> + <p> + Charles was at last able to express his feelings. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, Eugenie; my soul would be small indeed if I did not accept. And yet,—gift + for gift, confidence for confidence.” + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean?” she said, frightened. + </p> + <p> + “Listen, dear cousin; I have here—” He interrupted himself to point + out a square box covered with an outer case of leather which was on the + drawers. “There,” he continued, “is something as precious to me as life + itself. This box was a present from my mother. All day I have been + thinking that if she could rise from her grave, she would herself sell the + gold which her love for me lavished on this dressing-case; but were I to + do so, the act would seem to me a sacrilege.” Eugenie pressed his hand as + she heard these last words. “No,” he added, after a slight pause, during + which a liquid glance of tenderness passed between them, “no, I will + neither sell it nor risk its safety on my journey. Dear Eugenie, you shall + be its guardian. Never did friend commit anything more sacred to another. + Let me show it to you.” + </p> + <p> + He went to the box, took it from its outer coverings, opened it, and + showed his delighted cousin a dressing-case where the rich workmanship + gave to the gold ornaments a value far above their weight. + </p> + <p> + “What you admire there is nothing,” he said, pushing a secret spring which + opened a hidden drawer. “Here is something which to me is worth the whole + world.” He drew out two portraits, masterpieces of Madame Mirbel, richly + set with pearls. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, how beautiful! Is it the lady to whom you wrote that—” + </p> + <p> + “No,” he said, smiling; “this is my mother, and here is my father, your + aunt and uncle. Eugenie, I beg you on my knees, keep my treasure safely. + If I die and your little fortune is lost, this gold and these pearls will + repay you. To you alone could I leave these portraits; you are worthy to + keep them. But destroy them at last, so that they may pass into no other + hands.” Eugenie was silent. “Ah, yes, say yes! You consent?” he added with + winning grace. + </p> + <p> + Hearing the very words she had just used to her cousin now addressed to + herself, she turned upon him a look of love, her first look of loving + womanhood,—a glance in which there is nearly as much of coquetry as + of inmost depth. He took her hand and kissed it. + </p> + <p> + “Angel of purity! between us two money is nothing, never can be anything. + Feeling, sentiment, must be all henceforth.” + </p> + <p> + “You are like your mother,—was her voice as soft as yours?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! much softer—” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, for you,” she said, dropping her eyelids. “Come, Charles, go to bed; + I wish it; you must be tired. Good-night.” She gently disengaged her hand + from those of her cousin, who followed her to her room, lighting the way. + When they were both upon the threshold,— + </p> + <p> + “Ah!” he said, “why am I ruined?” + </p> + <p> + “What matter?—my father is rich; I think so,” she answered. + </p> + <p> + “Poor child!” said Charles, making a step into her room and leaning his + back against the wall, “if that were so, he would never have let my father + die; he would not let you live in this poor way; he would live otherwise + himself.” + </p> + <p> + “But he owns Froidfond.” + </p> + <p> + “What is Froidfond worth?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know; but he has Noyers.” + </p> + <p> + “Nothing but a poor farm!” + </p> + <p> + “He has vineyards and fields.” + </p> + <p> + “Mere nothing,” said Charles disdainfully. “If your father had only + twenty-four thousand francs a year do you suppose you would live in this + cold, barren room?” he added, making a step in advance. “Ah! there you + will keep my treasures,” he said, glancing at the old cabinet, as if to + hide his thoughts. + </p> + <p> + “Go and sleep,” she said, hindering his entrance into the disordered room. + </p> + <p> + Charles stepped back, and they bid each other good-night with a mutual + smile. + </p> + <p> + Both fell asleep in the same dream; and from that moment the youth began + to wear roses with his mourning. The next day, before breakfast, Madame + Grandet found her daughter in the garden in company with Charles. The + young man was still sad, as became a poor fellow who, plunged in + misfortune, measures the depths of the abyss into which he has fallen, and + sees the terrible burden of his whole future life. + </p> + <p> + “My father will not be home till dinner-time,” said Eugenie, perceiving + the anxious look on her mother’s face. + </p> + <p> + It was easy to trace in the face and manners of the young girl and in the + singular sweetness of her voice a unison of thought between her and her + cousin. Their souls had espoused each other, perhaps before they even felt + the force of the feelings which bound them together. Charles spent the + morning in the hall, and his sadness was respected. Each of the three + women had occupations of her own. Grandet had left all his affairs + unattended to, and a number of persons came on business,—the + plumber, the mason, the slater, the carpenter, the diggers, the dressers, + the farmers; some to drive a bargain about repairs, others to pay their + rent or to be paid themselves for services. Madame Grandet and Eugenie + were obliged to go and come and listen to the interminable talk of all + these workmen and country folk. Nanon put away in her kitchen the produce + which they brought as tribute. She always waited for her master’s orders + before she knew what portion was to be used in the house and what was to + be sold in the market. It was the goodman’s custom, like that of a great + many country gentlemen, to drink his bad wine and eat his spoiled fruit. + </p> + <p> + Towards five in the afternoon Grandet returned from Angers, having made + fourteen thousand francs by the exchange on his gold, bringing home in his + wallet good treasury-notes which bore interest until the day he should + invest them in the Funds. He had left Cornoiller at Angers to look after + the horses, which were well-nigh foundered, with orders to bring them home + slowly after they were rested. + </p> + <p> + “I have got back from Angers, wife,” he said; “I am hungry.” + </p> + <p> + Nanon called out to him from the kitchen: “Haven’t you eaten anything + since yesterday?” + </p> + <p> + “Nothing,” answered the old man. + </p> + <p> + Nanon brought in the soup. Des Grassins came to take his client’s orders + just as the family sat down to dinner. Grandet had not even observed his + nephew. + </p> + <p> + “Go on eating, Grandet,” said the banker; “we can talk. Do you know what + gold is worth in Angers? They have come from Nantes after it? I shall send + some of ours.” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t send any,” said Grandet; “they have got enough. We are such old + friends, I ought to save you from such a loss of time.” + </p> + <p> + “But gold is worth thirteen francs fifty centimes.” + </p> + <p> + “Say <i>was</i> worth—” + </p> + <p> + “Where the devil have they got any?” + </p> + <p> + “I went to Angers last night,” answered Grandet in a low voice. + </p> + <p> + The banker shook with surprise. Then a whispered conversation began + between the two, during which Grandet and des Grassins frequently looked + at Charles. Presently des Grassins gave a start of astonishment; probably + Grandet was then instructing him to invest the sum which was to give him a + hundred thousand francs a year in the Funds. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur Grandet,” said the banker to Charles, “I am starting for Paris; + if you have any commissions—” + </p> + <p> + “None, monsieur, I thank you,” answered Charles. + </p> + <p> + “Thank him better than that, nephew. Monsieur is going to settle the + affairs of the house of Guillaume Grandet.” + </p> + <p> + “Is there any hope?” said Charles eagerly. + </p> + <p> + “What!” exclaimed his uncle, with well-acted pride, “are you not my + nephew? Your honor is ours. Is not your name Grandet?” + </p> + <p> + Charles rose, seized Pere Grandet, kissed him, turned pale, and left the + room. Eugenie looked at her father with admiration. + </p> + <p> + “Well, good-by, des Grassins; it is all in your hands. Decoy those people + as best you can; lead ‘em by the nose.” + </p> + <p> + The two diplomatists shook hands. The old cooper accompanied the banker to + the front door. Then, after closing it, he came back and plunged into his + armchair, saying to Nanon,— + </p> + <p> + “Get me some black-currant ratafia.” + </p> + <p> + Too excited, however, to remain long in one place, he got up, looked at + the portrait of Monsieur de la Bertelliere, and began to sing, doing what + Nanon called his dancing steps,— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Dans les gardes francaises + J’avais un bon papa.” + </pre> + <p> + Nanon, Madame Grandet, and Eugenie looked at each other in silence. The + hilarity of the master always frightened them when it reached its climax. + The evening was soon over. Pere Grandet chose to go to bed early, and when + he went to bed, everybody else was expected to go too; like as when + Augustus drank, Poland was drunk. On this occasion Nanon, Charles, and + Eugenie were not less tired than the master. As for Madame Grandet, she + slept, ate, drank, and walked according to the will of her husband. + However, during the two hours consecrated to digestion, the cooper, more + facetious than he had ever been in his life, uttered a number of his own + particular apothegms,—a single one of which will give the measure of + his mind. When he had drunk his ratafia, he looked at his glass and said,— + </p> + <p> + “You have no sooner put your lips to a glass than it is empty! Such is + life. You can’t have and hold. Gold won’t circulate and stay in your + purse. If it were not for that, life would be too fine.” + </p> + <p> + He was jovial and benevolent. When Nanon came with her spinning-wheel, + “You must be tired,” he said; “put away your hemp.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, bah! then I shall get sleepy,” she answered. + </p> + <p> + “Poor Nanon! Will you have some ratafia?” + </p> + <p> + “I won’t refuse a good offer; madame makes it a deal better than the + apothecaries. What they sell is all drugs.” + </p> + <p> + “They put too much sugar,” said the master; “you can’t taste anything + else.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IX + </h2> + <p> + The following day the family, meeting at eight o’clock for the early + breakfast, made a picture of genuine domestic intimacy. Grief had drawn + Madame Grandet, Eugenie, and Charles <i>en rapport</i>; even Nanon + sympathized, without knowing why. The four now made one family. As to the + old man, his satisfied avarice and the certainty of soon getting rid of + the dandy without having to pay more than his journey to Nantes, made him + nearly indifferent to his presence in the house. He left the two children, + as he called Charles and Eugenie, free to conduct themselves as they + pleased, under the eye of Madame Grandet, in whom he had implicit + confidence as to all that concerned public and religious morality. He + busied himself in straightening the boundaries of his fields and ditches + along the high-road, in his poplar-plantations beside the Loire, in the + winter work of his vineyards, and at Froidfond. All these things occupied + his whole time. + </p> + <p> + For Eugenie the springtime of love had come. Since the scene at night when + she gave her little treasure to her cousin, her heart had followed the + treasure. Confederates in the same secret, they looked at each other with + a mutual intelligence which sank to the depth of their consciousness, + giving a closer communion, a more intimate relation to their feelings, and + putting them, so to speak, beyond the pale of ordinary life. Did not their + near relationship warrant the gentleness in their tones, the tenderness in + their glances? Eugenie took delight in lulling her cousin’s pain with the + pretty childish joys of a new-born love. Are there no sweet similitudes + between the birth of love and the birth of life? Do we not rock the babe + with gentle songs and softest glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales + of the golden future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings + above its head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of + sorrow and its tears of joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the + pretty pebbles with which to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers + forgotten as soon as plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming time, to + spring forward into life? Love is our second transformation. Childhood and + love were one and the same thing to Eugenie and to Charles; it was a first + passion, with all its child-like play,—the more caressing to their + hearts because they now were wrapped in sadness. Struggling at birth + against the gloom of mourning, their love was only the more in harmony + with the provincial plainness of that gray and ruined house. As they + exchanged a few words beside the well in the silent court, or lingered in + the garden for the sunset hour, sitting on a mossy seat saying to each + other the infinite nothings of love, or mused in the silent calm which + reigned between the house and the ramparts like that beneath the arches of + a church, Charles comprehended the sanctity of love; for his great lady, + his dear Annette, had taught him only its stormy troubles. At this moment + he left the worldly passion, coquettish, vain, and showy as it was, and + turned to the true, pure love. He loved even the house, whose customs no + longer seemed to him ridiculous. He got up early in the mornings that he + might talk with Eugenie for a moment before her father came to dole out + the provisions; when the steps of the old man sounded on the staircase he + escaped into the garden. The small criminality of this morning <i>tete-a-tete</i> + which Nanon pretended not to see, gave to their innocent love the lively + charm of a forbidden joy. + </p> + <p> + After breakfast, when Grandet had gone to his fields and his other + occupations, Charles remained with the mother and daughter, finding an + unknown pleasure in holding their skeins, in watching them at work, in + listening to their quiet prattle. The simplicity of this half-monastic + life, which revealed to him the beauty of these souls, unknown and + unknowing of the world, touched him keenly. He had believed such morals + impossible in France, and admitted their existence nowhere but in Germany; + even so, they seemed to him fabulous, only real in the novels of Auguste + Lafontaine. Soon Eugenie became to him the Margaret of Goethe—before + her fall. Day by day his words, his looks enraptured the poor girl, who + yielded herself up with delicious non-resistance to the current of love; + she caught her happiness as a swimmer seizes the overhanging branch of a + willow to draw himself from the river and lie at rest upon its shore. Did + no dread of a coming absence sadden the happy hours of those fleeting + days? Daily some little circumstance reminded them of the parting that was + at hand. + </p> + <p> + Three days after the departure of des Grassins, Grandet took his nephew to + the Civil courts, with the solemnity which country people attach to all + legal acts, that he might sign a deed surrendering his rights in his + father’s estate. Terrible renunciation! species of domestic apostasy! + Charles also went before Maitre Cruchot to make two powers of attorney,—one + for des Grassins, the other for the friend whom he had charged with the + sale of his belongings. After that he attended to all the formalities + necessary to obtain a passport for foreign countries; and finally, when he + received his simple mourning clothes from Paris, he sent for the tailor of + Saumur and sold to him his useless wardrobe. This last act pleased Grandet + exceedingly. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! now you look like a man prepared to embark and make your fortune,” he + said, when Charles appeared in a surtout of plain black cloth. “Good! very + good!” + </p> + <p> + “I hope you will believe, monsieur,” answered his nephew, “that I shall + always try to conform to my situation.” + </p> + <p> + “What’s that?” said his uncle, his eyes lighting up at a handful of gold + which Charles was carrying. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur, I have collected all my buttons and rings and other + superfluities which may have some value; but not knowing any one in + Saumur, I wanted to ask you to—” + </p> + <p> + “To buy them?” said Grandet, interrupting him. + </p> + <p> + “No, uncle; only to tell me of an honest man who—” + </p> + <p> + “Give me those things, I will go upstairs and estimate their value; I will + come back and tell you what it is to a fraction. Jeweller’s gold,” + examining a long chain, “eighteen or nineteen carats.” + </p> + <p> + The goodman held out his huge hand and received the mass of gold, which he + carried away. + </p> + <p> + “Cousin,” said Grandet, “may I offer you these two buttons? They can + fasten ribbons round your wrists; that sort of bracelet is much the + fashion just now.” + </p> + <p> + “I accept without hesitation,” she answered, giving him an understanding + look. + </p> + <p> + “Aunt, here is my mother’s thimble; I have always kept it carefully in my + dressing-case,” said Charles, presenting a pretty gold thimble to Madame + Grandet, who for many years had longed for one. + </p> + <p> + “I cannot thank you; no words are possible, my nephew,” said the poor + mother, whose eyes filled with tears. “Night and morning in my prayers I + shall add one for you, the most earnest of all—for those who travel. + If I die, Eugenie will keep this treasure for you.” + </p> + <p> + “They are worth nine hundred and eighty-nine francs, seventy-five + centimes,” said Grandet, opening the door. “To save you the pain of + selling them, I will advance the money—in <i>livres</i>.” + </p> + <p> + The word <i>livres</i> on the littoral of the Loire signifies that crown + prices of six <i>livres</i> are to be accepted as six francs without + deduction. + </p> + <p> + “I dared not propose it to you,” answered Charles; “but it was most + repugnant to me to sell my jewels to some second-hand dealer in your own + town. People should wash their dirty linen at home, as Napoleon said. I + thank you for your kindness.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet scratched his ear, and there was a moment’s silence. + </p> + <p> + “My dear uncle,” resumed Charles, looking at him with an uneasy air, as if + he feared to wound his feelings, “my aunt and cousin have been kind enough + to accept a trifling remembrance of me. Will you allow me to give you + these sleeve-buttons, which are useless to me now? They will remind you of + a poor fellow who, far away, will always think of those who are henceforth + all his family.” + </p> + <p> + “My lad, my lad, you mustn’t rob yourself this way! Let me see, wife, what + have you got?” he added, turning eagerly to her. “Ah! a gold thimble. And + you, little girl? What! diamond buttons? Yes, I’ll accept your present, + nephew,” he answered, shaking Charles by the hand. “But—you must let + me—pay—your—yes, your passage to the Indies. Yes, I wish + to pay your passage because—d’ye see, my boy?—in valuing your + jewels I estimated only the weight of the gold; very likely the + workmanship is worth something. So let us settle it that I am to give you + fifteen hundred francs—in <i>livres</i>; Cruchot will lend them to + me. I haven’t got a copper farthing here,—unless Perrotet, who is + behindhand with his rent, should pay up. By the bye, I’ll go and see him.” + </p> + <p> + He took his hat, put on his gloves, and went out. + </p> + <p> + “Then you are really going?” said Eugenie to her cousin, with a sad look, + mingled with admiration. + </p> + <p> + “I must,” he said, bowing his head. + </p> + <p> + For some days past, Charles’s whole bearing, manners, and speech had + become those of a man who, in spite of his profound affliction, feels the + weight of immense obligations and has the strength to gather courage from + misfortune. He no longer repined, he became a man. Eugenie never augured + better of her cousin’s character than when she saw him come down in the + plain black clothes which suited well with his pale face and sombre + countenance. On that day the two women put on their own mourning, and all + three assisted at a Requiem celebrated in the parish church for the soul + of the late Guillaume Grandet. + </p> + <p> + At the second breakfast Charles received letters from Paris and began to + read them. + </p> + <p> + “Well, cousin, are you satisfied with the management of your affairs?” + said Eugenie in a low voice. + </p> + <p> + “Never ask such questions, my daughter,” said Grandet. “What the devil! do + I tell you my affairs? Why do you poke your nose into your cousin’s? Let + the lad alone!” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! I haven’t any secrets,” said Charles. + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta, nephew; you’ll soon find out that you must hold your + tongue in business.” + </p> + <p> + When the two lovers were alone in the garden, Charles said to Eugenie, + drawing her down on the old bench beneath the walnut-tree,— + </p> + <p> + “I did right to trust Alphonse; he has done famously. He has managed my + affairs with prudence and good faith. I now owe nothing in Paris. All my + things have been sold; and he tells me that he has taken the advice of an + old sea-captain and spent three thousand francs on a commercial outfit of + European curiosities which will be sure to be in demand in the Indies. He + has sent my trunks to Nantes, where a ship is loading for San Domingo. In + five days, Eugenie, we must bid each other farewell—perhaps forever, + at least for years. My outfit and ten thousand francs, which two of my + friends send me, are a very small beginning. I cannot look to return for + many years. My dear cousin, do not weight your life in the scales with + mine; I may perish; some good marriage may be offered to you—” + </p> + <p> + “Do you love me?” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, yes! indeed, yes!” he answered, with a depth of tone that revealed an + equal depth of feeling. + </p> + <p> + “I shall wait, Charles—Good heavens! there is my father at his + window,” she said, repulsing her cousin, who leaned forward to kiss her. + </p> + <p> + She ran quickly under the archway. Charles followed her. When she saw him, + she retreated to the foot of the staircase and opened the swing-door; + then, scarcely knowing where she was going, Eugenie reached the corner + near Nanon’s den, in the darkest end of the passage. There Charles caught + her hand and drew her to his heart. Passing his arm about her waist, he + made her lean gently upon him. Eugenie no longer resisted; she received + and gave the purest, the sweetest, and yet, withal, the most unreserved of + kisses. + </p> + <p> + “Dear Eugenie, a cousin is better than a brother, for he can marry you,” + said Charles. + </p> + <p> + “So be it!” cried Nanon, opening the door of her lair. + </p> + <p> + The two lovers, alarmed, fled into the hall, where Eugenie took up her + work and Charles began to read the litanies of the Virgin in Madame + Grandet’s prayer-book. + </p> + <p> + “Mercy!” cried Nanon, “now they’re saying their prayers.” + </p> + <p> + As soon as Charles announced his immediate departure, Grandet bestirred + himself to testify much interest in his nephew. He became very liberal of + all that cost him nothing; took pains to find a packer; declared the man + asked too much for his cases; insisted on making them himself out of old + planks; got up early in the morning to fit and plane and nail together the + strips, out of which he made, to his own satisfaction, some strong cases, + in which he packed all Charles’s effects; he also took upon himself to + send them by boat down the Loire, to insure them, and get them to Nantes + in proper time. + </p> + <p> + After the kiss taken in the passage, the hours fled for Eugenie with + frightful rapidity. Sometimes she thought of following her cousin. Those + who have known that most endearing of all passions,—the one whose + duration is each day shortened by time, by age, by mortal illness, by + human chances and fatalities,—they will understand the poor girl’s + tortures. She wept as she walked in the garden, now so narrow to her, as + indeed the court, the house, the town all seemed. She launched in thought + upon the wide expanse of the ocean he was about to traverse. At last the + eve of his departure came. That morning, in the absence of Grandet and of + Nanon, the precious case which contained the two portraits was solemnly + installed in the only drawer of the old cabinet which could be locked, + where the now empty velvet purse was lying. This deposit was not made + without a goodly number of tears and kisses. When Eugenie placed the key + within her bosom she had no courage to forbid the kiss with which Charles + sealed the act. + </p> + <p> + “It shall never leave that place, my friend,” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Then my heart will be always there.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! Charles, it is not right,” she said, as though she blamed him. + </p> + <p> + “Are we not married?” he said. “I have thy promise,—then take mine.” + </p> + <p> + “Thine; I am thine forever!” they each said, repeating the words twice + over. + </p> + <p> + No promise made upon this earth was ever purer. The innocent sincerity of + Eugenie had sanctified for a moment the young man’s love. + </p> + <p> + On the morrow the breakfast was sad. Nanon herself, in spite of the + gold-embroidered robe and the Jeannette cross bestowed by Charles, had + tears in her eyes. + </p> + <p> + “The poor dear monsieur who is going on the seas—oh, may God guide + him!” + </p> + <p> + At half-past ten the whole family started to escort Charles to the + diligence for Nantes. Nanon let loose the dog, locked the door, and + insisted on carrying the young man’s carpet-bag. All the tradesmen in the + tortuous old street were on the sill of their shop-doors to watch the + procession, which was joined in the market-place by Maitre Cruchot. + </p> + <p> + “Eugenie, be sure you don’t cry,” said her mother. + </p> + <p> + “Nephew,” said Grandet, in the doorway of the inn from which the coach + started, kissing Charles on both cheeks, “depart poor, return rich; you + will find the honor of your father safe. I answer for that myself, I—Grandet; + for it will only depend on you to—” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! my uncle, you soften the bitterness of my departure. Is it not the + best gift that you could make me?” + </p> + <p> + Not understanding his uncle’s words which he had thus interrupted, Charles + shed tears of gratitude upon the tanned cheeks of the old miser, while + Eugenie pressed the hand of her cousin and that of her father with all her + strength. The notary smiled, admiring the sly speech of the old man, which + he alone had understood. The family stood about the coach until it + started; then as it disappeared upon the bridge, and its rumble grew + fainter in the distance, Grandet said: + </p> + <p> + “Good-by to you!” + </p> + <p> + Happily no one but Maitre Cruchot heard the exclamation. Eugenie and her + mother had gone to a corner of the quay from which they could still see + the diligence and wave their white handkerchiefs, to which Charles made + answer by displaying his. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! mother, would that I had the power of God for a single moment,” said + Eugenie, when she could no longer see her lover’s handkerchief. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + Not to interrupt the current of events which are about to take place in + the bosom of the Grandet family, it is necessary to cast a forestalling + eye upon the various operations which the goodman carried on in Paris by + means of Monsieur des Grassins. A month after the latter’s departure from + Saumur, Grandet, became possessed of a certificate of a hundred thousand + francs a year from his investment in the Funds, bought at eighty francs + net. The particulars revealed at his death by the inventory of his + property threw no light upon the means which his suspicious nature took to + remit the price of the investment and receive the certificate thereof. + Maitre Cruchot was of opinion that Nanon, unknown to herself, was the + trusty instrument by which the money was transported; for about this time + she was absent five days, under a pretext of putting things to rights at + Froidfond,—as if the goodman were capable of leaving anything lying + about or out of order! + </p> + <p> + In all that concerned the business of the house of Guillaume Grandet the + old cooper’s intentions were fulfilled to the letter. The Bank of France, + as everybody knows, affords exact information about all the large fortunes + in Paris and the provinces. The names of des Grassins and Felix Grandet of + Saumur were well known there, and they enjoyed the esteem bestowed on + financial celebrities whose wealth comes from immense and unencumbered + territorial possessions. The arrival of the Saumur banker for the purpose, + it was said, of honorably liquidating the affairs of Grandet of Paris, was + enough to avert the shame of protested notes from the memory of the + defunct merchant. The seals on the property were taken off in presence of + the creditors, and the notary employed by Grandet went to work at once on + the inventory of the assets. Soon after this, des Grassins called a + meeting of the creditors, who unanimously elected him, conjointly with + Francois Keller, the head of a rich banking-house and one of those + principally interested in the affair, as liquidators, with full power to + protect both the honor of the family and the interests of the claimants. + The credit of Grandet of Saumur, the hopes he diffused by means of des + Grassins in the minds of all concerned, facilitated the transactions. Not + a single creditor proved recalcitrant; no one thought of passing his claim + to his profit-and-loss account; each and all said confidently, “Grandet of + Saumur will pay.” + </p> + <p> + Six months went by. The Parisians had redeemed the notes in circulation as + they fell due, and held them under lock and key in their desks. First + result aimed at by the old cooper! Nine months after this preliminary + meeting, the two liquidators distributed forty-seven per cent to each + creditor on his claim. This amount was obtained by the sale of the + securities, property, and possessions of all kinds belonging to the late + Guillaume Grandet, and was paid over with scrupulous fidelity. + Unimpeachable integrity was shown in the transaction. The creditors + gratefully acknowledged the remarkable and incontestable honor displayed + by the Grandets. When these praises had circulated for a certain length of + time, the creditors asked for the rest of their money. It became necessary + to write a collective letter to Grandet of Saumur. + </p> + <p> + “Here it comes!” said the old man as he threw the letter into the fire. + “Patience, my good friends!” + </p> + <p> + In answer to the proposals contained in the letter, Grandet of Saumur + demanded that all vouchers for claims against the estate of his brother + should be deposited with a notary, together with acquittances for the + forty-seven per cent already paid; he made this demand under pretence of + sifting the accounts and finding out the exact condition of the estate. It + roused at once a variety of difficulties. Generally speaking, the creditor + is a species of maniac, ready to agree to anything one day, on the next + breathing fire and slaughter; later on, he grows amicable and easy-going. + To-day his wife is good-humored, his last baby has cut its first tooth, + all is well at home, and he is determined not to lose a sou; on the morrow + it rains, he can’t go out, he is gloomy, he says yes to any proposal that + is made to him, so long as it will put an end to the affair; on the third + day he declares he must have guarantees; by the end of the month he wants + his debtor’s head, and becomes at heart an executioner. The creditor is a + good deal like the sparrow on whose tail confiding children are invited to + put salt,—with this difference, that he applies the image to his + claim, the proceeds of which he is never able to lay hold of. Grandet had + studied the atmospheric variations of creditors, and the creditors of his + brother justified all his calculations. Some were angry, and flatly + refused to give in their vouchers. + </p> + <p> + “Very good; so much the better,” said Grandet, rubbing his hands over the + letter in which des Grassins announced the fact. + </p> + <p> + Others agreed to the demand, but only on condition that their rights + should be fully guaranteed; they renounced none, and even reserved the + power of ultimately compelling a failure. On this began a long + correspondence, which ended in Grandet of Saumur agreeing to all + conditions. By means of this concession the placable creditors were able + to bring the dissatisfied creditors to reason. The deposit was then made, + but not without sundry complaints. + </p> + <p> + “Your goodman,” they said to des Grassins, “is tricking us.” + </p> + <p> + Twenty-three months after the death of Guillaume Grandet many of the + creditors, carried away by more pressing business in the markets of Paris, + had forgotten their Grandet claims, or only thought of them to say: + </p> + <p> + “I begin to believe that forty-seven per cent is all I shall ever get out + of that affair.” + </p> + <p> + The old cooper had calculated on the power of time, which, as he used to + say, is a pretty good devil after all. By the end of the third year des + Grassins wrote to Grandet that he had brought the creditors to agree to + give up their claims for ten per cent on the two million four hundred + thousand francs still due by the house of Grandet. Grandet answered that + the notary and the broker whose shameful failures had caused the death of + his brother were still living, that they might now have recovered their + credit, and that they ought to be sued, so as to get something out of them + towards lessening the total of the deficit. + </p> + <p> + By the end of the fourth year the liabilities were definitely estimated at + a sum of twelve hundred thousand francs. Many negotiations, lasting over + six months, took place between the creditors and the liquidators, and + between the liquidators and Grandet. To make a long story short, Grandet + of Saumur, anxious by this time to get out of the affair, told the + liquidators, about the ninth month of the fourth year, that his nephew had + made a fortune in the Indies and was disposed to pay his father’s debts in + full; he therefore could not take upon himself to make any settlement + without previously consulting him; he had written to him, and was + expecting an answer. The creditors were held in check until the middle of + the fifth year by the words, “payment in full,” which the wily old miser + threw out from time to time as he laughed in his beard, saying with a + smile and an oath, “Those Parisians!” + </p> + <p> + But the creditors were reserved for a fate unexampled in the annals of + commerce. When the events of this history bring them once more into + notice, they will be found still in the position Grandet had resolved to + force them into from the first. + </p> + <p> + As soon as the Funds reached a hundred and fifteen, Pere Grandet sold out + his interests and withdrew two million four hundred thousand francs in + gold, to which he added, in his coffers, the six hundred thousand francs + compound interest which he had derived from the capital. Des Grassins now + lived in Paris. In the first place he had been made a deputy; then he + became infatuated (father of a family as he was, though horribly bored by + the provincial life of Saumur) with a pretty actress at the Theatre de + Madame, known as Florine, and he presently relapsed into the old habits of + his army life. It is useless to speak of his conduct; Saumur considered it + profoundly immoral. His wife was fortunate in the fact of her property + being settled upon herself, and in having sufficient ability to keep up + the banking-house in Saumur, which was managed in her name and repaired + the breach in her fortune caused by the extravagance of her husband. The + Cruchotines made so much talk about the false position of the quasi-widow + that she married her daughter very badly, and was forced to give up all + hope of an alliance between Eugenie Grandet and her son. Adolphe joined + his father in Paris and became, it was said, a worthless fellow. The + Cruchots triumphed. + </p> + <p> + “Your husband hasn’t common sense,” said Grandet as he lent Madame des + Grassins some money on a note securely endorsed. “I am very sorry for you, + for you are a good little woman.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, monsieur,” said the poor lady, “who could have believed that when he + left Saumur to go to Paris on your business he was going to his ruin?” + </p> + <p> + “Heaven is my witness, madame, that up to the last moment I did all I + could to prevent him from going. Monsieur le president was most anxious to + take his place; but he was determined to go, and now we all see why.” + </p> + <p> + In this way Grandet made it quite plain that he was under no obligation to + des Grassins. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + In all situations women have more cause for suffering than men, and they + suffer more. Man has strength and the power of exercising it; he acts, + moves, thinks, occupies himself; he looks ahead, and sees consolation in + the future. It was thus with Charles. But the woman stays at home; she is + always face to face with the grief from which nothing distracts her; she + goes down to the depths of the abyss which yawns before her, measures it, + and often fills it with her tears and prayers. Thus did Eugenie. She + initiated herself into her destiny. To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote + herself,—is not this the sum of woman’s life? Eugenie was to be in + all things a woman, except in the one thing that consoles for all. Her + happiness, picked up like nails scattered on a wall—to use the fine + simile of Bossuet—would never so much as fill even the hollow of her + hand. Sorrows are never long in coming; for her they came soon. The day + after Charles’s departure the house of Monsieur Grandet resumed its + ordinary aspect in the eyes of all, except in those of Eugenie, to whom it + grew suddenly empty. She wished, if it could be done unknown to her + father, that Charles’s room might be kept as he had left it. Madame + Grandet and Nanon were willing accomplices in this <i>statu quo</i>. + </p> + <p> + “Who knows but he may come back sooner than we think for?” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, don’t I wish I could see him back!” answered Nanon. “I took to him! + He was such a dear, sweet young man,—pretty too, with his curly + hair.” Eugenie looked at Nanon. “Holy Virgin! don’t look at me that way, + mademoiselle; your eyes are like those of a lost soul.” + </p> + <p> + From that day the beauty of Mademoiselle Grandet took a new character. The + solemn thoughts of love which slowly filled her soul, and the dignity of + the woman beloved, gave to her features an illumination such as painters + render by a halo. Before the coming of her cousin, Eugenie might be + compared to the Virgin before the conception; after he had gone, she was + like the Virgin Mother,—she had given birth to love. These two Marys + so different, so well represented by Spanish art, embody one of those + shining symbols with which Christianity abounds. + </p> + <p> + Returning from Mass on the morning after Charles’s departure,—having + made a vow to hear it daily,—Eugenie bought a map of the world, + which she nailed up beside her looking-glass, that she might follow her + cousin on his westward way, that she might put herself, were it ever so + little, day by day into the ship that bore him, and see him and ask him a + thousand questions,—“Art thou well? Dost thou suffer? Dost thou + think of me when the star, whose beauty and usefulness thou hast taught me + to know, shines upon thee?” In the mornings she sat pensive beneath the + walnut-tree, on the worm-eaten bench covered with gray lichens, where they + had said to each other so many precious things, so many trifles, where + they had built the pretty castles of their future home. She thought of the + future now as she looked upward to the bit of sky which was all the high + walls suffered her to see; then she turned her eyes to the angle where the + sun crept on, and to the roof above the room in which he had slept. Hers + was the solitary love, the persistent love, which glides into every + thought and becomes the substance, or, as our fathers might have said, the + tissue of life. When the would-be friends of Pere Grandet came in the + evening for their game at cards, she was gay and dissimulating; but all + the morning she talked of Charles with her mother and Nanon. Nanon had + brought herself to see that she could pity the sufferings of her young + mistress without failing in her duty to the old master, and she would say + to Eugenie,— + </p> + <p> + “If I had a man for myself I’d—I’d follow him to hell, yes, I’d + exterminate myself for him; but I’ve none. I shall die and never know what + life is. Would you believe, mamz’elle, that old Cornoiller (a good fellow + all the same) is always round my petticoats for the sake of my money,—just + for all the world like the rats who come smelling after the master’s + cheese and paying court to you? I see it all; I’ve got a shrewd eye, + though I am as big as a steeple. Well, mamz’elle, it pleases me, but it + isn’t love.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + X + </h2> + <p> + Two months went by. This domestic life, once so monotonous, was now + quickened with the intense interest of a secret that bound these women + intimately together. For them Charles lived and moved beneath the grim + gray rafters of the hall. Night and morning Eugenie opened the + dressing-case and gazed at the portrait of her aunt. One Sunday morning + her mother surprised her as she stood absorbed in finding her cousin’s + features in his mother’s face. Madame Grandet was then for the first time + admitted into the terrible secret of the exchange made by Charles against + her daughter’s treasure. + </p> + <p> + “You gave him all!” cried the poor mother, terrified. “What will you say + to your father on New Year’s Day when he asks to see your gold?” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie’s eyes grew fixed, and the two women lived through mortal terror + for more than half the morning. They were so troubled in mind that they + missed high Mass, and only went to the military service. In three days the + year 1819 would come to an end. In three days a terrible drama would + begin, a bourgeois tragedy, without poison, or dagger, or the spilling of + blood; but—as regards the actors in it—more cruel than all the + fabled horrors in the family of the Atrides. + </p> + <p> + “What will become of us?” said Madame Grandet to her daughter, letting her + knitting fall upon her knees. + </p> + <p> + The poor mother had gone through such anxiety for the past two months that + the woollen sleeves which she needed for the coming winter were not yet + finished. This domestic fact, insignificant as it seems, bore sad results. + For want of those sleeves, a chill seized her in the midst of a sweat + caused by a terrible explosion of anger on the part of her husband. + </p> + <p> + “I have been thinking, my poor child, that if you had confided your secret + to me we should have had time to write to Monsieur des Grassins in Paris. + He might have sent us gold pieces like yours; though Grandet knows them + all, perhaps—” + </p> + <p> + “Where could we have got the money?” + </p> + <p> + “I would have pledged my own property. Besides, Monsieur des Grassins + would have—” + </p> + <p> + “It is too late,” said Eugenie in a broken, hollow voice. “To-morrow + morning we must go and wish him a happy New Year in his chamber.” + </p> + <p> + “But, my daughter, why should I not consult the Cruchots?” + </p> + <p> + “No, no; it would be delivering me up to them, and putting ourselves in + their power. Besides, I have chosen my course. I have done right, I repent + of nothing. God will protect me. His will be done! Ah! mother, if you had + read his letter, you, too, would have thought only of him.” + </p> + <p> + The next morning, January 1, 1820, the horrible fear to which mother and + daughter were a prey suggested to their minds a natural excuse by which to + escape the solemn entrance into Grandet’s chamber. The winter of 1819-1820 + was one of the coldest of that epoch. The snow encumbered the roofs. + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet called to her husband as soon as she heard him stirring in + his chamber, and said,— + </p> + <p> + “Grandet, will you let Nanon light a fire here for me? The cold is so + sharp that I am freezing under the bedclothes. At my age I need some + comforts. Besides,” she added, after a slight pause, “Eugenie shall come + and dress here; the poor child might get an illness from dressing in her + cold room in such weather. Then we will go and wish you a happy New Year + beside the fire in the hall.” + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta, what a tongue! a pretty way to begin the new year, Madame + Grandet! You never talked so much before; but you haven’t been sopping + your bread in wine, I know that.” + </p> + <p> + There was a moment’s silence. + </p> + <p> + “Well,” resumed the goodman, who no doubt had some reason of his own for + agreeing to his wife’s request, “I’ll do what you ask, Madame Grandet. You + are a good woman, and I don’t want any harm to happen to you at your time + of life,—though as a general thing the Bertellieres are as sound as + a roach. Hein! isn’t that so?” he added after a pause. “Well, I forgive + them; we got their property in the end.” And he coughed. + </p> + <p> + “You are very gay this morning, monsieur,” said the poor woman gravely. + </p> + <p> + “I’m always gay,— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “‘Gai, gai, gai, le tonnelier, + Raccommodez votre cuvier!’” + </pre> + <p> + he answered, entering his wife’s room fully dressed. “Yes, on my word, it + is cold enough to freeze you solid. We shall have a fine breakfast, wife. + Des Grassins has sent me a pate-de-foie-gras truffled! I am going now to + get it at the coach-office. There’ll be a double napoleon for Eugenie in + the package,” he whispered in Madame Grandet’s ear. “I have no gold left, + wife. I had a few stray pieces—I don’t mind telling you that—but + I had to let them go in business.” + </p> + <p> + Then, by way of celebrating the new year, he kissed her on the forehead. + </p> + <p> + “Eugenie,” cried the mother, when Grandet was fairly gone, “I don’t know + which side of the bed your father got out of, but he is good-tempered this + morning. Perhaps we shall come out safe after all?” + </p> + <p> + “What’s happened to the master?” said Nanon, entering her mistress’s room + to light the fire. “First place, he said, ‘Good-morning; happy New Year, + you big fool! Go and light my wife’s fire, she’s cold’; and then, didn’t I + feel silly when he held out his hand and gave me a six-franc piece, which + isn’t worn one bit? Just look at it, madame! Oh, the kind man! He is a + good man, that’s a fact. There are some people who the older they get the + harder they grow; but he,—why he’s getting soft and improving with + time, like your ratafia! He is a good, good man—” + </p> + <p> + The secret of Grandet’s joy lay in the complete success of his + speculation. Monsieur des Grassins, after deducting the amount which the + old cooper owed him for the discount on a hundred and fifty thousand + francs in Dutch notes, and for the surplus which he had advanced to make + up the sum required for the investment in the Funds which was to produce a + hundred thousand francs a year, had now sent him, by the diligence, thirty + thousand francs in silver coin, the remainder of his first half-year’s + interest, informing him at the same time that the Funds had already gone + up in value. They were then quoted at eighty-nine; the shrewdest + capitalists bought in, towards the last of January, at ninety-three. + Grandet had thus gained in two months twelve per cent on his capital; he + had simplified his accounts, and would in future receive fifty thousand + francs interest every six months, without incurring any taxes or costs for + repairs. He understood at last what it was to invest money in the public + securities,—a system for which provincials have always shown a + marked repugnance,—and at the end of five years he found himself + master of a capital of six millions, which increased without much effort + of his own, and which, joined to the value and proceeds of his territorial + possessions, gave him a fortune that was absolutely colossal. The six + francs bestowed on Nanon were perhaps the reward of some great service + which the poor servant had rendered to her master unawares. + </p> + <p> + “Oh! oh! where’s Pere Grandet going? He has been scurrying about since + sunrise as if to a fire,” said the tradespeople to each other as they + opened their shops for the day. + </p> + <p> + When they saw him coming back from the wharf, followed by a porter from + the coach-office wheeling a barrow which was laden with sacks, they all + had their comments to make:— + </p> + <p> + “Water flows to the river; the old fellow was running after his gold,” + said one. + </p> + <p> + “He gets it from Paris and Froidfond and Holland,” said another. + </p> + <p> + “He’ll end by buying up Saumur,” cried a third. + </p> + <p> + “He doesn’t mind the cold, he’s so wrapped up in his gains,” said a wife + to her husband. + </p> + <p> + “Hey! hey! Monsieur Grandet, if that’s too heavy for you,” said a + cloth-dealer, his nearest neighbor, “I’ll take it off your hands.” + </p> + <p> + “Heavy?” said the cooper, “I should think so; it’s all sous!” + </p> + <p> + “Silver sous,” said the porter in a low voice. + </p> + <p> + “If you want me to take care of you, keep your tongue between your teeth,” + said the goodman to the porter as they reached the door. + </p> + <p> + “The old fox! I thought he was deaf; seems he can hear fast enough in + frosty weather.” + </p> + <p> + “Here’s twenty sous for your New Year, and <i>mum</i>!” said Grandet. “Be + off with you! Nanon shall take back your barrow. Nanon, are the linnets at + church?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, monsieur.” + </p> + <p> + “Then lend a hand! go to work!” he cried, piling the sacks upon her. In a + few moments all were carried up to his inner room, where he shut himself + in with them. “When breakfast is ready, knock on the wall,” he said as he + disappeared. “Take the barrow back to the coach-office.” + </p> + <p> + The family did not breakfast that day until ten o’clock. + </p> + <p> + “Your father will not ask to see your gold downstairs,” said Madame + Grandet as they got back from Mass. “You must pretend to be very chilly. + We may have time to replace the treasure before your fete-day.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet came down the staircase thinking of his splendid speculation in + government securities, and wondering how he could metamorphose his + Parisian silver into solid gold; he was making up his mind to invest in + this way everything he could lay hands on until the Funds should reach a + par value. Fatal reverie for Eugenie! As soon as he came in, the two women + wished him a happy New Year,—his daughter by putting her arms round + his neck and caressing him; Madame Grandet gravely and with dignity. + </p> + <p> + “Ha! ha! my child,” he said, kissing his daughter on both cheeks. “I work + for you, don’t you see? I think of your happiness. Must have money to be + happy. Without money there’s not a particle of happiness. Here! there’s a + new napoleon for you. I sent to Paris for it. On my word of honor, it’s + all the gold I have; you are the only one that has got any gold. I want to + see your gold, little one.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! it is too cold; let us have breakfast,” answered Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “Well, after breakfast, then; it will help the digestion. That fat des + Grassins sent me the pate. Eat as much as you like, my children, it costs + nothing. Des Grassins is getting along very well. I am satisfied with him. + The old fish is doing Charles a good service, and gratis too. He is making + a very good settlement of that poor deceased Grandet’s business. Hoo! + hoo!” he muttered, with his mouth full, after a pause, “how good it is! + Eat some, wife; that will feed you for at least two days.” + </p> + <p> + “I am not hungry. I am very poorly; you know that.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, bah! you can stuff yourself as full as you please without danger, + you’re a Bertelliere; they are all hearty. You are a bit yellow, that’s + true; but I like yellow, myself.” + </p> + <p> + The expectation of ignominious and public death is perhaps less horrible + to a condemned criminal than the anticipation of what was coming after + breakfast to Madame Grandet and Eugenie. The more gleefully the old man + talked and ate, the more their hearts shrank within them. The daughter, + however, had an inward prop at this crisis,—she gathered strength + through love. + </p> + <p> + “For him! for him!” she cried within her, “I would die a thousand deaths.” + </p> + <p> + At this thought, she shot a glance at her mother which flamed with + courage. + </p> + <p> + “Clear away,” said Grandet to Nanon when, about eleven o’clock, breakfast + was over, “but leave the table. We can spread your little treasure upon + it,” he said, looking at Eugenie. “Little? Faith! no; it isn’t little. You + possess, in actual value, five thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine francs + and the forty I gave you just now. That makes six thousand francs, less + one. Well, now see here, little one! I’ll give you that one franc to make + up the round number. Hey! what are you listening for, Nanon? Mind your own + business; go and do your work.” + </p> + <p> + Nanon disappeared. + </p> + <p> + “Now listen, Eugenie; you must give me back your gold. You won’t refuse + your father, my little girl, hein?” + </p> + <p> + The two women were dumb. + </p> + <p> + “I have no gold myself. I had some, but it is all gone. I’ll give you in + return six thousand francs in <i>livres</i>, and you are to put them just + where I tell you. You mustn’t think anything more about your ‘dozen.’ When + I marry you (which will be soon) I shall get you a husband who can give + you the finest ‘dozen’ ever seen in the provinces. Now attend to me, + little girl. There’s a fine chance for you; you can put your six thousand + francs into government funds, and you will receive every six months nearly + two hundred francs interest, without taxes, or repairs, or frost, or hail, + or floods, or anything else to swallow up the money. Perhaps you don’t + like to part with your gold, hey, my girl? Never mind, bring it to me all + the same. I’ll get you some more like it,—like those Dutch coins and + the <i>portugaises</i>, the rupees of Mogul, and the <i>genovines</i>,—I’ll + give you some more on your fete-days, and in three years you’ll have got + back half your little treasure. What’s that you say? Look up, now. Come, + go and get it, the precious metal. You ought to kiss me on the eyelids for + telling you the secrets and the mysteries of the life and death of money. + Yes, silver and gold live and swarm like men; they come, and go, and + sweat, and multiply—” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie rose; but after making a few steps towards the door she turned + abruptly, looked her father in the face, and said,— + </p> + <p> + “I have not got <i>my</i> gold.” + </p> + <p> + “You have not got your gold!” cried Grandet, starting up erect, like a + horse that hears a cannon fired beside him. + </p> + <p> + “No, I have not got it.” + </p> + <p> + “You are mistaken, Eugenie.” + </p> + <p> + “No.” + </p> + <p> + “By the shears of my father!” + </p> + <p> + Whenever the old man swore that oath the rafters trembled. + </p> + <p> + “Holy Virgin! Madame is turning pale,” cried Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “Grandet, your anger will kill me,” said the poor mother. + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta! nonsense; you never die in your family! Eugenie, what + have you done with your gold?” he cried, rushing upon her. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur,” said the daughter, falling at Madame Grandet’s knees, “my + mother is ill. Look at her; do not kill her.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet was frightened by the pallor which overspread his wife’s face, + usually so yellow. + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, help me to bed,” said the poor woman in a feeble voice; “I am + dying—” + </p> + <p> + Nanon gave her mistress an arm, Eugenie gave her another; but it was only + with infinite difficulty that they could get her upstairs, she fell with + exhaustion at every step. Grandet remained alone. However, in a few + moments he went up six or eight stairs and called out,— + </p> + <p> + “Eugenie, when your mother is in bed, come down.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, father.” + </p> + <p> + She soon came, after reassuring her mother. + </p> + <p> + “My daughter,” said Grandet, “you will now tell me what you have done with + your gold.” + </p> + <p> + “My father, if you make me presents of which I am not the sole mistress, + take them back,” she answered coldly, picking up the napoleon from the + chimney-piece and offering it to him. + </p> + <p> + Grandet seized the coin and slipped it into his breeches’ pocket. + </p> + <p> + “I shall certainly never give you anything again. Not so much as that!” he + said, clicking his thumb-nail against a front tooth. “Do you dare to + despise your father? have you no confidence in him? Don’t you know what a + father is? If he is nothing for you, he is nothing at all. Where is your + gold?” + </p> + <p> + “Father, I love and respect you, in spite of your anger; but I humbly ask + you to remember that I am twenty-three years old. You have told me often + that I have attained my majority, and I do not forget it. I have used my + money as I chose to use it, and you may be sure that it was put to a good + use—” + </p> + <p> + “What use?” + </p> + <p> + “That is an inviolable secret,” she answered. “Have you no secrets?” + </p> + <p> + “I am the head of the family; I have my own affairs.” + </p> + <p> + “And this is mine.” + </p> + <p> + “It must be something bad if you can’t tell it to your father, + Mademoiselle Grandet.” + </p> + <p> + “It is good, and I cannot tell it to my father.” + </p> + <p> + “At least you can tell me when you parted with your gold?” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie made a negative motion with her head. + </p> + <p> + “You had it on your birthday, hein?” + </p> + <p> + She grew as crafty through love as her father was through avarice, and + reiterated the negative sign. + </p> + <p> + “Was there ever such obstinacy! It’s a theft,” cried Grandet, his voice + going up in a crescendo which gradually echoed through the house. “What! + here, in my own home, under my very eyes, somebody has taken your gold!—the + only gold we have!—and I’m not to know who has got it! Gold is a + precious thing. Virtuous girls go wrong sometimes, and give—I don’t + know what; they do it among the great people, and even among the + bourgeoisie. But give their gold!—for you have given it to some one, + hein?—” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie was silent and impassive. + </p> + <p> + “Was there ever such a daughter? Is it possible that I am your father? If + you have invested it anywhere, you must have a receipt—” + </p> + <p> + “Was I free—yes or no—to do what I would with my own? Was it + not mine?” + </p> + <p> + “You are a child.” + </p> + <p> + “Of age.” + </p> + <p> + Dumbfounded by his daughter’s logic, Grandet turned pale and stamped and + swore. When at last he found words, he cried: “Serpent! Cursed girl! Ah, + deceitful creature! You know I love you, and you take advantage of it. + She’d cut her father’s throat! Good God! you’ve given our fortune to that + ne’er-do-well,—that dandy with morocco boots! By the shears of my + father! I can’t disinherit you, but I curse you,—you and your cousin + and your children! Nothing good will come of it! Do you hear? If it was to + Charles—but, no; it’s impossible. What! has that wretched fellow + robbed me?—” + </p> + <p> + He looked at his daughter, who continued cold and silent. + </p> + <p> + “She won’t stir; she won’t flinch! She’s more Grandet than I’m Grandet! + Ha! you have not given your gold for nothing? Come, speak the truth!” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie looked at her father with a sarcastic expression that stung him. + </p> + <p> + “Eugenie, you are here, in my house,—in your father’s house. If you + wish to stay here, you must submit yourself to me. The priests tell you to + obey me.” Eugenie bowed her head. “You affront me in all I hold most dear. + I will not see you again until you submit. Go to your chamber. You will + stay there till I give you permission to leave it. Nanon will bring you + bread and water. You hear me—go!” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie burst into tears and fled up to her mother. Grandet, after + marching two or three times round the garden in the snow without heeding + the cold, suddenly suspected that his daughter had gone to her mother; + only too happy to find her disobedient to his orders, he climbed the + stairs with the agility of a cat and appeared in Madame Grandet’s room + just as she was stroking Eugenie’s hair, while the girl’s face was hidden + in her motherly bosom. + </p> + <p> + “Be comforted, my poor child,” she was saying; “your father will get over + it.” + </p> + <p> + “She has no father!” said the old man. “Can it be you and I, Madame + Grandet, who have given birth to such a disobedient child? A fine + education,—religious, too! Well! why are you not in your chamber? + Come, to prison, to prison, mademoiselle!” + </p> + <p> + “Would you deprive me of my daughter, monsieur?” said Madame Grandet, + turning towards him a face that was now red with fever. + </p> + <p> + “If you want to keep her, carry her off! Clear out—out of my house, + both of you! Thunder! where is the gold? what’s become of the gold?” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie rose, looked proudly at her father, and withdrew to her room. + Grandet turned the key of the door. + </p> + <p> + “Nanon,” he cried, “put out the fire in the hall.” + </p> + <p> + Then he sat down in an armchair beside his wife’s fire and said to her,— + </p> + <p> + “Undoubtedly she has given the gold to that miserable seducer, Charles, + who only wanted our money.” + </p> + <p> + “I knew nothing about it,” she answered, turning to the other side of the + bed, that she might escape the savage glances of her husband. “I suffer so + much from your violence that I shall never leave this room, if I trust my + own presentiments, till I am carried out of it in my coffin. You ought to + have spared me this suffering, monsieur,—you, to whom I have caused + no pain; that is, I think so. Your daughter loves you. I believe her to be + as innocent as the babe unborn. Do not make her wretched. Revoke your + sentence. The cold is very severe; you may give her some serious illness.” + </p> + <p> + “I will not see her, neither will I speak to her. She shall stay in her + room, on bread and water, until she submits to her father. What the devil! + shouldn’t a father know where the gold in his house has gone to? She owned + the only rupees in France, perhaps, and the Dutch ducats and the <i>genovines</i>—” + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur, Eugenie is our only child; and even if she had thrown them into + the water—” + </p> + <p> + “Into the water!” cried her husband; “into the water! You are crazy, + Madame Grandet! What I have said is said; you know that well enough. If + you want peace in this household, make your daughter confess, pump it out + of her. Women understand how to do that better than we do. Whatever she + has done, I sha’n’t eat her. Is she afraid of me? Even if she has + plastered Charles with gold from head to foot, he is on the high seas, and + nobody can get at him, hein!” + </p> + <p> + “But, monsieur—” Excited by the nervous crisis through which she had + passed, and by the fate of her daughter, which brought forth all her + tenderness and all her powers of mind, Madame Grandet suddenly observed a + frightful movement of her husband’s wen, and, in the very act of replying, + she changed her speech without changing the tones of her voice,—“But, + monsieur, I have not more influence over her than you have. She has said + nothing to me; she takes after you.” + </p> + <p> + “Tut, tut! Your tongue is hung in the middle this morning. Ta, ta, ta, ta! + You are setting me at defiance, I do believe. I daresay you are in league + with her.” + </p> + <p> + He looked fixedly at his wife. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur Grandet, if you wish to kill me, you have only to go on like + this. I tell you, monsieur,—and if it were to cost me my life, I + would say it,—you do wrong by your daughter; she is more in the + right than you are. That money belonged to her; she is incapable of making + any but a good use of it, and God alone has the right to know our good + deeds. Monsieur, I implore you, take Eugenie back into favor; forgive her. + If you will do this you will lessen the injury your anger has done me; + perhaps you will save my life. My daughter! oh, monsieur, give me back my + daughter!” + </p> + <p> + “I shall decamp,” he said; “the house is not habitable. A mother and + daughter talking and arguing like that! Broooouh! Pouah! A fine New Year’s + present you’ve made me, Eugenie,” he called out. “Yes, yes, cry away! What + you’ve done will bring you remorse, do you hear? What’s the good of taking + the sacrament six times every three months, if you give away your father’s + gold secretly to an idle fellow who’ll eat your heart out when you’ve + nothing else to give him? You’ll find out some day what your Charles is + worth, with his morocco boots and supercilious airs. He has got neither + heart nor soul if he dared to carry off a young girl’s treasure without + the consent of her parents.” + </p> + <p> + When the street-door was shut, Eugenie came out of her room and went to + her mother. + </p> + <p> + “What courage you have had for your daughter’s sake!” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! my child, see where forbidden things may lead us. You forced me to + tell a lie.” + </p> + <p> + “I will ask God to punish only me.” + </p> + <p> + “Is it true,” cried Nanon, rushing in alarmed, “that mademoiselle is to be + kept on bread and water for the rest of her life?” + </p> + <p> + “What does that signify, Nanon?” said Eugenie tranquilly. + </p> + <p> + “Goodness! do you suppose I’ll eat <i>frippe</i> when the daughter of the + house is eating dry bread? No, no!” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t say a word about all this, Nanon,” said Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll be as mute as a fish; but you’ll see!” + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + Grandet dined alone for the first time in twenty-four years. + </p> + <p> + “So you’re a widower, monsieur,” said Nanon; “it must be disagreeable to + be a widower with two women in the house.” + </p> + <p> + “I did not speak to you. Hold your jaw, or I’ll turn you off! What is that + I hear boiling in your saucepan on the stove?” + </p> + <p> + “It is grease I’m trying out.” + </p> + <p> + “There will be some company to-night. Light the fire.” + </p> + <p> + The Cruchots, Madame des Grassins, and her son arrived at the usual hour + of eight, and were surprised to see neither Madame Grandet nor her + daughter. + </p> + <p> + “My wife is not very well, and Eugenie is with her,” said the old + wine-grower, whose face betrayed no emotion. + </p> + <p> + At the end of an hour spent in idle conversation, Madame des Grassins, who + had gone up to see Madame Grandet, came down, and every one inquired,— + </p> + <p> + “How is Madame Grandet?” + </p> + <p> + “Not at all well,” she answered; “her condition seems to me really + alarming. At her age you ought to take every precaution, Papa Grandet.” + </p> + <p> + “We’ll see about it,” said the old man in an absent way. + </p> + <p> + They all wished him good-night. When the Cruchots got into the street + Madame des Grassins said to them,— + </p> + <p> + “There is something going on at the Grandets. The mother is very ill + without her knowing it. The girl’s eyes are red, as if she had been crying + all day. Can they be trying to marry her against her will?” + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + When Grandet had gone to bed Nanon came softly to Eugenie’s room in her + stockinged feet and showed her a pate baked in a saucepan. + </p> + <p> + “See, mademoiselle,” said the good soul, “Cornoiller gave me a hare. You + eat so little that this pate will last you full a week; in such frosty + weather it won’t spoil. You sha’n’t live on dry bread, I’m determined; it + isn’t wholesome.” + </p> + <p> + “Poor Nanon!” said Eugenie, pressing her hand. + </p> + <p> + “I’ve made it downright good and dainty, and <i>he</i> never found it out. + I bought the lard and the spices out of my six francs: I’m the mistress of + my own money”; and she disappeared rapidly, fancying she heard Grandet. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XI + </h2> + <p> + For several months the old wine-grower came constantly to his wife’s room + at all hours of the day, without ever uttering his daughter’s name, or + seeing her, or making the smallest allusion to her. Madame Grandet did not + leave her chamber, and daily grew worse. Nothing softened the old man; he + remained unmoved, harsh, and cold as a granite rock. He continued to go + and come about his business as usual; but ceased to stutter, talked less, + and was more obdurate in business transactions than ever before. Often he + made mistakes in adding up his figures. + </p> + <p> + “Something is going on at the Grandets,” said the Grassinists and the + Cruchotines. + </p> + <p> + “What has happened in the Grandet family?” became a fixed question which + everybody asked everybody else at the little evening-parties of Saumur. + Eugenie went to Mass escorted by Nanon. If Madame des Grassins said a few + words to her on coming out of church, she answered in an evasive manner, + without satisfying any curiosity. However, at the end of two months, it + became impossible to hide, either from the three Cruchots or from Madame + des Grassins, the fact that Eugenie was in confinement. There came a + moment when all pretexts failed to explain her perpetual absence. Then, + though it was impossible to discover by whom the secret had been betrayed, + all the town became aware that ever since New Year’s day Mademoiselle + Grandet had been kept in her room without fire, on bread and water, by her + father’s orders, and that Nanon cooked little dainties and took them to + her secretly at night. It was even known that the young woman was not able + to see or take care of her mother, except at certain times when her father + was out of the house. + </p> + <p> + Grandet’s conduct was severely condemned. The whole town outlawed him, so + to speak; they remembered his treachery, his hard-heartedness, and they + excommunicated him. When he passed along the streets, people pointed him + out and muttered at him. When his daughter came down the winding street, + accompanied by Nanon, on her way to Mass or Vespers, the inhabitants ran + to the windows and examined with intense curiosity the bearing of the rich + heiress and her countenance, which bore the impress of angelic gentleness + and melancholy. Her imprisonment and the condemnation of her father were + as nothing to her. Had she not a map of the world, the little bench, the + garden, the angle of the wall? Did she not taste upon her lips the honey + that love’s kisses left there? She was ignorant for a time that the town + talked about her, just as Grandet himself was ignorant of it. Pious and + pure in heart before God, her conscience and her love helped her to suffer + patiently the wrath and vengeance of her father. + </p> + <p> + One deep grief silenced all others. Her mother, that gentle, tender + creature, made beautiful by the light which shone from the inner to the + outer as she approached the tomb,—her mother was perishing from day + to day. Eugenie often reproached herself as the innocent cause of the + slow, cruel malady that was wasting her away. This remorse, though her + mother soothed it, bound her still closer to her love. Every morning, as + soon as her father left the house, she went to the bedside of her mother, + and there Nanon brought her breakfast. The poor girl, sad, and suffering + through the sufferings of her mother, would turn her face to the old + servant with a mute gesture, weeping, and yet not daring to speak of her + cousin. It was Madame Grandet who first found courage to say,— + </p> + <p> + “Where is <i>he</i>? Why does <i>he</i> not write?” + </p> + <p> + “Let us think about him, mother, but not speak of him. You are ill—you, + before all.” + </p> + <p> + “All” meant “him.” + </p> + <p> + “My child,” said Madame Grandet, “I do not wish to live. God protects me + and enables me to look with joy to the end of my misery.” + </p> + <p> + Every utterance of this woman was unfalteringly pious and Christian. + Sometimes, during the first months of the year, when her husband came to + breakfast with her and tramped up and down the room, she would say to him + a few religious words, always spoken with angelic sweetness, yet with the + firmness of a woman to whom approaching death lends a courage she had + lacked in life. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur, I thank you for the interest you take in my health,” she would + answer when he made some commonplace inquiry; “but if you really desire to + render my last moments less bitter and to ease my grief, take back your + daughter: be a Christian, a husband, and a father.” + </p> + <p> + When he heard these words, Grandet would sit down by the bed with the air + of a man who sees the rain coming and quietly gets under the shelter of a + gateway till it is over. When these touching, tender, and religious + supplications had all been made, he would say,— + </p> + <p> + “You are rather pale to-day, my poor wife.” + </p> + <p> + Absolute forgetfulness of his daughter seemed graven on his stony brow, on + his closed lips. He was unmoved by the tears which flowed down the white + cheeks of his unhappy wife as she listened to his meaningless answers. + </p> + <p> + “May God pardon you,” she said, “even as I pardon you! You will some day + stand in need of mercy.” + </p> + <p> + Since Madame Grandet’s illness he had not dared to make use of his + terrible “Ta, ta, ta, ta!” Yet, for all that, his despotic nature was not + disarmed by this angel of gentleness, whose ugliness day by day decreased, + driven out by the ineffable expression of moral qualities which shone upon + her face. She was all soul. The spirit of prayer seemed to purify her and + refine those homely features and make them luminous. Who has not seen the + phenomenon of a like transfiguration on sacred faces where the habits of + the soul have triumphed over the plainest features, giving them that + spiritual illumination whose light comes from the purity and nobility of + the inward thought? The spectacle of this transformation wrought by the + struggle which consumed the last shreds of the human life of this woman, + did somewhat affect the old cooper, though feebly, for his nature was of + iron; if his language ceased to be contemptuous, an imperturbable silence, + which saved his dignity as master of the household, took its place and + ruled his conduct. + </p> + <p> + When the faithful Nanon appeared in the market, many quips and quirks and + complaints about the master whistled in her ears; but however loudly + public opinion condemned Monsieur Grandet, the old servant defended him, + for the honor of the family. + </p> + <p> + “Well!” she would say to his detractors, “don’t we all get hard as we grow + old? Why shouldn’t he get horny too? Stop telling lies. Mademoiselle lives + like a queen. She’s alone, that’s true; but she likes it. Besides, my + masters have good reasons.” + </p> + <p> + At last, towards the end of spring, Madame Grandet, worn out by grief even + more than by illness, having failed, in spite of her prayers, to reconcile + the father and daughter, confided her secret troubles to the Cruchots. + </p> + <p> + “Keep a girl of twenty-three on bread and water!” cried Monsieur de + Bonfons; “without any reason, too! Why, that constitutes wrongful cruelty; + she can contest, as much in as upon—” + </p> + <p> + “Come, nephew, spare us your legal jargon,” said the notary. “Set your + mind at ease, madame; I will put a stop to such treatment to-morrow.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie, hearing herself mentioned, came out of her room. + </p> + <p> + “Gentlemen,” she said, coming forward with a proud step, “I beg you not to + interfere in this matter. My father is master in his own house. As long as + I live under his roof I am bound to obey him. His conduct is not subject + to the approbation or the disapprobation of the world; he is accountable + to God only. I appeal to your friendship to keep total silence in this + affair. To blame my father is to attack our family honor. I am much + obliged to you for the interest you have shown in me; you will do me an + additional service if you will put a stop to the offensive rumors which + are current in the town, of which I am accidentally informed.” + </p> + <p> + “She is right,” said Madame Grandet. + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle, the best way to stop such rumors is to procure your + liberty,” answered the old notary respectfully, struck with the beauty + which seclusion, melancholy, and love had stamped upon her face. + </p> + <p> + “Well, my daughter, let Monsieur Cruchot manage the matter if he is so + sure of success. He understands your father, and how to manage him. If you + wish to see me happy for my few remaining days, you must, at any cost, be + reconciled to your father.” + </p> + <p> + On the morrow Grandet, in pursuance of a custom he had begun since + Eugenie’s imprisonment, took a certain number of turns up and down the + little garden; he had chosen the hour when Eugenie brushed and arranged + her hair. When the old man reached the walnut-tree he hid behind its trunk + and remained for a few moments watching his daughter’s movements, + hesitating, perhaps, between the course to which the obstinacy of his + character impelled him and his natural desire to embrace his child. + Sometimes he sat down on the rotten old bench where Charles and Eugenie + had vowed eternal love; and then she, too, looked at her father secretly + in the mirror before which she stood. If he rose and continued his walk, + she sat down obligingly at the window and looked at the angle of the wall + where the pale flowers hung, where the Venus-hair grew from the crevices + with the bindweed and the sedum,—a white or yellow stone-crop very + abundant in the vineyards of Saumur and at Tours. Maitre Cruchot came + early, and found the old wine-grower sitting in the fine June weather on + the little bench, his back against the division wall of the garden, + engaged in watching his daughter. + </p> + <p> + “What may you want, Maitre Cruchot?” he said, perceiving the notary. + </p> + <p> + “I came to speak to you on business.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! ah! have you brought some gold in exchange for my silver?” + </p> + <p> + “No, no, I have not come about money; it is about your daughter Eugenie. + All the town is talking of her and you.” + </p> + <p> + “What does the town meddle for? A man’s house is his castle.” + </p> + <p> + “Very true; and a man may kill himself if he likes, or, what is worse, he + may fling his money into the gutter.” + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean?” + </p> + <p> + “Why, your wife is very ill, my friend. You ought to consult Monsieur + Bergerin; she is likely to die. If she does die without receiving proper + care, you will not be very easy in mind, I take it.” + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta! you know a deal about my wife! These doctors, if they + once get their foot in your house, will come five and six times a day.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course you will do as you think best. We are old friends; there is no + one in all Saumur who takes more interest than I in what concerns you. + Therefore, I was bound to tell you this. However, happen what may, you + have the right to do as you please; you can choose your own course. + Besides, that is not what brings me here. There is another thing which may + have serious results for you. After all, you can’t wish to kill your wife; + her life is too important to you. Think of your situation in connection + with your daughter if Madame Grandet dies. You must render an account to + Eugenie, because you enjoy your wife’s estate only during her lifetime. At + her death your daughter can claim a division of property, and she may + force you to sell Froidfond. In short, she is her mother’s heir, and you + are not.” + </p> + <p> + These words fell like a thunderbolt on the old man, who was not as wise + about law as he was about business. He had never thought of a legal + division of the estate. + </p> + <p> + “Therefore I advise you to treat her kindly,” added Cruchot, in + conclusion. + </p> + <p> + “But do you know what she has done, Cruchot?” + </p> + <p> + “What?” asked the notary, curious to hear the truth and find out the cause + of the quarrel. + </p> + <p> + “She has given away her gold!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, wasn’t it hers?” said the notary. + </p> + <p> + “They all tell me that!” exclaimed the old man, letting his arms fall to + his sides with a movement that was truly tragic. + </p> + <p> + “Are you going—for a mere nothing,”—resumed Cruchot, “to put + obstacles in the way of the concessions which you will be obliged to ask + from your daughter as soon as her mother dies?” + </p> + <p> + “Do you call six thousand francs a mere nothing?” + </p> + <p> + “Hey! my old friend, do you know what the inventory of your wife’s + property will cost, if Eugenie demands the division?” + </p> + <p> + “How much?” + </p> + <p> + “Two, three, four thousand francs, perhaps! The property would have to be + put up at auction and sold, to get at its actual value. Instead of that, + if you are on good terms with—” + </p> + <p> + “By the shears of my father!” cried Grandet, turning pale as he suddenly + sat down, “we will see about it, Cruchot.” + </p> + <p> + After a moment’s silence, full of anguish perhaps, the old man looked at + the notary and said,— + </p> + <p> + “Life is very hard! It has many griefs! Cruchot,” he continued solemnly, + “you would not deceive me? Swear to me upon your honor that all you’ve + told me is legally true. Show me the law; I must see the law!” + </p> + <p> + “My poor friend,” said the notary, “don’t I know my own business?” + </p> + <p> + “Then it is true! I am robbed, betrayed, killed, destroyed by my own + daughter!” + </p> + <p> + “It is true that your daughter is her mother’s heir.” + </p> + <p> + “Why do we have children? Ah! my wife, I love her! Luckily she’s sound and + healthy; she’s a Bertelliere.” + </p> + <p> + “She has not a month to live.” + </p> + <p> + Grandet struck his forehead, went a few steps, came back, cast a dreadful + look on Cruchot, and said,— + </p> + <p> + “What can be done?” + </p> + <p> + “Eugenie can relinquish her claim to her mother’s property. Should she do + this you would not disinherit her, I presume?—but if you want to + come to such a settlement, you must not treat her harshly. What I am + telling you, old man, is against my own interests. What do I live by, if + it isn’t liquidations, inventories, conveyances, divisions of property?—” + </p> + <p> + “We’ll see, we’ll see! Don’t let’s talk any more about it, Cruchot; it + wrings my vitals. Have you received any gold?” + </p> + <p> + “No; but I have a few old louis, a dozen or so, which you may have. My + good friend, make it up with Eugenie. Don’t you know all Saumur is pelting + you with stones?” + </p> + <p> + “The scoundrels!” + </p> + <p> + “Come, the Funds are at ninety-nine. Do be satisfied for once in your + life.” + </p> + <p> + “At ninety-nine! Are they, Cruchot?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes.” + </p> + <p> + “Hey, hey! Ninety-nine!” repeated the old man, accompanying the notary to + the street-door. Then, too agitated by what he had just heard to stay in + the house, he went up to his wife’s room and said,— + </p> + <p> + “Come, mother, you may have your daughter to spend the day with you. I’m + going to Froidfond. Enjoy yourselves, both of you. This is our + wedding-day, wife. See! here are sixty francs for your altar at the + Fete-Dieu; you’ve wanted one for a long time. Come, cheer up, enjoy + yourself, and get well! Hurrah for happiness!” + </p> + <p> + He threw ten silver pieces of six francs each upon the bed, and took his + wife’s head between his hands and kissed her forehead. + </p> + <p> + “My good wife, you are getting well, are not you?” + </p> + <p> + “How can you think of receiving the God of mercy in your house when you + refuse to forgive your daughter?” she said with emotion. + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta!” said Grandet in a coaxing voice. “We’ll see about that.” + </p> + <p> + “Merciful heaven! Eugenie,” cried the mother, flushing with joy, “come and + kiss your father; he forgives you!” + </p> + <p> + But the old man had disappeared. He was going as fast as his legs could + carry him towards his vineyards, trying to get his confused ideas into + order. Grandet had entered his seventy-sixth year. During the last two + years his avarice had increased upon him, as all the persistent passions + of men increase at a certain age. As if to illustrate an observation which + applies equally to misers, ambitious men, and others whose lives are + controlled by any dominant idea, his affections had fastened upon one + special symbol of his passion. The sight of gold, the possession of gold, + had become a monomania. His despotic spirit had grown in proportion to his + avarice, and to part with the control of the smallest fraction of his + property at the death of his wife seemed to him a thing “against nature.” + To declare his fortune to his daughter, to give an inventory of his + property, landed and personal, for the purposes of division— + </p> + <p> + “Why,” he cried aloud in the midst of a field where he was pretending to + examine a vine, “it would be cutting my throat!” + </p> + <p> + He came at last to a decision, and returned to Saumur in time for dinner, + resolved to unbend to Eugenie, and pet and coax her, that he might die + regally, holding the reins of his millions in his own hands so long as the + breath was in his body. At the moment when the old man, who chanced to + have his pass-key in his pocket, opened the door and climbed with a + stealthy step up the stairway to go into his wife’s room, Eugenie had + brought the beautiful dressing-case from the oak cabinet and placed it on + her mother’s bed. Mother and daughter, in Grandet’s absence, allowed + themselves the pleasure of looking for a likeness to Charles in the + portrait of his mother. + </p> + <p> + “It is exactly his forehead and his mouth,” Eugenie was saying as the old + man opened the door. At the look which her husband cast upon the gold, + Madame Grandet cried out,— + </p> + <p> + “O God, have pity upon us!” + </p> + <p> + The old man sprang upon the box as a famished tiger might spring upon a + sleeping child. + </p> + <p> + “What’s this?” he said, snatching the treasure and carrying it to the + window. “Gold, good gold!” he cried. “All gold,—it weighs two + pounds! Ha, ha! Charles gave you that for your money, did he? Hein! Why + didn’t you tell me so? It was a good bargain, little one! Yes, you are my + daughter, I see that—” Eugenie trembled in every limb. “This came + from Charles, of course, didn’t it?” continued the old man. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, father; it is not mine. It is a sacred trust.” + </p> + <p> + “Ta, ta, ta, ta! He took your fortune, and now you can get it back.” + </p> + <p> + “Father!” + </p> + <p> + Grandet took his knife to pry out some of the gold; to do this, he placed + the dressing-case on a chair. Eugenie sprang forward to recover it; but + her father, who had his eye on her and on the treasure too, pushed her + back so violently with a thrust of his arm that she fell upon her mother’s + bed. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur, monsieur!” cried the mother, lifting herself up. + </p> + <p> + Grandet had opened his knife, and was about to apply it to the gold. + </p> + <p> + “Father!” cried Eugenie, falling on her knees and dragging herself close + to him with clasped hands, “father, in the name of all the saints and the + Virgin! in the name of Christ who died upon the cross! in the name of your + eternal salvation, father! for my life’s sake, father!—do not touch + that! It is neither yours nor mine. It is a trust placed in my hands by an + unhappy relation: I must give it back to him uninjured!” + </p> + <p> + “If it is a trust, why were you looking at it? To look at it is as bad as + touching it.” + </p> + <p> + “Father, don’t destroy it, or you will disgrace me! Father, do you hear?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, have pity!” said the mother. + </p> + <p> + “Father!” cried Eugenie in so startling a voice that Nanon ran upstairs + terrified. Eugenie sprang upon a knife that was close at hand. + </p> + <p> + “Well, what now?” said Grandet coldly, with a callous smile. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, you are killing me!” said the mother. + </p> + <p> + “Father, if your knife so much as cuts a fragment of that gold, I will + stab myself with this one! You have already driven my mother to her death; + you will now kill your child! Do as you choose! Wound for wound!” + </p> + <p> + Grandet held his knife over the dressing-case and hesitated as he looked + at his daughter. + </p> + <p> + “Are you capable of doing it, Eugenie?” he said. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, yes!” said the mother. + </p> + <p> + “She’ll do it if she says so!” cried Nanon. “Be reasonable, monsieur, for + once in your life.” + </p> + <p> + The old man looked at the gold and then at his daughter alternately for an + instant. Madame Grandet fainted. + </p> + <p> + “There! don’t you see, monsieur, that madame is dying?” cried Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “Come, come, my daughter, we won’t quarrel for a box! Here, take it!” he + cried hastily, flinging the case upon the bed. “Nanon, go and fetch + Monsieur Bergerin! Come, mother,” said he, kissing his wife’s hand, “it’s + all over! There! we’ve made up—haven’t we, little one? No more dry + bread; you shall have all you want—Ah, she opens her eyes! Well, + mother, little mother, come! See, I’m kissing Eugenie! She loves her + cousin, and she may marry him if she wants to; she may keep his case. But + don’t die, mother; live a long time yet, my poor wife! Come, try to move! + Listen! you shall have the finest altar that ever was made in Saumur.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, how can you treat your wife and daughter so!” said Madame Grandet in + a feeble voice. + </p> + <p> + “I won’t do so again, never again,” cried her husband; “you shall see, my + poor wife!” He went to his inner room and returned with a handful of + louis, which he scattered on the bed. “Here, Eugenie! see, wife! all these + are for you,” he said, fingering the coins. “Come, be happy, wife! feel + better, get well; you sha’n’t want for anything, nor Eugenie either. + Here’s a hundred <i>louis d’or</i> for her. You won’t give these away, + will you, Eugenie, hein?” + </p> + <p> + Madame Grandet and her daughter looked at each other in astonishment. + </p> + <p> + “Take back your money, father; we ask for nothing but your affection.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, well, that’s right!” he said, pocketing the coins; “let’s be good + friends! We will all go down to dinner to-day, and we’ll play loto every + evening for two sous. You shall both be happy. Hey, wife?” + </p> + <p> + “Alas! I wish I could, if it would give you pleasure,” said the dying + woman; “but I cannot rise from my bed.” + </p> + <p> + “Poor mother,” said Grandet, “you don’t know how I love you! and you too, + my daughter!” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Oh, how good it is + to kiss a daughter when we have been angry with her! There, mother, don’t + you see it’s all over now? Go and put that away, Eugenie,” he added, + pointing to the case. “Go, don’t be afraid! I shall never speak of it + again, never!” + </p> + <p> + Monsieur Bergerin, the celebrated doctor of Saumur, presently arrived. + After an examination, he told Grandet positively that his wife was very + ill; but that perfect peace of mind, a generous diet, and great care might + prolong her life until the autumn. + </p> + <p> + “Will all that cost much?” said the old man. “Will she need medicines?” + </p> + <p> + “Not much medicine, but a great deal of care,” answered the doctor, who + could scarcely restrain a smile. + </p> + <p> + “Now, Monsieur Bergerin,” said Grandet, “you are a man of honor, are not + you? I trust to you! Come and see my wife how and when you think + necessary. Save my good wife! I love her,—don’t you see?—though + I never talk about it; I keep things to myself. I’m full of trouble. + Troubles began when my brother died; I have to spend enormous sums on his + affairs in Paris. Why, I’m paying through my nose; there’s no end to it. + Adieu, monsieur! If you can save my wife, save her. I’ll spare no expense, + not even if it costs me a hundred or two hundred francs.” + </p> + <p> + In spite of Grandet’s fervent wishes for the health of his wife, whose + death threatened more than death to him; in spite of the consideration he + now showed on all occasions for the least wish of his astonished wife and + daughter; in spite of the tender care which Eugenie lavished upon her + mother,—Madame Grandet rapidly approached her end. Every day she + grew weaker and wasted visibly, as women of her age when attacked by + serious illness are wont to do. She was fragile as the foliage in autumn; + the radiance of heaven shone through her as the sun strikes athwart the + withering leaves and gilds them. It was a death worthy of her life,—a + Christian death; and is not that sublime? In the month of October, 1822, + her virtues, her angelic patience, her love for her daughter, seemed to + find special expression; and then she passed away without a murmur. Lamb + without spot, she went to heaven, regretting only the sweet companion of + her cold and dreary life, for whom her last glance seemed to prophesy a + destiny of sorrows. She shrank from leaving her ewe-lamb, white as + herself, alone in the midst of a selfish world that sought to strip her of + her fleece and grasp her treasures. + </p> + <p> + “My child,” she said as she expired, “there is no happiness except in + heaven; you will know it some day.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XII + </h2> + <p> + On the morrow of this death Eugenie felt a new motive for attachment to + the house in which she was born, where she had suffered so much, where her + mother had just died. She could not see the window and the chair on its + castors without weeping. She thought she had mistaken the heart of her old + father when she found herself the object of his tenderest cares. He came + in the morning and gave her his arm to take her to breakfast; he looked at + her for hours together with an eye that was almost kind; he brooded over + her as though she had been gold. The old man was so unlike himself, he + trembled so often before his daughter, that Nanon and the Cruchotines, who + witnessed his weakness, attributed it to his great age, and feared that + his faculties were giving away. But the day on which the family put on + their mourning, and after dinner, to which meal Maitre Cruchot (the only + person who knew his secret) had been invited, the conduct of the old miser + was explained. + </p> + <p> + “My dear child,” he said to Eugenie when the table had been cleared and + the doors carefully shut, “you are now your mother’s heiress, and we have + a few little matters to settle between us. Isn’t that so, Cruchot?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes.” + </p> + <p> + “Is it necessary to talk of them to-day, father?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, yes, little one; I can’t bear the uncertainty in which I’m placed. I + think you don’t want to give me pain?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! father—” + </p> + <p> + “Well, then! let us settle it all to-night.” + </p> + <p> + “What is it you wish me to do?” + </p> + <p> + “My little girl, it is not for me to say. Tell her, Cruchot.” + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle, your father does not wish to divide the property, nor sell + the estate, nor pay enormous taxes on the ready money which he may + possess. Therefore, to avoid all this, he must be released from making the + inventory of his whole fortune, part of which you inherit from your + mother, and which is now undivided between you and your father—” + </p> + <p> + “Cruchot, are you quite sure of what you are saying before you tell it to + a mere child?” + </p> + <p> + “Let me tell it my own way, Grandet.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, yes, my friend. Neither you nor my daughter wish to rob me,—do + you, little one?” + </p> + <p> + “But, Monsieur Cruchot, what am I to do?” said Eugenie impatiently. + </p> + <p> + “Well,” said the notary, “it is necessary to sign this deed, by which you + renounce your rights to your mother’s estate and leave your father the use + and disposition, during his lifetime, of all the property undivided + between you, of which he guarantees you the capital.” + </p> + <p> + “I do not understand a word of what you are saying,” returned Eugenie; + “give me the deed, and show me where I am to sign it.” + </p> + <p> + Pere Grandet looked alternately at the deed and at his daughter, at his + daughter and at the deed, undergoing as he did so such violent emotion + that he wiped the sweat from his brow. + </p> + <p> + “My little girl,” he said, “if, instead of signing this deed, which will + cost a great deal to record, you would simply agree to renounce your + rights as heir to your poor dear, deceased mother’s property, and would + trust to me for the future, I should like it better. In that case I will + pay you monthly the good round sum of a hundred francs. See, now, you + could pay for as many masses as you want for anybody—Hein! a hundred + francs a month—in <i>livres</i>?” + </p> + <p> + “I will do all you wish, father.” + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle,” said the notary, “it is my duty to point out to you that + you are despoiling yourself without guarantee—” + </p> + <p> + “Good heavens! what is all that to me?” + </p> + <p> + “Hold your tongue, Cruchot! It’s settled, all settled,” cried Grandet, + taking his daughter’s hand and striking it with his own. “Eugenie, you + won’t go back on your word?—you are an honest girl, hein?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! father!—” + </p> + <p> + He kissed her effusively, and pressed her in his arms till he almost + choked her. + </p> + <p> + “Go, my good child, you restore your father’s life; but you only return to + him that which he gave you: we are quits. This is how business should be + done. Life is a business. I bless you! you are a virtuous girl, and you + love your father. Do just what you like in future. To-morrow, Cruchot,” he + added, looking at the horrified notary, “you will see about preparing the + deed of relinquishment, and then enter it on the records of the court.” + </p> + <p> + The next morning Eugenie signed the papers by which she herself completed + her spoliation. At the end of the first year, however, in spite of his + bargain, the old man had not given his daughter one sou of the hundred + francs he had so solemnly pledged to her. When Eugenie pleasantly reminded + him of this, he could not help coloring, and went hastily to his secret + hiding-place, from whence he brought down about a third of the jewels he + had taken from his nephew, and gave them to her. + </p> + <p> + “There, little one,” he said in a sarcastic tone, “do you want those for + your twelve hundred francs?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! father, truly? will you really give them to me?” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll give you as many more next year,” he said, throwing them into her + apron. “So before long you’ll get all his gewgaws,” he added, rubbing his + hands, delighted to be able to speculate on his daughter’s feelings. + </p> + <p> + Nevertheless, the old man, though still robust, felt the importance of + initiating his daughter into the secrets of his thrift and its management. + For two consecutive years he made her order the household meals in his + presence and receive the rents, and he taught her slowly and successively + the names and remunerative capacity of his vineyards and his farms. About + the third year he had so thoroughly accustomed her to his avaricious + methods that they had turned into the settled habits of her own life, and + he was able to leave the household keys in her charge without anxiety, and + to install her as mistress of the house. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + Five years passed away without a single event to relieve the monotonous + existence of Eugenie and her father. The same actions were performed daily + with the automatic regularity of clockwork. The deep sadness of + Mademoiselle Grandet was known to every one; but if others surmised the + cause, she herself never uttered a word that justified the suspicions + which all Saumur entertained about the state of the rich heiress’s heart. + Her only society was made up of the three Cruchots and a few of their + particular friends whom they had, little by little, introduced into the + Grandet household. They had taught her to play whist, and they came every + night for their game. During the year 1827 her father, feeling the weight + of his infirmities, was obliged to initiate her still further into the + secrets of his landed property, and told her that in case of difficulty + she was to have recourse to Maitre Cruchot, whose integrity was well known + to him. + </p> + <p> + Towards the end of this year the old man, then eighty-two, was seized by + paralysis, which made rapid progress. Dr. Bergerin gave him up. Eugenie, + feeling that she was about to be left alone in the world, came, as it + were, nearer to her father, and clasped more tightly this last living link + of affection. To her mind, as in that of all loving women, love was the + whole of life. Charles was not there, and she devoted all her care and + attention to the old father, whose faculties had begun to weaken, though + his avarice remained instinctively acute. The death of this man offered no + contrast to his life. In the morning he made them roll him to a spot + between the chimney of his chamber and the door of the secret room, which + was filled, no doubt, with gold. He asked for an explanation of every + noise he heard, even the slightest; to the great astonishment of the + notary, he even heard the watch-dog yawning in the court-yard. He woke up + from his apparent stupor at the day and hour when the rents were due, or + when accounts had to be settled with his vine-dressers, and receipts + given. At such times he worked his chair forward on its castors until he + faced the door of the inner room. He made his daughter open it, and + watched while she placed the bags of money one upon another in his secret + receptacles and relocked the door. Then she returned silently to her seat, + after giving him the key, which he replaced in his waistcoat pocket and + fingered from time to time. His old friend the notary, feeling sure that + the rich heiress would inevitably marry his nephew the president, if + Charles Grandet did not return, redoubled all his attentions; he came + every day to take Grandet’s orders, went on his errands to Froidfond, to + the farms and the fields and the vineyards, sold the vintages, and turned + everything into gold and silver, which found their way in sacks to the + secret hiding-place. + </p> + <p> + At length the last struggle came, in which the strong frame of the old man + slowly yielded to destruction. He was determined to sit at the + chimney-corner facing the door of the secret room. He drew off and rolled + up all the coverings which were laid over him, saying to Nanon, “Put them + away, lock them up, for fear they should be stolen.” + </p> + <p> + So long as he could open his eyes, in which his whole being had now taken + refuge, he turned them to the door behind which lay his treasures, saying + to his daughter, “Are they there? are they there?” in a tone of voice + which revealed a sort of panic fear. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, my father,” she would answer. + </p> + <p> + “Take care of the gold—put gold before me.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie would then spread coins on a table before him, and he would sit + for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like a child who, at the + moment it first begins to see, gazes in stupid contemplation at the same + object, and like the child, a distressful smile would flicker upon his + face. + </p> + <p> + “It warms me!” he would sometimes say, as an expression of beatitude stole + across his features. + </p> + <p> + When the cure of the parish came to administer the last sacraments, the + old man’s eyes, sightless, apparently, for some hours, kindled at the + sight of the cross, the candlesticks, and the holy-water vessel of silver; + he gazed at them fixedly, and his wen moved for the last time. When the + priest put the crucifix of silver-gilt to his lips, that he might kiss the + Christ, he made a frightful gesture, as if to seize it; and that last + effort cost him his life. He called Eugenie, whom he did not see, though + she was kneeling beside him bathing with tears his stiffening hand, which + was already cold. + </p> + <p> + “My father, bless me!” she entreated. + </p> + <p> + “Take care of it all. You will render me an account yonder!” he said, + proving by these last words that Christianity must always be the religion + of misers. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + Eugenie Grandet was now alone in the world in that gray house, with none + but Nanon to whom she could turn with the certainty of being heard and + understood,—Nanon the sole being who loved her for herself and with + whom she could speak of her sorrows. La Grande Nanon was a providence for + Eugenie. She was not a servant, but a humble friend. After her father’s + death Eugenie learned from Maitre Cruchot that she possessed an income of + three hundred thousand francs from landed and personal property in the + arrondissement of Saumur; also six millions invested at three per cent in + the Funds (bought at sixty, and now worth seventy-six francs); also two + millions in gold coin, and a hundred thousand francs in silver + crown-pieces, besides all the interest which was still to be collected. + The sum total of her property reached seventeen millions. + </p> + <p> + “Where is my cousin?” was her one thought. + </p> + <p> + The day on which Maitre Cruchot handed in to his client a clear and exact + schedule of the whole inheritance, Eugenie remained alone with Nanon, + sitting beside the fireplace in the vacant hall, where all was now a + memory, from the chair on castors which her mother had sat in, to the + glass from which her cousin drank. + </p> + <p> + “Nanon, we are alone—” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, mademoiselle; and if I knew where he was, the darling, I’d go on + foot to find him.” + </p> + <p> + “The ocean is between us,” she said. + </p> + <p> + While the poor heiress wept in company of an old servant, in that cold + dark house, which was to her the universe, the whole province rang, from + Nantes to Orleans, with the seventeen millions of Mademoiselle Grandet. + Among her first acts she had settled an annuity of twelve hundred francs + on Nanon, who, already possessed of six hundred more, became a rich and + enviable match. In less than a month that good soul passed from single to + wedded life under the protection of Antoine Cornoiller, who was appointed + keeper of all Mademoiselle Grandet’s estates. Madame Cornoiller possessed + one striking advantage over her contemporaries. Although she was + fifty-nine years of age, she did not look more than forty. Her strong + features had resisted the ravages of time. Thanks to the healthy customs + of her semi-conventual life, she laughed at old age from the + vantage-ground of a rosy skin and an iron constitution. Perhaps she never + looked as well in her life as she did on her marriage-day. She had all the + benefits of her ugliness, and was big and fat and strong, with a look of + happiness on her indestructible features which made a good many people + envy Cornoiller. + </p> + <p> + “Fast colors!” said the draper. + </p> + <p> + “Quite likely to have children,” said the salt merchant. “She’s pickled in + brine, saving your presence.” + </p> + <p> + “She is rich, and that fellow Cornoiller has done a good thing for + himself,” said a third man. + </p> + <p> + When she came forth from the old house on her way to the parish church, + Nanon, who was loved by all the neighborhood, received many compliments as + she walked down the tortuous street. Eugenie had given her three dozen + silver forks and spoons as a wedding present. Cornoiller, amazed at such + magnificence, spoke of his mistress with tears in his eyes; he would + willingly have been hacked in pieces in her behalf. Madame Cornoiller, + appointed housekeeper to Mademoiselle Grandet, got as much happiness out + of her new position as she did from the possession of a husband. She took + charge of the weekly accounts; she locked up the provisions and gave them + out daily, after the manner of her defunct master; she ruled over two + servants,—a cook, and a maid whose business it was to mend the + house-linen and make mademoiselle’s dresses. Cornoiller combined the + functions of keeper and bailiff. It is unnecessary to say that the + women-servants selected by Nanon were “perfect treasures.” Mademoiselle + Grandet thus had four servants, whose devotion was unbounded. The farmers + perceived no change after Monsieur Grandet’s death; the usages and customs + he had sternly established were scrupulously carried out by Monsieur and + Madame Cornoiller. + </p> + <p> + At thirty years of age Eugenie knew none of the joys of life. Her pale, + sad childhood had glided on beside a mother whose heart, always + misunderstood and wounded, had known only suffering. Leaving this life + joyfully, the mother pitied the daughter because she still must live; and + she left in her child’s soul some fugitive remorse and many lasting + regrets. Eugenie’s first and only love was a wellspring of sadness within + her. Meeting her lover for a few brief days, she had given him her heart + between two kisses furtively exchanged; then he had left her, and a whole + world lay between them. This love, cursed by her father, had cost the life + of her mother and brought her only sorrow, mingled with a few frail hopes. + Thus her upward spring towards happiness had wasted her strength and given + her nothing in exchange for it. In the life of the soul, as in the + physical life, there is an inspiration and a respiration; the soul needs + to absorb the sentiments of another soul and assimilate them, that it may + render them back enriched. Were it not for this glorious human phenomenon, + there would be no life for the heart; air would be wanting; it would + suffer, and then perish. Eugenie had begun to suffer. For her, wealth was + neither a power nor a consolation; she could not live except through love, + through religion, through faith in the future. Love explained to her the + mysteries of eternity. Her heart and the Gospel taught her to know two + worlds; she bathed, night and day, in the depths of two infinite thoughts, + which for her may have had but one meaning. She drew back within herself, + loving, and believing herself beloved. For seven years her passion had + invaded everything. Her treasuries were not the millions whose revenues + were rolling up; they were Charles’s dressing-case, the portraits hanging + above her bed, the jewels recovered from her father and proudly spread + upon a bed of wool in a drawer of the oaken cabinet, the thimble of her + aunt, used for a while by her mother, which she wore religiously as she + worked at a piece of embroidery,—a Penelope’s web, begun for the + sole purpose of putting upon her finger that gold so rich in memories. + </p> + <p> + It seemed unlikely that Mademoiselle Grandet would marry during the period + of her mourning. Her genuine piety was well known. Consequently the + Cruchots, whose policy was sagely guided by the old abbe, contented + themselves for the time being with surrounding the great heiress and + paying her the most affectionate attentions. Every evening the hall was + filled with a party of devoted Cruchotines, who sang the praises of its + mistress in every key. She had her doctor in ordinary, her grand almoner, + her chamberlain, her first lady of honor, her prime minister; above all, + her chancellor, a chancellor who would fain have said much to her. If the + heiress had wished for a train-bearer, one would instantly have been + found. She was a queen, obsequiously flattered. Flattery never emanates + from noble souls; it is the gift of little minds, who thus still further + belittle themselves to worm their way into the vital being of the persons + around whom they crawl. Flattery means self-interest. So the people who, + night after night, assembled in Mademoiselle Grandet’s house (they called + her Mademoiselle de Froidfond) outdid each other in expressions of + admiration. This concert of praise, never before bestowed upon Eugenie, + made her blush under its novelty; but insensibly her ear became habituated + to the sound, and however coarse the compliments might be, she soon was so + accustomed to hear her beauty lauded that if any new-comer had seemed to + think her plain, she would have felt the reproach far more than she might + have done eight years earlier. She ended at last by loving the incense, + which she secretly laid at the feet of her idol. By degrees she grew + accustomed to be treated as a sovereign and to see her court pressing + around her every evening. + </p> + <p> + Monsieur de Bonfons was the hero of the little circle, where his wit, his + person, his education, his amiability, were perpetually praised. One or + another would remark that in seven years he had largely increased his + fortune, that Bonfons brought in at least ten thousand francs a year, and + was surrounded, like the other possessions of the Cruchots, by the vast + domains of the heiress. + </p> + <p> + “Do you know, mademoiselle,” said an habitual visitor, “that the Cruchots + have an income of forty thousand francs among them!” + </p> + <p> + “And then, their savings!” exclaimed an elderly female Cruchotine, + Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt. + </p> + <p> + “A gentleman from Paris has lately offered Monsieur Cruchot two hundred + thousand francs for his practice,” said another. “He will sell it if he is + appointed <i>juge de paix</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “He wants to succeed Monsieur de Bonfons as president of the Civil courts, + and is taking measures,” replied Madame d’Orsonval. “Monsieur le president + will certainly be made councillor.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, he is a very distinguished man,” said another,—“don’t you + think so, mademoiselle?” + </p> + <p> + Monsieur de Bonfons endeavored to put himself in keeping with the role he + sought to play. In spite of his forty years, in spite of his dusky and + crabbed features, withered like most judicial faces, he dressed in + youthful fashions, toyed with a bamboo cane, never took snuff in + Mademoiselle de Froidfond’s house, and came in a white cravat and a shirt + whose pleated frill gave him a family resemblance to the race of turkeys. + He addressed the beautiful heiress familiarly, and spoke of her as “Our + dear Eugenie.” In short, except for the number of visitors, the change + from loto to whist, and the disappearance of Monsieur and Madame Grandet, + the scene was about the same as the one with which this history opened. + The pack were still pursuing Eugenie and her millions; but the hounds, + more in number, lay better on the scent, and beset the prey more unitedly. + If Charles could have dropped from the Indian Isles, he would have found + the same people and the same interests. Madame des Grassins, to whom + Eugenie was full of kindness and courtesy, still persisted in tormenting + the Cruchots. Eugenie, as in former days, was the central figure of the + picture; and Charles, as heretofore, would still have been the sovereign + of all. Yet there had been some progress. The flowers which the president + formerly presented to Eugenie on her birthdays and fete-days had now + become a daily institution. Every evening he brought the rich heiress a + huge and magnificent bouquet, which Madame Cornoiller placed conspicuously + in a vase, and secretly threw into a corner of the court-yard when the + visitors had departed. + </p> + <p> + Early in the spring, Madame des Grassins attempted to trouble the peace of + the Cruchotines by talking to Eugenie of the Marquis de Froidfond, whose + ancient and ruined family might be restored if the heiress would give him + back his estates through marriage. Madame des Grassins rang the changes on + the peerage and the title of marquise, until, mistaking Eugenie’s + disdainful smile for acquiescence, she went about proclaiming that the + marriage with “Monsieur Cruchot” was not nearly as certain as people + thought. + </p> + <p> + “Though Monsieur de Froidfond is fifty,” she said, “he does not look older + than Monsieur Cruchot. He is a widower, and he has children, that’s true. + But then he is a marquis; he will be peer of France; and in times like + these where you will find a better match? I know it for a fact that Pere + Grandet, when he put all his money into Froidfond, intended to graft + himself upon that stock; he often told me so. He was a deep one, that old + man!” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! Nanon,” said Eugenie, one night as she was going to bed, “how is it + that in seven years he has never once written to me?” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIII + </h2> + <p> + While these events were happening in Saumur, Charles was making his + fortune in the Indies. His commercial outfit had sold well. He began by + realizing a sum of six thousand dollars. Crossing the line had brushed a + good many cobwebs out of his brain; he perceived that the best means of + attaining fortune in tropical regions, as well as in Europe, was to buy + and sell men. He went to the coast of Africa and bought Negroes, combining + his traffic in human flesh with that of other merchandise equally + advantageous to his interests. He carried into this business an activity + which left him not a moment of leisure. He was governed by the desire of + reappearing in Paris with all the prestige of a large fortune, and by the + hope of regaining a position even more brilliant than the one from which + he had fallen. + </p> + <p> + By dint of jostling with men, travelling through many lands, and studying + a variety of conflicting customs, his ideas had been modified and had + become sceptical. He ceased to have fixed principles of right and wrong, + for he saw what was called a crime in one country lauded as a virtue in + another. In the perpetual struggle of selfish interests his heart grew + cold, then contracted, and then dried up. The blood of the Grandets did + not fail of its destiny; Charles became hard, and eager for prey. He sold + Chinamen, Negroes, birds’ nests, children, artists; he practised usury on + a large scale; the habit of defrauding custom-houses soon made him less + scrupulous about the rights of his fellow men. He went to the Island of + St. Thomas and bought, for a mere song, merchandise that had been captured + by pirates, and took it to ports where he could sell it at a good price. + If the pure and noble face of Eugenie went with him on his first voyage, + like that image of the Virgin which Spanish mariners fastened to their + masts, if he attributed his first success to the magic influence of the + prayers and intercessions of his gentle love, later on women of other + kinds,—blacks, mulattoes, whites, and Indian dancing-girls,—orgies + and adventures in many lands, completely effaced all recollection of his + cousin, of Saumur, of the house, the bench, the kiss snatched in the dark + passage. He remembered only the little garden shut in with crumbling + walls, for it was there he learned the fate that had overtaken him; but he + rejected all connection with his family. His uncle was an old dog who had + filched his jewels; Eugenie had no place in his heart nor in his thoughts, + though she did have a place in his accounts as a creditor for the sum of + six thousand francs. + </p> + <p> + Such conduct and such ideas explain Charles Grandet’s silence. In the + Indies, at St. Thomas, on the coast of Africa, at Lisbon, and in the + United States the adventurer had taken the pseudonym of Shepherd, that he + might not compromise his own name. Charles Shepherd could safely be + indefatigable, bold, grasping, and greedy of gain, like a man who resolves + to snatch his fortune <i>quibus cumque viis</i>, and makes haste to have + done with villany, that he may spend the rest of his life as an honest + man. + </p> + <p> + With such methods, prosperity was rapid and brilliant; and in 1827 Charles + Grandet returned to Bordeaux on the “Marie Caroline,” a fine brig + belonging to a royalist house of business. He brought with him nineteen + hundred thousand francs worth of gold-dust, from which he expected to + derive seven or eight per cent more at the Paris mint. On the brig he met + a gentleman-in-ordinary to His Majesty Charles X., Monsieur d’Aubrion, a + worthy old man who had committed the folly of marrying a woman of fashion + with a fortune derived from the West India Islands. To meet the costs of + Madame d’Aubrion’s extravagance, he had gone out to the Indies to sell the + property, and was now returning with his family to France. + </p> + <p> + Monsieur and Madame d’Aubrion, of the house of d’Aubrion de Buch, a family + of southern France, whose last <i>captal</i>, or chief, died before 1789, + were now reduced to an income of about twenty thousand francs, and they + possessed an ugly daughter whom the mother was resolved to marry without a + <i>dot</i>,—the family fortune being scarcely sufficient for the + demands of her own life in Paris. This was an enterprise whose success + might have seemed problematical to most men of the world, in spite of the + cleverness with which such men credit a fashionable woman; in fact, Madame + d’Aubrion herself, when she looked at her daughter, almost despaired of + getting rid of her to any one, even to a man craving connection with + nobility. Mademoiselle d’Aubrion was a long, spare, spindling demoiselle, + like her namesake the insect; her mouth was disdainful; over it hung a + nose that was too long, thick at the end, sallow in its normal condition, + but very red after a meal,—a sort of vegetable phenomenon which is + particularly disagreeable when it appears in the middle of a pale, dull, + and uninteresting face. In one sense she was all that a worldly mother, + thirty-eight years of age and still a beauty with claims to admiration, + could have wished. However, to counterbalance her personal defects, the + marquise gave her daughter a distinguished air, subjected her to hygienic + treatment which provisionally kept her nose at a reasonable flesh-tint, + taught her the art of dressing well, endowed her with charming manners, + showed her the trick of melancholy glances which interest a man and make + him believe that he has found a long-sought angel, taught her the + manoeuvre of the foot,—letting it peep beneath the petticoat, to + show its tiny size, at the moment when the nose became aggressively red; + in short, Madame d’Aubrion had cleverly made the very best of her + offspring. By means of full sleeves, deceptive pads, puffed dresses amply + trimmed, and high-pressure corsets, she had obtained such curious feminine + developments that she ought, for the instruction of mothers, to have + exhibited them in a museum. + </p> + <p> + Charles became very intimate with Madame d’Aubrion precisely because she + was desirous of becoming intimate with him. Persons who were on board the + brig declared that the handsome Madame d’Aubrion neglected no means of + capturing so rich a son-in-law. On landing at Bordeaux in June, 1827, + Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle d’Aubrion, and Charles lodged at the same + hotel and started together for Paris. The hotel d’Aubrion was hampered + with mortgages; Charles was destined to free it. The mother told him how + delighted she would be to give up the ground-floor to a son-in-law. Not + sharing Monsieur d’Aubrion’s prejudices on the score of nobility, she + promised Charles Grandet to obtain a royal ordinance from Charles X. which + would authorize him, Grandet, to take the name and arms of d’Aubrion and + to succeed, by purchasing the entailed estate for thirty-six thousand + francs a year, to the titles of Captal de Buch and Marquis d’Aubrion. By + thus uniting their fortunes, living on good terms, and profiting by + sinecures, the two families might occupy the hotel d’Aubrion with an + income of over a hundred thousand francs. + </p> + <p> + “And when a man has a hundred thousand francs a year, a name, a family, + and a position at court,—for I will get you appointed as + gentleman-of-the-bedchamber,—he can do what he likes,” she said to + Charles. “You can then become anything you choose,—master of the + rolls in the council of State, prefect, secretary to an embassy, the + ambassador himself, if you like. Charles X. is fond of d’Aubrion; they + have known each other from childhood.” + </p> + <p> + Intoxicated with ambition, Charles toyed with the hopes thus cleverly + presented to him in the guise of confidences poured from heart to heart. + Believing his father’s affairs to have been settled by his uncle, he + imagined himself suddenly anchored in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,—that + social object of all desire, where, under shelter of Mademoiselle + Mathilde’s purple nose, he was to reappear as the Comte d’Aubrion, very + much as the Dreux reappeared in Breze. Dazzled by the prosperity of the + Restoration, which was tottering when he left France, fascinated by the + splendor of aristocratic ideas, his intoxication, which began on the brig, + increased after he reached Paris, and he finally determined to take the + course and reach the high position which the selfish hopes of his would-be + mother-in-law pointed out to him. His cousin counted for no more than a + speck in this brilliant perspective; but he went to see Annette. True + woman of the world, Annette advised her old friend to make the marriage, + and promised him her support in all his ambitious projects. In her heart + she was enchanted to fasten an ugly and uninteresting girl on Charles, + whose life in the West Indies had rendered him very attractive. His + complexion had bronzed, his manners had grown decided and bold, like those + of a man accustomed to make sharp decisions, to rule, and to succeed. + Charles breathed more at his ease in Paris, conscious that he now had a + part to play. + </p> + <p> + Des Grassins, hearing of his return, of his approaching marriage and his + large fortune, came to see him, and inquired about the three hundred + thousand francs still required to settle his father’s debts. He found + Grandet in conference with a goldsmith, from whom he had ordered jewels + for Mademoiselle d’Aubrion’s <i>corbeille</i>, and who was then submitting + the designs. Charles had brought back magnificent diamonds, and the value + of their setting, together with the plate and jewelry of the new + establishment, amounted to more than two hundred thousand francs. He + received des Grassins, whom he did not recognize, with the impertinence of + a young man of fashion conscious of having killed four men in as many + duels in the Indies. Monsieur des Grassins had already called several + times. Charles listened to him coldly, and then replied, without fully + understanding what had been said to him,— + </p> + <p> + “My father’s affairs are not mine. I am much obliged, monsieur, for the + trouble you have been good enough to take,—by which, however, I + really cannot profit. I have not earned two millions by the sweat of my + brow to fling them at the head of my father’s creditors.” + </p> + <p> + “But suppose that your father’s estate were within a few days to be + declared bankrupt?” + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur, in a few days I shall be called the Comte d’Aubrion; you will + understand, therefore, that what you threaten is of no consequence to me. + Besides, you know as well as I do that when a man has an income of a + hundred thousand francs his father has <i>never failed</i>.” So saying, he + politely edged Monsieur des Grassins to the door. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + At the beginning of August in the same year, Eugenie was sitting on the + little wooden bench where her cousin had sworn to love her eternally, and + where she usually breakfasted if the weather were fine. The poor girl was + happy, for the moment, in the fresh and joyous summer air, letting her + memory recall the great and the little events of her love and the + catastrophes which had followed it. The sun had just reached the angle of + the ruined wall, so full of chinks, which no one, through a caprice of the + mistress, was allowed to touch, though Cornoiller often remarked to his + wife that “it would fall and crush somebody one of these days.” At this + moment the postman knocked, and gave a letter to Madame Cornoiller, who + ran into the garden, crying out: + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle, a letter!” She gave it to her mistress, adding, “Is it the + one you expected?” + </p> + <p> + The words rang as loudly in the heart of Eugenie as they echoed in sound + from wall to wall of the court and garden. + </p> + <p> + “Paris—from him—he has returned!” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie turned pale and held the letter for a moment. She trembled so + violently that she could not break the seal. La Grande Nanon stood before + her, both hands on her hips, her joy puffing as it were like smoke through + the cracks of her brown face. + </p> + <p> + “Read it, mademoiselle!” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, Nanon, why did he return to Paris? He went from Saumur.” + </p> + <p> + “Read it, and you’ll find out.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie opened the letter with trembling fingers. A cheque on the house of + “Madame des Grassins and Coret, of Saumur,” fluttered down. Nanon picked + it up. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + My dear Cousin,— +</pre> + <p> + “No longer ‘Eugenie,’” she thought, and her heart quailed. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + You— +</pre> + <p> + “He once said ‘thou.’” She folded her arms and dared not read another + word; great tears gathered in her eyes. + </p> + <p> + “Is he dead?” asked Nanon. + </p> + <p> + “If he were, he could not write,” said Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + She then read the whole letter, which was as follows: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + My dear Cousin,—You will, I am sure, hear with pleasure of the + success of my enterprise. You brought me luck; I have come back + rich, and I have followed the advice of my uncle, whose death, + together with that of my aunt, I have just learned from Monsieur + des Grassins. The death of parents is in the course of nature, and + we must succeed them. I trust you are by this time consoled. + Nothing can resist time, as I am well aware. Yes, my dear cousin, + the day of illusions is, unfortunately, gone for me. How could it + be otherwise? Travelling through many lands, I have reflected upon + life. I was a child when I went away,—I have come back a man. + To-day, I think of many I did not dream of then. You are free, my + dear cousin, and I am free still. Nothing apparently hinders the + realization of our early hopes; but my nature is too loyal to hide + from you the situation in which I find myself. I have not + forgotten our relations; I have always remembered, throughout my + long wanderings, the little wooden seat— +</pre> + <p> + Eugenie rose as if she were sitting on live coals, and went away and sat + down on the stone steps of the court. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + —the little wooden seat where we vowed to love each other + forever, the passage, the gray hall, my attic chamber, and the + night when, by your delicate kindness, you made my future easier + to me. Yes, these recollections sustained my courage; I said in my + heart that you were thinking of me at the hour we had agreed upon. + Have you always looked at the clouds at nine o’clock? Yes, I am + sure of it. I cannot betray so true a friendship,—no, I must not + deceive you. An alliance has been proposed to me which satisfies + all my ideas of matrimony. Love in marriage is a delusion. My + present experience warns me that in marrying we are bound to obey + all social laws and meet the conventional demands of the world. + Now, between you and me there are differences which might affect + your future, my dear cousin, even more than they would mine. I + will not here speak of your customs and inclinations, your + education, nor yet of your habits, none of which are in keeping + with Parisian life, or with the future which I have marked out for + myself. My intention is to keep my household on a stately footing, + to receive much company,—in short, to live in the world; and I + think I remember that you love a quiet and tranquil life. I will + be frank, and make you the judge of my situation; you have the + right to understand it and to judge it. + + I possess at the present moment an income of eighty thousand + francs. This fortune enables me to marry into the family of + Aubrion, whose heiress, a young girl nineteen years of age, brings + me a title, a place of gentleman-of-the-bed-chamber to His + Majesty, and a very brilliant position. I will admit to you, my + dear cousin, that I do not love Mademoiselle d’Aubrion; but in + marrying her I secure to my children a social rank whose + advantages will one day be incalculable: monarchical principles + are daily coming more and more into favor. Thus in course of time + my son, when he becomes Marquis d’Aubrion, having, as he then will + have, an entailed estate with a rental of forty thousand francs a + year, can obtain any position in the State which he may think + proper to select. We owe ourselves to our children. + + You see, my cousin, with what good faith I lay the state of my + heart, my hopes, and my fortune before you. Possibly, after seven + years’ separation, you have yourself forgotten our youthful loves; + but I have never forgotten either your kindness or my own words. I + remember all, even words that were lightly uttered,—words by + which a man less conscientious than I, with a heart less youthful + and less upright, would scarcely feel himself bound. In telling + you that the marriage I propose to make is solely one of + convenience, that I still remember our childish love, am I not + putting myself entirely in your hands and making you the mistress + of my fate? am I not telling you that if I must renounce my social + ambitions, I shall willingly content myself with the pure and + simple happiness of which you have shown me so sweet an image? +</pre> + <p> + “Tan, ta, ta—tan, ta, ti,” sang Charles Grandet to the air of <i>Non + piu andrai</i>, as he signed himself,— + </p> + <p> + Your devoted cousin, Charles. + </p> + <p> + “Thunder! that’s doing it handsomely!” he said, as he looked about him for + the cheque; having found it, he added the words:— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + P.S.—I enclose a cheque on the des Grassins bank for eight + thousand francs to your order, payable in gold, which includes the + capital and interest of the sum you were kind enough to lend me. I + am expecting a case from Bordeaux which contains a few things + which you must allow me to offer you as a mark of my unceasing + gratitude. You can send my dressing-case by the diligence to the + hotel d’Aubrion, rue Hillerin-Bertin. +</pre> + <p> + “By the diligence!” said Eugenie. “A thing for which I would have laid + down my life!” + </p> + <p> + Terrible and utter disaster! The ship went down, leaving not a spar, not a + plank, on a vast ocean of hope! Some women when they see themselves + abandoned will try to tear their lover from the arms of a rival, they will + kill her, and rush to the ends of the earth,—to the scaffold, to + their tomb. That, no doubt, is fine; the motive of the crime is a great + passion, which awes even human justice. Other women bow their heads and + suffer in silence; they go their way dying, resigned, weeping, forgiving, + praying, and recollecting, till they draw their last breath. This is love,—true + love, the love of angels, the proud love which lives upon its anguish and + dies of it. Such was Eugenie’s love after she had read that dreadful + letter. She raised her eyes to heaven, thinking of the last words uttered + by her dying mother, who, with the prescience of death, had looked into + the future with clear and penetrating eyes: Eugenie, remembering that + prophetic death, that prophetic life, measured with one glance her own + destiny. Nothing was left for her; she could only unfold her wings, + stretch upward to the skies, and live in prayer until the day of her + deliverance. + </p> + <p> + “My mother was right,” she said, weeping. “Suffer—and die!” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIV + </h2> + <p> + Eugenie came slowly back from the garden to the house, and avoided + passing, as was her custom, through the corridor. But the memory of her + cousin was in the gray old hall and on the chimney-piece, where stood a + certain saucer and the old Sevres sugar-bowl which she used every morning + at her breakfast. + </p> + <p> + This day was destined to be solemn throughout and full of events. Nanon + announced the cure of the parish church. He was related to the Cruchots, + and therefore in the interests of Monsieur de Bonfons. For some time past + the old abbe had urged him to speak to Mademoiselle Grandet, from a purely + religious point of view, about the duty of marriage for a woman in her + position. When she saw her pastor, Eugenie supposed he had come for the + thousand francs which she gave monthly to the poor, and she told Nanon to + go and fetch them; but the cure only smiled. + </p> + <p> + “To-day, mademoiselle,” he said, “I have come to speak to you about a poor + girl in whom the whole town of Saumur takes an interest, who, through lack + of charity to herself, neglects her Christian duties.” + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur le cure, you have come to me at a moment when I cannot think of + my neighbor, I am filled with thoughts of myself. I am very unhappy; my + only refuge is in the Church; her bosom is large enough to hold all human + woe, her love so full that we may draw from its depths and never drain it + dry.” + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle, in speaking of this young girl we shall speak of you. + Listen! If you wish to insure your salvation you have only two paths to + take,—either leave the world or obey its laws. Obey either your + earthly destiny or your heavenly destiny.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! your voice speaks to me when I need to hear a voice. Yes, God has + sent you to me; I will bid farewell to the world and live for God alone, + in silence and seclusion.” + </p> + <p> + “My daughter, you must think long before you take so violent a step. + Marriage is life, the veil is death.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, death,—a quick death!” she said, with dreadful eagerness. + </p> + <p> + “Death? but you have great obligations to fulfil to society, mademoiselle. + Are you not the mother of the poor, to whom you give clothes and wood in + winter and work in summer? Your great fortune is a loan which you must + return, and you have sacredly accepted it as such. To bury yourself in a + convent would be selfishness; to remain an old maid is to fail in duty. In + the first place, can you manage your vast property alone? May you not lose + it? You will have law-suits, you will find yourself surrounded by + inextricable difficulties. Believe your pastor: a husband is useful; you + are bound to preserve what God has bestowed upon you. I speak to you as a + precious lamb of my flock. You love God too truly not to find your + salvation in the midst of his world, of which you are noble ornament and + to which you owe your example.” + </p> + <p> + At this moment Madame des Grassins was announced. She came incited by + vengeance and the sense of a great despair. + </p> + <p> + “Mademoiselle,” she said—“Ah! here is monsieur le cure; I am silent. + I came to speak to you on business; but I see that you are conferring with—” + </p> + <p> + “Madame,” said the cure, “I leave the field to you.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh! monsieur le cure,” said Eugenie, “come back later; your support is + very necessary to me just now.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, yes, indeed, my poor child!” said Madame des Grassins. + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean?” asked Eugenie and the cure together. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t I know about your cousin’s return, and his marriage with + Mademoiselle d’Aubrion? A woman doesn’t carry her wits in her pocket.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie blushed, and remained silent for a moment. From this day forth she + assumed the impassible countenance for which her father had been so + remarkable. + </p> + <p> + “Well, madame,” she presently said, ironically, “no doubt I carry my wits + in my pocket, for I do not understand you. Speak, say what you mean, + before monsieur le cure; you know he is my director.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, then, mademoiselle, here is what des Grassins writes me. Read it.” + </p> + <p> + Eugenie read the following letter:— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + My dear Wife,—Charles Grandet has returned from the Indies and + has been in Paris about a month— +</pre> + <p> + “A month!” thought Eugenie, her hand falling to her side. After a pause + she resumed the letter,— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I had to dance attendance before I was allowed to see the future + Vicomte d’Aubrion. Though all Paris is talking of his marriage and + the banns are published— +</pre> + <p> + “He wrote to me after that!” thought Eugenie. She did not conclude the + thought; she did not cry out, as a Parisian woman would have done, “The + villain!” but though she said it not, contempt was none the less present + in her mind. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The marriage, however, will not come off. The Marquis d’Aubrion + will never give his daughter to the son of a bankrupt. I went to + tell Grandet of the steps his uncle and I took in his father’s + business, and the clever manoeuvres by which we had managed to + keep the creditor’s quiet until the present time. The insolent + fellow had the face to say to me—to me, who for five years have + devoted myself night and day to his interests and his honor!—that + <i>his father’s affairs were not his</i>! A solicitor would have had + the right to demand fees amounting to thirty or forty thousand + francs, one per cent on the total of the debts. But patience! + there are twelve hundred thousand francs legitimately owing to the + creditors, and I shall at once declare his father a bankrupt. + + I went into this business on the word of that old crocodile + Grandet, and I have made promises in the name of his family. If + Monsieur de vicomte d’Aubrion does not care for his honor, I care + for mine. I shall explain my position to the creditors. Still, I + have too much respect for Mademoiselle Eugenie (to whom under + happier circumstances we once hoped to be allied) to act in this + matter before you have spoken to her about it— +</pre> + <p> + There Eugenie paused, and coldly returned the letter without finishing it. + </p> + <p> + “I thank you,” she said to Madame des Grassins. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! you have the voice and manner of your deceased father,” Madame des + Grassins replied. + </p> + <p> + “Madame, you have eight thousand francs to pay us,” said Nanon, producing + Charles’s cheque. + </p> + <p> + “That’s true; have the kindness to come with me now, Madame Cornoiller.” + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur le cure,” said Eugenie with a noble composure, inspired by the + thought she was about to express, “would it be a sin to remain a virgin + after marriage?” + </p> + <p> + “That is a case of conscience whose solution is not within my knowledge. + If you wish to know what the celebrated Sanchez says of it in his treatise + ‘De Matrimonio,’ I shall be able to tell you to-morrow.” + </p> + <p> + The cure went away; Mademoiselle Grandet went up to her father’s secret + room and spent the day there alone, without coming down to dinner, in + spite of Nanon’s entreaties. She appeared in the evening at the hour when + the usual company began to arrive. Never was the old hall so full as on + this occasion. The news of Charles’s return and his foolish treachery had + spread through the whole town. But however watchful the curiosity of the + visitors might be, it was left unsatisfied. Eugenie, who expected + scrutiny, allowed none of the cruel emotions that wrung her soul to appear + on the calm surface of her face. She was able to show a smiling front in + answer to all who tried to testify their interest by mournful looks or + melancholy speeches. She hid her misery behind a veil of courtesy. Towards + nine o’clock the games ended and the players left the tables, paying their + losses and discussing points of the game as they joined the rest of the + company. At the moment when the whole party rose to take leave, an + unexpected and striking event occurred, which resounded through the length + and breadth of Saumur, from thence through the arrondissement, and even to + the four surrounding prefectures. + </p> + <p> + “Stay, monsieur le president,” said Eugenie to Monsieur de Bonfons as she + saw him take his cane. + </p> + <p> + There was not a person in that numerous assembly who was unmoved by these + words. The president turned pale, and was forced to sit down. + </p> + <p> + “The president gets the millions,” said Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt. + </p> + <p> + “It is plain enough; the president marries Mademoiselle Grandet,” cried + Madame d’Orsonval. + </p> + <p> + “All the trumps in one hand,” said the abbe. + </p> + <p> + “A love game,” said the notary. + </p> + <p> + Each and all said his say, made his pun, and looked at the heiress mounted + on her millions as on a pedestal. The drama begun nine years before had + reached its conclusion. To tell the president, in face of all Saumur, to + “stay,” was surely the same thing as proclaiming him her husband. In + provincial towns social conventionalities are so rigidly enforced than an + infraction like this constituted a solemn promise. + </p> + <p> + “Monsieur le president,” said Eugenie in a voice of some emotion when they + were left alone, “I know what pleases you in me. Swear to leave me free + during my whole life, to claim none of the rights which marriage will give + you over me, and my hand is yours. Oh!” she added, seeing him about to + kneel at her feet, “I have more to say. I must not deceive you. In my + heart I cherish one inextinguishable feeling. Friendship is the only + sentiment which I can give to a husband. I wish neither to affront him nor + to violate the laws of my own heart. But you can possess my hand and my + fortune only at the cost of doing me an inestimable service.” + </p> + <p> + “I am ready for all things,” said the president. + </p> + <p> + “Here are fifteen hundred thousand francs,” she said, drawing from her + bosom a certificate of a hundred shares in the Bank of France. “Go to + Paris,—not to-morrow, but instantly. Find Monsieur des Grassins, + learn the names of my uncle’s creditors, call them together, pay them in + full all that was owing, with interest at five per cent from the day the + debt was incurred to the present time. Be careful to obtain a full and + legal receipt, in proper form, before a notary. You are a magistrate, and + I can trust this matter in your hands. You are a man of honor; I will put + faith in your word, and meet the dangers of life under shelter of your + name. Let us have mutual indulgence. We have known each other so long that + we are almost related; you would not wish to render me unhappy.” + </p> + <p> + The president fell at the feet of the rich heiress, his heart beating and + wrung with joy. + </p> + <p> + “I will be your slave!” he said. + </p> + <p> + “When you obtain the receipts, monsieur,” she resumed, with a cold glance, + “you will take them with all the other papers to my cousin Grandet, and + you will give him this letter. On your return I will keep my word.” + </p> + <p> + The president understood perfectly that he owed the acquiescence of + Mademoiselle Grandet to some bitterness of love, and he made haste to obey + her orders, lest time should effect a reconciliation between the pair. + </p> + <p> + When Monsieur de Bonfons left her, Eugenie fell back in her chair and + burst into tears. All was over. + </p> + <p> + The president took the mail-post, and reached Paris the next evening. The + morning after his arrival he went to see des Grassins, and together they + summoned the creditors to meet at the notary’s office where the vouchers + had been deposited. Not a single creditor failed to be present. Creditors + though they were, justice must be done to them,—they were all + punctual. Monsieur de Bonfons, in the name of Mademoiselle Grandet, paid + them the amount of their claims with interest. The payment of interest was + a remarkable event in the Parisian commerce of that day. When the receipts + were all legally registered, and des Grassins had received for his + services the sum of fifty thousand francs allowed to him by Eugenie, the + president made his way to the hotel d’Aubrion and found Charles just + entering his own apartment after a serious encounter with his prospective + father-in-law. The old marquis had told him plainly that he should not + marry his daughter until all the creditors of Guillaume Grandet had been + paid in full. + </p> + <p> + The president gave Charles the following letter:— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + My Cousin,—Monsieur le president de Bonfons has undertaken to + place in your hands the aquittance for all claims upon my uncle, + also a receipt by which I acknowledge having received from you the + sum total of those claims. I have heard of a possible failure, and + I think that the son of a bankrupt may not be able to marry + Mademoiselle d’Aubrion. Yes, my cousin, you judged rightly of my + mind and of my manners. I have, it is true, no part in the world; + I understand neither its calculations nor its customs; and I could + not give you the pleasures that you seek in it. Be happy, + according to the social conventions to which you have sacrificed + our love. To make your happiness complete I can only offer you + your father’s honor. Adieu! You will always have a faithful friend + in your cousin +</pre> + <p> + Eugenie. + </p> + <p> + The president smiled at the exclamation which the ambitious young man + could not repress as he received the documents. + </p> + <p> + “We shall announce our marriages at the same time,” remarked Monsieur de + Bonfons. + </p> + <p> + “Ah! you marry Eugenie? Well, I am delighted; she is a good girl. But,” + added Charles, struck with a luminous idea, “she must be rich?” + </p> + <p> + “She had,” said the president, with a mischievous smile, “about nineteen + millions four days ago; but she has only seventeen millions to-day.” + </p> + <p> + Charles looked at him thunderstruck. + </p> + <p> + “Seventeen mil—” + </p> + <p> + “Seventeen millions; yes, monsieur. We shall muster, Mademoiselle Grandet + and I, an income of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs when we + marry.” + </p> + <p> + “My dear cousin,” said Charles, recovering a little of his assurance, “we + can push each other’s fortunes.” + </p> + <p> + “Agreed,” said the president. “Here is also a little case which I am + charged to give into your own hands,” he added, placing on the table the + leather box which contained the dressing-case. + </p> + <p> + “Well, my dear friend,” said Madame d’Aubrion, entering the room without + noticing the president, “don’t pay any attention to what poor Monsieur + d’Aubrion has just said to you; the Duchesse de Chaulieu has turned his + head. I repeat, nothing shall interfere with the marriage—” + </p> + <p> + “Very good, madame. The three millions which my father owed were paid + yesterday.” + </p> + <p> + “In money?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, in full, capital and interest; and I am about to do honor to his + memory—” + </p> + <p> + “What folly!” exclaimed his mother-in-law. “Who is this?” she whispered in + Grandet’s ear, perceiving the president. + </p> + <p> + “My man of business,” he answered in a low voice. + </p> + <p> + The marquise bowed superciliously to Monsieur de Bonfons. + </p> + <p> + “We are pushing each other’s fortunes already,” said the president, taking + up his hat. “Good-by, cousin.” + </p> + <p> + “He is laughing at me, the old cockatoo! I’d like to put six inches of + iron into him!” muttered Charles. + </p> + <p> + The president was out of hearing. Three days later Monsieur de Bonfons, on + his return to Saumur, announced his marriage with Eugenie. Six months + after the marriage he was appointed councillor in the Cour royale at + Angers. Before leaving Saumur Madame de Bonfons had the gold of certain + jewels, once so precious to her, melted up, and put, together with the + eight thousand francs paid back by her cousin, into a golden pyx, which + she gave to the parish church where she had so long prayed for <i>him</i>. + She now spent her time between Angers and Saumur. Her husband, who had + shown some public spirit on a certain occasion, became a judge in the + superior courts, and finally, after a few years, president of them. He was + anxiously awaiting a general election, in the hope of being returned to + the Chamber of deputies. He hankered after a peerage; and then— + </p> + <p> + “The king will be his cousin, won’t he?” said Nanon, la Grande Nanon, + Madame Cornoiller, bourgeoise of Saumur, as she listened to her mistress, + who was recounting the honors to which she was called. + </p> + <p> + Nevertheless, Monsieur de Bonfons (he had finally abolished his patronymic + of Cruchot) did not realize any of his ambitious ideas. He died eight days + after his election as deputy of Saumur. God, who sees all and never + strikes amiss, punished him, no doubt, for his sordid calculations and the + legal cleverness with which, <i>accurante Cruchot</i>, he had drawn up his + marriage contract, in which husband and wife gave to each other, “in case + they should have no children, their entire property of every kind, landed + or otherwise, without exception or reservation, dispensing even with the + formality of an inventory; provided that said omission of said inventory + shall not injure their heirs and assigns, it being understood that this + deed of gift is, etc., etc.” This clause of the contract will explain the + profound respect which monsieur le president always testified for the + wishes, and above all, for the solitude of Madame de Bonfons. Women cited + him as the most considerate and delicate of men, pitied him, and even went + so far as to find fault with the passion and grief of Eugenie, blaming + her, as women know so well how to blame, with cruel but discreet + insinuation. + </p> + <p> + “Madame de Bonfons must be very ill to leave her husband entirely alone. + Poor woman! Is she likely to get well? What is it? Something gastric? A + cancer?”—“She has grown perfectly yellow. She ought to consult some + celebrated doctor in Paris.”—“How can she be happy without a child? + They say she loves her husband; then why not give him an heir?—in + his position, too!”—“Do you know, it is really dreadful! If it is + the result of mere caprice, it is unpardonable. Poor president!” + </p> + <p> + Endowed with the delicate perception which a solitary soul acquires + through constant meditation, through the exquisite clear-sightedness with + which a mind aloof from life fastens on all that falls within its sphere, + Eugenie, taught by suffering and by her later education to divine thought, + knew well that the president desired her death that he might step into + possession of their immense fortune, augmented by the property of his + uncle the notary and his uncle the abbe, whom it had lately pleased God to + call to himself. The poor solitary pitied the president. Providence + avenged her for the calculations and the indifference of a husband who + respected the hopeless passion on which she spent her life because it was + his surest safeguard. To give life to a child would give death to his + hopes,—the hopes of selfishness, the joys of ambition, which the + president cherished as he looked into the future. + </p> + <p> + God thus flung piles of gold upon this prisoner to whom gold was a matter + of indifference, who longed for heaven, who lived, pious and good, in holy + thoughts, succoring the unfortunate in secret, and never wearying of such + deeds. Madame de Bonfons became a widow at thirty-six. She is still + beautiful, but with the beauty of a woman who is nearly forty years of + age. Her face is white and placid and calm; her voice gentle and + self-possessed; her manners are simple. She has the noblest qualities of + sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never soiled her soul by contact + with the world; but she has also the rigid bearing of an old maid and the + petty habits inseparable from the narrow round of provincial life. In + spite of her vast wealth, she lives as the poor Eugenie Grandet once + lived. The fire is never lighted on her hearth until the day when her + father allowed it to be lighted in the hall, and it is put out in + conformity with the rules which governed her youthful years. She dresses + as her mother dressed. The house in Saumur, without sun, without warmth, + always in shadow, melancholy, is an image of her life. She carefully + accumulates her income, and might seem parsimonious did she not disarm + criticism by a noble employment of her wealth. Pious and charitable + institutions, a hospital for old age, Christian schools for children, a + public library richly endowed, bear testimony against the charge of + avarice which some persons lay at her door. The churches of Saumur owe + much of their embellishment to her. Madame de Bonfons (sometimes + ironically spoken of as mademoiselle) inspires for the most part + reverential respect: and yet that noble heart, beating only with tenderest + emotions, has been, from first to last, subjected to the calculations of + human selfishness; money has cast its frigid influence upon that hallowed + life and taught distrust of feelings to a woman who is all feeling. + </p> + <p> + “I have none but you to love me,” she says to Nanon. + </p> + <p> + The hand of this woman stanches the secret wounds in many families. She + goes on her way to heaven attended by a train of benefactions. The + grandeur of her soul redeems the narrowness of her education and the petty + habits of her early life. + </p> + <p> + Such is the history of Eugenie Grandet, who is in the world but not of it; + who, created to be supremely a wife and mother, has neither husband nor + children nor family. Lately there has been some question of her marrying + again. The Saumur people talk of her and of the Marquis de Froidfond, + whose family are beginning to beset the rich widow just as, in former + days, the Cruchots laid siege to the rich heiress. Nanon and Cornoiller + are, it is said, in the interests of the marquis. Nothing could be more + false. Neither la Grande Nanon nor Cornoiller has sufficient mind to + understand the corruptions of the world. + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + ADDENDUM + </h2> + <h3> + The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. + </h3> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Chaulieu, Eleonore, Duchesse de + Letters of Two Brides + + Grandet, Victor-Ange-Guillaume + The Firm of Nucingen + + Grandet, Charles + The Firm of Nucingen + + Keller, Francois + Domestic Peace + Cesar Birotteau + The Government Clerks + The Member for Arcis + + Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des + The Muse of the Department + A Bachelor’s Establishment + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + The Government Clerks + Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life + Ursule Mirouet + + Nathan, Madame Raoul + The Muse of the Department + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life + The Government Clerks + A Bachelor’s Establishment + Ursule Mirouet + The Imaginary Mistress + A Prince of Bohemia + A Daughter of Eve + The Unconscious Humorists + + Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de + Father Goriot + The Thirteen + Cesar Birotteau + Melmoth Reconciled + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + The Commission in Lunacy + Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life + Modeste Mignon + The Firm of Nucingen + Another Study of Woman + A Daughter of Eve + The Member for Arcis + + Roguin + Cesar Birotteau + Eugenie Grandet + A Bachelor’s Establishment + The Vendetta +</pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENIE GRANDET *** + +***** This file should be named 1715-h.htm or 1715-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/1/1715/ + +Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Eugenie Grandet + +Author: Honore de Balzac + +Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley + +Release Date: April, 1999 [Etext #1715] +Posting Date: March 1, 2010 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENIE GRANDET *** + + + + +Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny + + + + + +EUGENIE GRANDET + + +By Honore De Balzac + + + +Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley + + + + DEDICATION + + To Maria. + + May your name, that of one whose portrait is the noblest ornament + of this work, lie on its opening pages like a branch of sacred + box, taken from an unknown tree, but sanctified by religion, and + kept ever fresh and green by pious hands to bless the house. + + De Balzac. + + + + +EUGENIE GRANDET + + + + +I + +There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires +melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary +moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, +perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the +skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a +stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters +suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose +half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an +unaccustomed step. + +Such elements of sadness formed the physiognomy, as it were, of a +dwelling-house in Saumur which stands at the end of the steep street +leading to the chateau in the upper part of the town. This street--now +little frequented, hot in summer, cold in winter, dark in certain +sections--is remarkable for the resonance of its little pebbly pavement, +always clean and dry, for the narrowness of its tortuous road-way, for +the peaceful stillness of its houses, which belong to the Old town and +are over-topped by the ramparts. Houses three centuries old are still +solid, though built of wood, and their divers aspects add to the +originality which commends this portion of Saumur to the attention of +artists and antiquaries. + +It is difficult to pass these houses without admiring the enormous oaken +beams, their ends carved into fantastic figures, which crown with a +black bas-relief the lower floor of most of them. In one place these +transverse timbers are covered with slate and mark a bluish line along +the frail wall of a dwelling covered by a roof _en colombage_ which +bends beneath the weight of years, and whose rotting shingles are +twisted by the alternate action of sun and rain. In another place +blackened, worn-out window-sills, with delicate sculptures now scarcely +discernible, seem too weak to bear the brown clay pots from which +springs the heart's-ease or the rose-bush of some poor working-woman. +Farther on are doors studded with enormous nails, where the genius of +our forefathers has traced domestic hieroglyphics, of which the meaning +is now lost forever. Here a Protestant attested his belief; there +a Leaguer cursed Henry IV.; elsewhere some bourgeois has carved the +insignia of his _noblesse de cloches_, symbols of his long-forgotten +magisterial glory. The whole history of France is there. + +Next to a tottering house with roughly plastered walls, where an artisan +enshrines his tools, rises the mansion of a country gentleman, on the +stone arch of which above the door vestiges of armorial bearings may +still be seen, battered by the many revolutions that have shaken France +since 1789. In this hilly street the ground-floors of the merchants are +neither shops nor warehouses; lovers of the Middle Ages will here find +the _ouvrouere_ of our forefathers in all its naive simplicity. These +low rooms, which have no shop-frontage, no show-windows, in fact +no glass at all, are deep and dark and without interior or exterior +decoration. Their doors open in two parts, each roughly iron-bound; the +upper half is fastened back within the room, the lower half, fitted with +a spring-bell, swings continually to and fro. Air and light reach the +damp den within, either through the upper half of the door, or through +an open space between the ceiling and a low front wall, breast-high, +which is closed by solid shutters that are taken down every morning, put +up every evening, and held in place by heavy iron bars. + +This wall serves as a counter for the merchandise. No delusive display +is there; only samples of the business, whatever it may chance to +be,--such, for instance, as three or four tubs full of codfish and +salt, a few bundles of sail-cloth, cordage, copper wire hanging from +the joists above, iron hoops for casks ranged along the wall, or a +few pieces of cloth upon the shelves. Enter. A neat girl, glowing +with youth, wearing a white kerchief, her arms red and bare, drops her +knitting and calls her father or her mother, one of whom comes forward +and sells you what you want, phlegmatically, civilly, or arrogantly, +according to his or her individual character, whether it be a matter of +two sous' or twenty thousand francs' worth of merchandise. You may see a +cooper, for instance, sitting in his doorway and twirling his thumbs as +he talks with a neighbor. To all appearance he owns nothing more than a +few miserable boat-ribs and two or three bundles of laths; but below +in the port his teeming wood-yard supplies all the cooperage trade of +Anjou. He knows to a plank how many casks are needed if the vintage is +good. A hot season makes him rich, a rainy season ruins him; in a single +morning puncheons worth eleven francs have been known to drop to six. +In this country, as in Touraine, atmospheric vicissitudes control +commercial life. Wine-growers, proprietors, wood-merchants, coopers, +inn-keepers, mariners, all keep watch of the sun. They tremble when they +go to bed lest they should hear in the morning of a frost in the night; +they dread rain, wind, drought, and want water, heat, and clouds to +suit their fancy. A perpetual duel goes on between the heavens and their +terrestrial interests. The barometer smooths, saddens, or makes merry +their countenances, turn and turn about. From end to end of this street, +formerly the Grand'Rue de Saumur, the words: "Here's golden weather," +are passed from door to door; or each man calls to his neighbor: "It +rains louis," knowing well what a sunbeam or the opportune rainfall is +bringing him. + +On Saturdays after midday, in the fine season, not one sou's worth +of merchandise can be bought from these worthy traders. Each has +his vineyard, his enclosure of fields, and all spend two days in the +country. This being foreseen, and purchases, sales, and profits provided +for, the merchants have ten or twelve hours to spend in parties of +pleasure, in making observations, in criticisms, and in continual +spying. A housewife cannot buy a partridge without the neighbors asking +the husband if it were cooked to a turn. A young girl never puts her +head near a window that she is not seen by idling groups in the street. +Consciences are held in the light; and the houses, dark, silent, +impenetrable as they seem, hide no mysteries. Life is almost wholly in +the open air; every household sits at its own threshold, breakfasts, +dines, and quarrels there. No one can pass along the street without +being examined; in fact formerly, when a stranger entered a provincial +town he was bantered and made game of from door to door. From this came +many good stories, and the nickname _copieux_, which was applied to the +inhabitants of Angers, who excelled in such urban sarcasms. + +The ancient mansions of the old town of Saumur are at the top of +this hilly street, and were formerly occupied by the nobility of the +neighborhood. The melancholy dwelling where the events of the following +history took place is one of these mansions,--venerable relics of a +century in which men and things bore the characteristics of simplicity +which French manners and customs are losing day by day. Follow the +windings of the picturesque thoroughfare, whose irregularities awaken +recollections that plunge the mind mechanically into reverie, and you +will see a somewhat dark recess, in the centre of which is hidden the +door of the house of Monsieur Grandet. It is impossible to understand +the force of this provincial expression--the house of Monsieur +Grandet--without giving the biography of Monsieur Grandet himself. + +Monsieur Grandet enjoyed a reputation in Saumur whose causes and effects +can never be fully understood by those who have not, at one time or +another, lived in the provinces. In 1789 Monsieur Grandet--still called +by certain persons le Pere Grandet, though the number of such old +persons has perceptibly diminished--was a master-cooper, able to read, +write, and cipher. At the period when the French Republic offered for +sale the church property in the arrondissement of Saumur, the cooper, +then forty years of age, had just married the daughter of a rich +wood-merchant. Supplied with the ready money of his own fortune and his +wife's _dot_, in all about two thousand louis-d'or, Grandet went to the +newly established "district," where, with the help of two hundred double +louis given by his father-in-law to the surly republican who presided +over the sales of the national domain, he obtained for a song, legally +if not legitimately, one of the finest vineyards in the arrondissement, +an old abbey, and several farms. The inhabitants of Saumur were so +little revolutionary that they thought Pere Grandet a bold man, a +republican, and a patriot with a mind open to all the new ideas; though +in point of fact it was open only to vineyards. He was appointed a +member of the administration of Saumur, and his pacific influence made +itself felt politically and commercially. Politically, he protected the +ci-devant nobles, and prevented, to the extent of his power, the sale of +the lands and property of the _emigres_; commercially, he furnished the +Republican armies with two or three thousand puncheons of white wine, +and took his pay in splendid fields belonging to a community of women +whose lands had been reserved for the last lot. + +Under the Consulate Grandet became mayor, governed wisely, and harvested +still better pickings. Under the Empire he was called Monsieur Grandet. +Napoleon, however, did not like republicans, and superseded Monsieur +Grandet (who was supposed to have worn the Phrygian cap) by a man of his +own surroundings, a future baron of the Empire. Monsieur Grandet quitted +office without regret. He had constructed in the interests of the town +certain fine roads which led to his own property; his house and lands, +very advantageously assessed, paid moderate taxes; and since the +registration of his various estates, the vineyards, thanks to his +constant care, had become the "head of the country,"--a local term used +to denote those that produced the finest quality of wine. He might have +asked for the cross of the Legion of honor. + +This event occurred in 1806. Monsieur Grandet was then fifty-seven years +of age, his wife thirty-six, and an only daughter, the fruit of their +legitimate love, was ten years old. Monsieur Grandet, whom Providence +no doubt desired to compensate for the loss of his municipal honors, +inherited three fortunes in the course of this year,--that of Madame +de la Gaudiniere, born de la Bertelliere, the mother of Madame Grandet; +that of old Monsieur de la Bertelliere, her grandfather; and, lastly, +that of Madame Gentillet, her grandmother on the mother's side: three +inheritances, whose amount was not known to any one. The avarice of the +deceased persons was so keen that for a long time they had hoarded their +money for the pleasure of secretly looking at it. Old Monsieur de la +Bertelliere called an investment an extravagance, and thought he got +better interest from the sight of his gold than from the profits of +usury. The inhabitants of Saumur consequently estimated his savings +according to "the revenues of the sun's wealth," as they said. + +Monsieur Grandet thus obtained that modern title of nobility which +our mania for equality can never rub out. He became the most imposing +personage in the arrondissement. He worked a hundred acres of vineyard, +which in fruitful years yielded seven or eight hundred hogsheads of +wine. He owned thirteen farms, an old abbey, whose windows and arches +he had walled up for the sake of economy,--a measure which preserved +them,--also a hundred and twenty-seven acres of meadow-land, where three +thousand poplars, planted in 1793, grew and flourished; and finally, the +house in which he lived. Such was his visible estate; as to his other +property, only two persons could give even a vague guess at its value: +one was Monsieur Cruchot, a notary employed in the usurious investments +of Monsieur Grandet; the other was Monsieur des Grassins, the richest +banker in Saumur, in whose profits Grandet had a certain covenanted and +secret share. + +Although old Cruchot and Monsieur des Grassins were both gifted with +the deep discretion which wealth and trust beget in the provinces, they +publicly testified so much respect to Monsieur Grandet that observers +estimated the amount of his property by the obsequious attention which +they bestowed upon him. In all Saumur there was no one not persuaded +that Monsieur Grandet had a private treasure, some hiding-place full +of louis, where he nightly took ineffable delight in gazing upon great +masses of gold. Avaricious people gathered proof of this when they +looked at the eyes of the good man, to which the yellow metal seemed to +have conveyed its tints. The glance of a man accustomed to draw enormous +interest from his capital acquires, like that of the libertine, the +gambler, or the sycophant, certain indefinable habits,--furtive, +eager, mysterious movements, which never escape the notice of +his co-religionists. This secret language is in a certain way the +freemasonry of the passions. Monsieur Grandet inspired the respectful +esteem due to one who owed no man anything, who, skilful cooper and +experienced wine-grower that he was, guessed with the precision of an +astronomer whether he ought to manufacture a thousand puncheons for his +vintage, or only five hundred, who never failed in any speculation, and +always had casks for sale when casks were worth more than the commodity +that filled them, who could store his whole vintage in his cellars and +bide his time to put the puncheons on the market at two hundred francs, +when the little proprietors had been forced to sell theirs for five +louis. His famous vintage of 1811, judiciously stored and slowly +disposed of, brought him in more than two hundred and forty thousand +francs. + +Financially speaking, Monsieur Grandet was something between a tiger and +a boa-constrictor. He could crouch and lie low, watch his prey a long +while, spring upon it, open his jaws, swallow a mass of louis, and +then rest tranquilly like a snake in process of digestion, impassible, +methodical, and cold. No one saw him pass without a feeling of +admiration mingled with respect and fear; had not every man in Saumur +felt the rending of those polished steel claws? For this one, Maitre +Cruchot had procured the money required for the purchase of a domain, +but at eleven per cent. For that one, Monsieur des Grassins discounted +bills of exchange, but at a frightful deduction of interest. Few days +ever passed that Monsieur Grandet's name was not mentioned either in the +markets or in social conversations at the evening gatherings. To some +the fortune of the old wine-grower was an object of patriotic pride. +More than one merchant, more than one innkeeper, said to strangers +with a certain complacency: "Monsieur, we have two or three millionaire +establishments; but as for Monsieur Grandet, he does not himself know +how much he is worth." + +In 1816 the best reckoners in Saumur estimated the landed property of +the worthy man at nearly four millions; but as, on an average, he had +made yearly, from 1793 to 1817, a hundred thousand francs out of that +property, it was fair to presume that he possessed in actual money a sum +nearly equal to the value of his estate. So that when, after a game of +boston or an evening discussion on the matter of vines, the talk fell +upon Monsieur Grandet, knowing people said: "Le Pere Grandet? le Pere +Grandet must have at least five or six millions." + +"You are cleverer than I am; I have never been able to find out the +amount," answered Monsieur Cruchot or Monsieur des Grassins, when either +chanced to overhear the remark. + +If some Parisian mentioned Rothschild or Monsieur Lafitte, the people of +Saumur asked if he were as rich as Monsieur Grandet. When the Parisian, +with a smile, tossed them a disdainful affirmative, they looked at each +other and shook their heads with an incredulous air. So large a fortune +covered with a golden mantle all the actions of this man. If in early +days some peculiarities of his life gave occasion for laughter or +ridicule, laughter and ridicule had long since died away. His least +important actions had the authority of results repeatedly shown. His +speech, his clothing, his gestures, the blinking of his eyes, were law +to the country-side, where every one, after studying him as a naturalist +studies the result of instinct in the lower animals, had come to +understand the deep mute wisdom of his slightest actions. + +"It will be a hard winter," said one; "Pere Grandet has put on his fur +gloves." + +"Pere Grandet is buying quantities of staves; there will be plenty of +wine this year." + +Monsieur Grandet never bought either bread or meat. His farmers supplied +him weekly with a sufficiency of capons, chickens, eggs, butter, and +his tithe of wheat. He owned a mill; and the tenant was bound, over and +above his rent, to take a certain quantity of grain and return him the +flour and bran. La Grande Nanon, his only servant, though she was no +longer young, baked the bread of the household herself every Saturday. +Monsieur Grandet arranged with kitchen-gardeners who were his tenants +to supply him with vegetables. As to fruits, he gathered such quantities +that he sold the greater part in the market. His fire-wood was cut from +his own hedgerows or taken from the half-rotten old sheds which he built +at the corners of his fields, and whose planks the farmers carted into +town for him, all cut up, and obligingly stacked in his wood-house, +receiving in return his thanks. His only known expenditures were for the +consecrated bread, the clothing of his wife and daughter, the hire of +their chairs in church, the wages of la Grand Nanon, the tinning of the +saucepans, lights, taxes, repairs on his buildings, and the costs of +his various industries. He had six hundred acres of woodland, lately +purchased, which he induced a neighbor's keeper to watch, under the +promise of an indemnity. After the acquisition of this property he ate +game for the first time. + +Monsieur Grandet's manners were very simple. He spoke little. He usually +expressed his meaning by short sententious phrases uttered in a soft +voice. After the Revolution, the epoch at which he first came into +notice, the good man stuttered in a wearisome way as soon as he was +required to speak at length or to maintain an argument. This stammering, +the incoherence of his language, the flux of words in which he drowned +his thought, his apparent lack of logic, attributed to defects of +education, were in reality assumed, and will be sufficiently explained +by certain events in the following history. Four sentences, precise +as algebraic formulas, sufficed him usually to grasp and solve all +difficulties of life and commerce: "I don't know; I cannot; I will not; +I will see about it." He never said yes, or no, and never committed +himself to writing. If people talked to him he listened coldly, holding +his chin in his right hand and resting his right elbow in the back of +his left hand, forming in his own mind opinions on all matters, from +which he never receded. He reflected long before making any business +agreement. When his opponent, after careful conversation, avowed the +secret of his own purposes, confident that he had secured his listener's +assent, Grandet answered: "I can decide nothing without consulting my +wife." His wife, whom he had reduced to a state of helpless slavery, was +a useful screen to him in business. He went nowhere among friends; he +neither gave nor accepted dinners; he made no stir or noise, seeming +to economize in everything, even movement. He never disturbed or +disarranged the things of other people, out of respect for the rights +of property. Nevertheless, in spite of his soft voice, in spite of his +circumspect bearing, the language and habits of a coarse nature came +to the surface, especially in his own home, where he controlled himself +less than elsewhere. + +Physically, Grandet was a man five feet high, thick-set, square-built, +with calves twelve inches in circumference, knotted knee-joints, +and broad shoulders; his face was round, tanned, and pitted by the +small-pox; his chin was straight, his lips had no curves, his teeth +were white; his eyes had that calm, devouring expression which people +attribute to the basilisk; his forehead, full of transverse wrinkles, +was not without certain significant protuberances; his yellow-grayish +hair was said to be silver and gold by certain young people who did not +realize the impropriety of making a jest about Monsieur Grandet. His +nose, thick at the end, bore a veined wen, which the common people said, +not without reason, was full of malice. The whole countenance showed +a dangerous cunning, an integrity without warmth, the egotism of a man +long used to concentrate every feeling upon the enjoyments of avarice +and upon the only human being who was anything whatever to him,--his +daughter and sole heiress, Eugenie. Attitude, manners, bearing, +everything about him, in short, testified to that belief in himself +which the habit of succeeding in all enterprises never fails to give to +a man. + +Thus, though his manners were unctuous and soft outwardly, Monsieur +Grandet's nature was of iron. His dress never varied; and those who saw +him to-day saw him such as he had been since 1791. His stout shoes +were tied with leathern thongs; he wore, in all weathers, thick woollen +stockings, short breeches of coarse maroon cloth with silver buckles, +a velvet waistcoat, in alternate stripes of yellow and puce, buttoned +squarely, a large maroon coat with wide flaps, a black cravat, and +a quaker's hat. His gloves, thick as those of a gendarme, lasted him +twenty months; to preserve them, he always laid them methodically on +the brim of his hat in one particular spot. Saumur knew nothing further +about this personage. + +Only six individuals had a right of entrance to Monsieur Grandet's +house. The most important of the first three was a nephew of Monsieur +Cruchot. Since his appointment as president of the Civil courts of +Saumur this young man had added the name of Bonfons to that of Cruchot. +He now signed himself C. de Bonfons. Any litigant so ill-advised as to +call him Monsieur Cruchot would soon be made to feel his folly in court. +The magistrate protected those who called him Monsieur le president, but +he favored with gracious smiles those who addressed him as Monsieur de +Bonfons. Monsieur le president was thirty-three years old, and possessed +the estate of Bonfons (Boni Fontis), worth seven thousand francs a year; +he expected to inherit the property of his uncle the notary and that +of another uncle, the Abbe Cruchot, a dignitary of the chapter of +Saint-Martin de Tours, both of whom were thought to be very rich. These +three Cruchots, backed by a goodly number of cousins, and allied +to twenty families in the town, formed a party, like the Medici in +Florence; like the Medici, the Cruchots had their Pazzi. + +Madame des Grassins, mother of a son twenty-three years of age, came +assiduously to play cards with Madame Grandet, hoping to marry her dear +Adolphe to Mademoiselle Eugenie. Monsieur des Grassins, the banker, +vigorously promoted the schemes of his wife by means of secret services +constantly rendered to the old miser, and always arrived in time +upon the field of battle. The three des Grassins likewise had their +adherents, their cousins, their faithful allies. On the Cruchot side the +abbe, the Talleyrand of the family, well backed-up by his brother +the notary, sharply contested every inch of ground with his female +adversary, and tried to obtain the rich heiress for his nephew the +president. + +This secret warfare between the Cruchots and des Grassins, the prize +thereof being the hand in marriage of Eugenie Grandet, kept the various +social circles of Saumur in violent agitation. Would Mademoiselle +Grandet marry Monsieur le president or Monsieur Adolphe des Grassins? +To this problem some replied that Monsieur Grandet would never give +his daughter to the one or to the other. The old cooper, eaten up with +ambition, was looking, they said, for a peer of France, to whom an +income of three hundred thousand francs would make all the past, +present, and future casks of the Grandets acceptable. Others replied +that Monsieur and Madame des Grassins were nobles, and exceedingly rich; +that Adolphe was a personable young fellow; and that unless the old man +had a nephew of the pope at his beck and call, such a suitable alliance +ought to satisfy a man who came from nothing,--a man whom Saumur +remembered with an adze in his hand, and who had, moreover, worn the +_bonnet rouge_. Certain wise heads called attention to the fact that +Monsieur Cruchot de Bonfons had the right of entry to the house at all +times, whereas his rival was received only on Sundays. Others, however, +maintained that Madame des Grassins was more intimate with the women of +the house of Grandet than the Cruchots were, and could put into their +minds certain ideas which would lead, sooner or later, to success. To +this the former retorted that the Abbe Cruchot was the most insinuating +man in the world: pit a woman against a monk, and the struggle was even. +"It is diamond cut diamond," said a Saumur wit. + +The oldest inhabitants, wiser than their fellows, declared that the +Grandets knew better than to let the property go out of the family, and +that Mademoiselle Eugenie Grandet of Saumur would be married to the son +of Monsieur Grandet of Paris, a wealthy wholesale wine-merchant. To this +the Cruchotines and the Grassinists replied: "In the first place, the +two brothers have seen each other only twice in thirty years; and next, +Monsieur Grandet of Paris has ambitious designs for his son. He is mayor +of an arrondissement, a deputy, colonel of the National Guard, judge in +the commercial courts; he disowns the Grandets of Saumur, and means to +ally himself with some ducal family,--ducal under favor of Napoleon." +In short, was there anything not said of an heiress who was talked +of through a circumference of fifty miles, and even in the public +conveyances from Angers to Blois, inclusively! + +At the beginning of 1811, the Cruchotines won a signal advantage over +the Grassinists. The estate of Froidfond, remarkable for its park, +its mansion, its farms, streams, ponds, forests, and worth about three +millions, was put up for sale by the young Marquis de Froidfond, who was +obliged to liquidate his possessions. Maitre Cruchot, the president, and +the abbe, aided by their adherents, were able to prevent the sale of the +estate in little lots. The notary concluded a bargain with the young +man for the whole property, payable in gold, persuading him that suits +without number would have to be brought against the purchasers of small +lots before he could get the money for them; it was better, therefore, +to sell the whole to Monsieur Grandet, who was solvent and able to pay +for the estate in ready money. The fine marquisate of Froidfond was +accordingly conveyed down the gullet of Monsieur Grandet, who, to the +great astonishment of Saumur, paid for it, under proper discount, with +the usual formalities. + +This affair echoed from Nantes to Orleans. Monsieur Grandet took +advantage of a cart returning by way of Froidfond to go and see his +chateau. Having cast a master's eye over the whole property, he returned +to Saumur, satisfied that he had invested his money at five per cent, +and seized by the stupendous thought of extending and increasing the +marquisate of Froidfond by concentrating all his property there. Then, +to fill up his coffers, now nearly empty, he resolved to thin out his +woods and his forests, and to sell off the poplars in the meadows. + + + + +II + +It is now easy to understand the full meaning of the term, "the house of +Monsieur Grandet,"--that cold, silent, pallid dwelling, standing above +the town and sheltered by the ruins of the ramparts. The two pillars and +the arch, which made the porte-cochere on which the door opened, were +built, like the house itself, of tufa,--a white stone peculiar to the +shores of the Loire, and so soft that it lasts hardly more than two +centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously bored or eaten out +by the inclemency of the weather, gave an appearance of the vermiculated +stonework of French architecture to the arch and the side walls of this +entrance, which bore some resemblance to the gateway of a jail. Above +the arch was a long bas-relief, in hard stone, representing the four +seasons, the faces already crumbling away and blackened. This bas-relief +was surmounted by a projecting plinth, upon which a variety of chance +growths had sprung up,--yellow pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, +plantain, and even a little cherry-tree, already grown to some height. + +The door of the archway was made of solid oak, brown, shrunken, and +split in many places; though frail in appearance, it was firmly held +in place by a system of iron bolts arranged in symmetrical patterns. +A small square grating, with close bars red with rust, filled up the +middle panel and made, as it were, a motive for the knocker, fastened to +it by a ring, which struck upon the grinning head of a huge nail. +This knocker, of the oblong shape and kind which our ancestors called +_jaquemart_, looked like a huge note of exclamation; an antiquary who +examined it attentively might have found indications of the figure, +essentially burlesque, which it once represented, and which long usage +had now effaced. Through this little grating--intended in olden times +for the recognition of friends in times of civil war--inquisitive +persons could perceive, at the farther end of the dark and slimy vault, +a few broken steps which led to a garden, picturesquely shut in by +walls that were thick and damp, and through which oozed a moisture that +nourished tufts of sickly herbage. These walls were the ruins of the +ramparts, under which ranged the gardens of several neighboring houses. + +The most important room on the ground-floor of the house was a large +hall, entered directly from beneath the vault of the porte-cochere. +Few people know the importance of a hall in the little towns of Anjou, +Touraine, and Berry. The hall is at one and the same time antechamber, +salon, office, boudoir, and dining-room; it is the theatre of domestic +life, the common living-room. There the barber of the neighborhood came, +twice a year, to cut Monsieur Grandet's hair; there the farmers, the +cure, the under-prefect, and the miller's boy came on business. This +room, with two windows looking on the street, was entirely of wood. Gray +panels with ancient mouldings covered the walls from top to bottom; the +ceiling showed all its beams, which were likewise painted gray, while +the space between them had been washed over in white, now yellow with +age. An old brass clock, inlaid with arabesques, adorned the mantel +of the ill-cut white stone chimney-piece, above which was a greenish +mirror, whose edges, bevelled to show the thickness of the glass, +reflected a thread of light the whole length of a gothic frame in +damascened steel-work. The two copper-gilt candelabra which decorated +the corners of the chimney-piece served a double purpose: by taking off +the side-branches, each of which held a socket, the main stem--which +was fastened to a pedestal of bluish marble tipped with copper--made a +candlestick for one candle, which was sufficient for ordinary occasions. +The chairs, antique in shape, were covered with tapestry representing +the fables of La Fontaine; it was necessary, however, to know that +writer well to guess at the subjects, for the faded colors and the +figures, blurred by much darning, were difficult to distinguish. + +At the four corners of the hall were closets, or rather buffets, +surmounted by dirty shelves. An old card-table in marquetry, of which +the upper part was a chess-board, stood in the space between the two +windows. Above this table was an oval barometer with a black border +enlivened with gilt bands, on which the flies had so licentiously +disported themselves that the gilding had become problematical. On +the panel opposite to the chimney-piece were two portraits in pastel, +supposed to represent the grandfather of Madame Grandet, old Monsieur +de la Bertelliere, as a lieutenant in the French guard, and the deceased +Madame Gentillet in the guise of a shepherdess. The windows were draped +with curtains of red _gros de Tours_ held back by silken cords with +ecclesiastical tassels. This luxurious decoration, little in keeping +with the habits of Monsieur Grandet, had been, together with the steel +pier-glass, the tapestries, and the buffets, which were of rose-wood, +included in the purchase of the house. + +By the window nearest to the door stood a straw chair, whose legs were +raised on castors to lift its occupant, Madame Grandet, to a height from +which she could see the passers-by. A work-table of stained cherry-wood +filled up the embrasure, and the little armchair of Eugenie Grandet +stood beside it. In this spot the lives had flowed peacefully onward for +fifteen years, in a round of constant work from the month of April to +the month of November. On the first day of the latter month they took +their winter station by the chimney. Not until that day did Grandet +permit a fire to be lighted; and on the thirty-first of March it was +extinguished, without regard either to the chills of the early spring or +to those of a wintry autumn. A foot-warmer, filled with embers from the +kitchen fire, which la Grande Nanon contrived to save for them, enabled +Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet to bear the chilly mornings and evenings +of April and October. Mother and daughter took charge of the family +linen, and spent their days so conscientiously upon a labor properly +that of working-women, that if Eugenie wished to embroider a collar for +her mother she was forced to take the time from sleep, and deceive her +father to obtain the necessary light. For a long time the miser had +given out the tallow candle to his daughter and la Grande Nanon just as +he gave out every morning the bread and other necessaries for the daily +consumption. + +La Grande Nanon was perhaps the only human being capable of accepting +willingly the despotism of her master. The whole town envied Monsieur +and Madame Grandet the possession of her. La Grande Nanon, so called on +account of her height, which was five feet eight inches, had lived with +Monsieur Grandet for thirty-five years. Though she received only sixty +francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the richest +serving-women in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating through +thirty-five years, had recently enabled her to invest four thousand +francs in an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her long and +persistent economy seemed gigantic. Every servant in the town, seeing +that the poor sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old age, was +jealous of her, and never thought of the hard slavery through which it +had been won. + +At twenty-two years of age the poor girl had been unable to find a +situation, so repulsive was her face to almost every one. Yet the +feeling was certainly unjust: the face would have been much admired on +the shoulders of a grenadier of the guard; but all things, so they say, +should be in keeping. Forced to leave a farm where she kept the cows, +because the dwelling-house was burned down, she came to Saumur to find +a place, full of the robust courage that shrinks from no labor. Le Pere +Grandet was at that time thinking of marriage and about to set up his +household. He espied the girl, rejected as she was from door to door. +A good judge of corporeal strength in his trade as a cooper, he guessed +the work that might be got out of a female creature shaped like a +Hercules, as firm on her feet as an oak sixty years old on its roots, +strong in the hips, square in the back, with the hands of a cartman and +an honesty as sound as her unblemished virtue. Neither the warts which +adorned her martial visage, nor the red-brick tints of her skin, nor the +sinewy arms, nor the ragged garments of la Grande Nanon, dismayed the +cooper, who was at that time still of an age when the heart shudders. +He fed, shod, and clothed the poor girl, gave her wages, and put her to +work without treating her too roughly. Seeing herself thus welcomed, +la Grande Nanon wept secretly tears of joy, and attached herself in all +sincerity to her master, who from that day ruled her and worked her with +feudal authority. Nanon did everything. She cooked, she made the lye, +she washed the linen in the Loire and brought it home on her shoulders; +she got up early, she went to bed late; she prepared the food of the +vine-dressers during the harvest, kept watch upon the market-people, +protected the property of her master like a faithful dog, and even, full +of blind confidence, obeyed without a murmur his most absurd exactions. + +In the famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with +unheard-of difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old +watch,--the first present he had made her during twenty years of +service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), +it is impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the +shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl +so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and +Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes +no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much +parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic benefits +derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no one was +ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed when +Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled as he +did. What pleasant compensations there were in such equality! Never did +the master have occasion to find fault with the servant for pilfering +the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines eaten under the trees. +"Come, fall-to, Nanon!" he would say in years when the branches bent +under the fruit and the farmers were obliged to give it to the pigs. + +To the poor peasant who in her youth had earned nothing but harsh +treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, Grandet's ambiguous +laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon's simple heart and narrow head +could hold only one feeling and one idea. For thirty-five years she had +never ceased to see herself standing before the wood-yard of Monsieur +Grandet, ragged and barefooted, and to hear him say: "What do you want, +young one?" Her gratitude was ever new. Sometimes Grandet, reflecting +that the poor creature had never heard a flattering word, that she was +ignorant of all the tender sentiments inspired by women, that she might +some day appear before the throne of God even more chaste than the +Virgin Mary herself,--Grandet, struck with pity, would say as he +looked at her, "Poor Nanon!" The exclamation was always followed by an +undefinable look cast upon him in return by the old servant. The words, +uttered from time to time, formed a chain of friendship that nothing +ever parted, and to which each exclamation added a link. Such compassion +arising in the heart of the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old +spinster, had something inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel +pity, recalling, as it did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old +cooper, was for Nanon the sum total of happiness. Who does not likewise +say, "Poor Nanon!" God will recognize his angels by the inflexions of +their voices and by their secret sighs. + +There were very many households in Saumur where the servants were better +treated, but where the masters received far less satisfaction in return. +Thus it was often said: "What have the Grandets ever done to make their +Grande Nanon so attached to them? She would go through fire and water +for their sake!" Her kitchen, whose barred windows looked into the +court, was always clean, neat, cold,--a true miser's kitchen, where +nothing went to waste. When Nanon had washed her dishes, locked up the +remains of the dinner, and put out her fire, she left the kitchen, which +was separated by a passage from the living-room, and went to spin +hemp beside her masters. One tallow candle sufficed the family for the +evening. The servant slept at the end of the passage in a species of +closet lighted only by a fan-light. Her robust health enabled her to +live in this hole with impunity; there she could hear the slightest +noise through the deep silence which reigned night and day in that +dreary house. Like a watch-dog, she slept with one ear open, and took +her rest with a mind alert. + +A description of the other parts of the dwelling will be found connected +with the events of this history, though the foregoing sketch of the +hall, where the whole luxury of the household appears, may enable the +reader to surmise the nakedness of the upper floors. + +In 1819, at the beginning of an evening in the middle of November, la +Grande Nanon lighted the fire for the first time. The autumn had +been very fine. This particular day was a fete-day well known to the +Cruchotines and the Grassinists. The six antagonists, armed at all +points, were making ready to meet at the Grandets and surpass each other +in testimonials of friendship. That morning all Saumur had seen Madame +and Mademoiselle Grandet, accompanied by Nanon, on their way to hear +Mass at the parish church, and every one remembered that the day was +the anniversary of Mademoiselle Eugenie's birth. Calculating the hour at +which the family dinner would be over, Maitre Cruchot, the Abbe Cruchot, +and Monsieur C. de Bonfons hastened to arrive before the des Grassins, +and be the first to pay their compliments to Mademoiselle Eugenie. All +three brought enormous bouquets, gathered in their little green-houses. +The stalks of the flowers which the president intended to present were +ingeniously wound round with a white satin ribbon adorned with gold +fringe. In the morning Monsieur Grandet, following his usual custom on +the days that commemorated the birth and the fete of Eugenie, went to +her bedside and solemnly presented her with his paternal gift,--which +for the last thirteen years had consisted regularly of a curious +gold-piece. Madame Grandet gave her daughter a winter dress or a summer +dress, as the case might be. These two dresses and the gold-pieces, +of which she received two others on New Year's day and on her father's +fete-day, gave Eugenie a little revenue of a hundred crowns or +thereabouts, which Grandet loved to see her amass. Was it not putting +his money from one strong-box to another, and, as it were, training the +parsimony of his heiress? from whom he sometimes demanded an account +of her treasure (formerly increased by the gifts of the Bertellieres), +saying: "It is to be your marriage dozen." + +The "marriage dozen" is an old custom sacredly preserved and still in +force in many parts of central France. In Berry and in Anjou, when a +young girl marries, her family, or that of the husband, must give her a +purse, in which they place, according to their means, twelve pieces, +or twelve dozen pieces, or twelve hundred pieces of gold. The poorest +shepherd-girl never marries without her dozen, be it only a dozen +coppers. They still tell in Issoudun of a certain "dozen" presented to +a rich heiress, which contained a hundred and forty-four _portugaises +d'or_. Pope Clement VII., uncle of Catherine de' Medici, gave her when +he married her to Henri II. a dozen antique gold medals of priceless +value. + +During dinner the father, delighted to see his Eugenie looking well in a +new gown, exclaimed: "As it is Eugenie's birthday let us have a fire; it +will be a good omen." + +"Mademoiselle will be married this year, that's certain," said la +Grande Nanon, carrying away the remains of the goose,--the pheasant of +tradesmen. + +"I don't see any one suitable for her in Saumur," said Madame Grandet, +glancing at her husband with a timid look which, considering her years, +revealed the conjugal slavery under which the poor woman languished. + +Grandet looked at his daughter and exclaimed gaily,-- + +"She is twenty-three years old to-day, the child; we must soon begin to +think of it." + +Eugenie and her mother silently exchanged a glance of intelligence. + +Madame Grandet was a dry, thin woman, as yellow as a quince, awkward, +slow, one of those women who are born to be down-trodden. She had big +bones, a big nose, a big forehead, big eyes, and presented at first +sight a vague resemblance to those mealy fruits that have neither savor +nor succulence. Her teeth were black and few in number, her mouth was +wrinkled, her chin long and pointed. She was an excellent woman, a true +la Bertelliere. L'abbe Cruchot found occasional opportunity to tell her +that she had not done ill; and she believed him. Angelic sweetness, +the resignation of an insect tortured by children, a rare piety, a good +heart, an unalterable equanimity of soul, made her universally pitied +and respected. Her husband never gave her more than six francs at a time +for her personal expenses. Ridiculous as it may seem, this woman, who by +her own fortune and her various inheritances brought Pere Grandet +more than three hundred thousand francs, had always felt so profoundly +humiliated by her dependence and the slavery in which she lived, against +which the gentleness of her spirit prevented her from revolting, that +she had never asked for one penny or made a single remark on the deeds +which Maitre Cruchot brought for her signature. This foolish secret +pride, this nobility of soul perpetually misunderstood and wounded by +Grandet, ruled the whole conduct of the wife. + +Madame Grandet was attired habitually in a gown of greenish levantine +silk, endeavoring to make it last nearly a year; with it she wore a +large kerchief of white cotton cloth, a bonnet made of plaited straws +sewn together, and almost always a black-silk apron. As she seldom left +the house she wore out very few shoes. She never asked anything for +herself. Grandet, seized with occasional remorse when he remembered how +long a time had elapsed since he gave her the last six francs, always +stipulated for the "wife's pin-money" when he sold his yearly vintage. +The four or five louis presented by the Belgian or the Dutchman who +purchased the wine were the chief visible signs of Madame Grandet's +annual revenues. But after she had received the five louis, her husband +would often say to her, as though their purse were held in common: +"Can you lend me a few sous?" and the poor woman, glad to be able to do +something for a man whom her confessor held up to her as her lord and +master, returned him in the course of the winter several crowns out of +the "pin-money." When Grandet drew from his pocket the five-franc piece +which he allowed monthly for the minor expenses,--thread, needles, and +toilet,--of his daughter, he never failed to say as he buttoned his +breeches' pocket: "And you, mother, do you want anything?" + +"My friend," Madame Grandet would answer, moved by a sense of maternal +dignity, "we will see about that later." + +Wasted dignity! Grandet thought himself very generous to his wife. +Philosophers who meet the like of Nanon, of Madame Grandet, of Eugenie, +have surely a right to say that irony is at the bottom of the ways of +Providence. + +After the dinner at which for the first time allusion had been made +to Eugenie's marriage, Nanon went to fetch a bottle of black-currant +ratafia from Monsieur Grandet's bed-chamber, and nearly fell as she came +down the stairs. + +"You great stupid!" said her master; "are you going to tumble about like +other people, hey?" + +"Monsieur, it was that step on your staircase which has given way." + +"She is right," said Madame Grandet; "it ought to have been mended long +ago. Yesterday Eugenie nearly twisted her ankle." + +"Here," said Grandet to Nanon, seeing that she looked quite pale, "as it +is Eugenie's birthday, and you came near falling, take a little glass of +ratafia to set you right." + +"Faith! I've earned it," said Nanon; "most people would have broken the +bottle; but I'd sooner have broken my elbow holding it up high." + +"Poor Nanon!" said Grandet, filling a glass. + +"Did you hurt yourself?" asked Eugenie, looking kindly at her. + +"No, I didn't fall; I threw myself back on my haunches." + +"Well! as it is Eugenie's birthday," said Grandet, "I'll have the step +mended. You people don't know how to set your foot in the corner where +the wood is still firm." + +Grandet took the candle, leaving his wife, daughter, and servant without +any other light than that from the hearth, where the flames were lively, +and went into the bakehouse to fetch planks, nails, and tools. + +"Can I help you?" cried Nanon, hearing him hammer on the stairs. + +"No, no! I'm an old hand at it," answered the former cooper. + +At the moment when Grandet was mending his worm-eaten staircase and +whistling with all his might, in remembrance of the days of his youth, +the three Cruchots knocked at the door. + +"Is it you, Monsieur Cruchot?" asked Nanon, peeping through the little +grating. + +"Yes," answered the president. + +Nanon opened the door, and the light from the hearth, reflected on the +ceiling, enabled the three Cruchots to find their way into the room. + +"Ha! you've come a-greeting," said Nanon, smelling the flowers. + +"Excuse me, messieurs," cried Grandet, recognizing their voices; "I'll +be with you in a moment. I'm not proud; I am patching up a step on my +staircase." + +"Go on, go on, Monsieur Grandet; a man's house is his castle," said the +president sententiously. + +Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet rose. The president, profiting by the +darkness, said to Eugenie: + +"Will you permit me, mademoiselle, to wish you, on this the day of your +birth, a series of happy years and the continuance of the health which +you now enjoy?" + +He offered her a huge bouquet of choice flowers which were rare in +Saumur; then, taking the heiress by the elbows, he kissed her on each +side of her neck with a complacency that made her blush. The president, +who looked like a rusty iron nail, felt that his courtship was +progressing. + +"Don't stand on ceremony," said Grandet, entering. "How well you do +things on fete-days, Monsieur le president!" + +"When it concerns mademoiselle," said the abbe, armed with his own +bouquet, "every day is a fete-day for my nephew." + +The abbe kissed Eugenie's hand. As for Maitre Cruchot, he boldly kissed +her on both cheeks, remarking: "How we sprout up, to be sure! Every year +is twelve months." + +As he replaced the candlestick beside the clock, Grandet, who never +forgot his own jokes, and repeated them to satiety when he thought them +funny, said,-- + +"As this is Eugenie's birthday let us illuminate." + +He carefully took off the branches of the candelabra, put a socket on +each pedestal, took from Nanon a new tallow candle with paper twisted +round the end of it, put it into the hollow, made it firm, lit it, and +then sat down beside his wife, looking alternately at his friends, his +daughter, and the two candles. The Abbe Cruchot, a plump, puffy little +man, with a red wig plastered down and a face like an old female +gambler, said as he stretched out his feet, well shod in stout shoes +with silver buckles: "The des Grassins have not come?" + +"Not yet," said Grandet. + +"But are they coming?" asked the old notary, twisting his face, which +had as many holes as a collander, into a queer grimace. + +"I think so," answered Madame Grandet. + +"Are your vintages all finished?" said Monsieur de Bonfons to Grandet. + +"Yes, all of them," said the old man, rising to walk up and down the +room, his chest swelling with pride as he said the words, "all of them." +Through the door of the passage which led to the kitchen he saw la +Grande Nanon sitting beside her fire with a candle and preparing to spin +there, so as not to intrude among the guests. + +"Nanon," he said, going into the passage, "put out that fire and that +candle, and come and sit with us. Pardieu! the hall is big enough for +all." + +"But monsieur, you are to have the great people." + +"Are not you as good as they? They are descended from Adam, and so are +you." + +Grandet came back to the president and said,-- + +"Have you sold your vintage?" + +"No, not I; I shall keep it. If the wine is good this year, it will +be better two years hence. The proprietors, you know, have made an +agreement to keep up the price; and this year the Belgians won't get the +better of us. Suppose they are sent off empty-handed for once, faith! +they'll come back." + +"Yes, but let us mind what we are about," said Grandet in a tone which +made the president tremble. + +"Is he driving some bargain?" thought Cruchot. + +At this moment the knocker announced the des Grassins family, and +their arrival interrupted a conversation which had begun between Madame +Grandet and the abbe. + +Madame des Grassins was one of those lively, plump little women, with +pink-and-white skins, who, thanks to the claustral calm of the provinces +and the habits of a virtuous life, keep their youth until they are +past forty. She was like the last rose of autumn,--pleasant to the +eye, though the petals have a certain frostiness, and their perfume is +slight. She dressed well, got her fashions from Paris, set the tone to +Saumur, and gave parties. Her husband, formerly a quartermaster in the +Imperial guard, who had been desperately wounded at Austerlitz, and had +since retired, still retained, in spite of his respect for Grandet, the +seeming frankness of an old soldier. + +"Good evening, Grandet," he said, holding out his hand and affecting +a sort of superiority, with which he always crushed the Cruchots. +"Mademoiselle," he added, turning to Eugenie, after bowing to Madame +Grandet, "you are always beautiful and good, and truly I do not know +what to wish you." So saying, he offered her a little box which his +servant had brought and which contained a Cape heather,--a flower lately +imported into Europe and very rare. + +Madame des Grassins kissed Eugenie very affectionately, pressed her +hand, and said: "Adolphe wishes to make you my little offering." + +A tall, blond young man, pale and slight, with tolerable manners and +seemingly rather shy, although he had just spent eight or ten thousand +francs over his allowance in Paris, where he had been sent to study +law, now came forward and kissed Eugenie on both cheeks, offering her a +workbox with utensils in silver-gilt,--mere show-case trumpery, in +spite of the monogram E.G. in gothic letters rather well engraved, +which belonged properly to something in better taste. As she opened it, +Eugenie experienced one of those unexpected and perfect delights which +make a young girl blush and quiver and tremble with pleasure. She +turned her eyes to her father as if to ask permission to accept it, and +Monsieur Grandet replied: "Take it, my daughter," in a tone which would +have made an actor illustrious. + +The three Cruchots felt crushed as they saw the joyous, animated look +cast upon Adolphe des Grassins by the heiress, to whom such riches were +unheard-of. Monsieur des Grassins offered Grandet a pinch of snuff, +took one himself, shook off the grains as they fell on the ribbon of +the Legion of honor which was attached to the button-hole of his blue +surtout; then he looked at the Cruchots with an air that seemed to say, +"Parry that thrust if you can!" Madame des Grassins cast her eyes on the +blue vases which held the Cruchot bouquets, looking at the enemy's +gifts with the pretended interest of a satirical woman. At this delicate +juncture the Abbe Cruchot left the company seated in a circle round the +fire and joined Grandet at the lower end of the hall. As the two men +reached the embrasure of the farthest window the priest said in the +miser's ear: "Those people throw money out of the windows." + +"What does that matter if it gets into my cellar?" retorted the old +wine-grower. + +"If you want to give gilt scissors to your daughter, you have the +means," said the abbe. + +"I give her something better than scissors," answered Grandet. + +"My nephew is a blockhead," thought the abbe as he looked at the +president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his brown +countenance. "Couldn't he have found some little trifle which cost +money?" + +"We will join you at cards, Madame Grandet," said Madame des Grassins. + +"We might have two tables, as we are all here." + +"As it is Eugenie's birthday you had better play loto all together," +said Pere Grandet: "the two young ones can join"; and the old cooper, +who never played any game, motioned to his daughter and Adolphe. "Come, +Nanon, set the tables." + +"We will help you, Mademoiselle Nanon," said Madame des Grassins gaily, +quite joyous at the joy she had given Eugenie. + +"I have never in my life been so pleased," the heiress said to her; "I +have never seen anything so pretty." + +"Adolphe brought it from Paris, and he chose it," Madame des Grassins +whispered in her ear. + +"Go on! go on! damned intriguing thing!" thought the president. "If you +ever have a suit in court, you or your husband, it shall go hard with +you." + +The notary, sitting in his corner, looked calmly at the abbe, saying +to himself: "The des Grassins may do what they like; my property and my +brother's and that of my nephew amount in all to eleven hundred thousand +francs. The des Grassins, at the most, have not half that; besides, +they have a daughter. They may give what presents they like; heiress and +presents too will be ours one of these days." + +At half-past eight in the evening the two card-tables were set out. +Madame des Grassins succeeded in putting her son beside Eugenie. The +actors in this scene, so full of interest, commonplace as it seems, were +provided with bits of pasteboard striped in many colors and numbered, +and with counters of blue glass, and they appeared to be listening +to the jokes of the notary, who never drew a number without making +a remark, while in fact they were all thinking of Monsieur Grandet's +millions. The old cooper, with inward self-conceit, was contemplating +the pink feathers and the fresh toilet of Madame des Grassins, the +martial head of the banker, the faces of Adolphe, the president, the +abbe, and the notary, saying to himself:-- + +"They are all after my money. Hey! neither the one nor the other shall +have my daughter; but they are useful--useful as harpoons to fish with." + +This family gaiety in the old gray room dimly lighted by two +tallow candles; this laughter, accompanied by the whirr of Nanon's +spinning-wheel, sincere only upon the lips of Eugenie or her mother; +this triviality mingled with important interests; this young girl, who, +like certain birds made victims of the price put upon them, was +now lured and trapped by proofs of friendship of which she was the +dupe,--all these things contributed to make the scene a melancholy +comedy. Is it not, moreover, a drama of all times and all places, though +here brought down to its simplest expression? The figure of Grandet, +playing his own game with the false friendship of the two families and +getting enormous profits from it, dominates the scene and throws +light upon it. The modern god,--the only god in whom faith is +preserved,--money, is here, in all its power, manifested in a single +countenance. The tender sentiments of life hold here but a secondary +place; only the three pure, simple hearts of Nanon, of Eugenie, and of +her mother were inspired by them. And how much of ignorance there was in +the simplicity of these poor women! Eugenie and her mother knew nothing +of Grandet's wealth; they could only estimate the things of life by the +glimmer of their pale ideas, and they neither valued nor despised money, +because they were accustomed to do without it. Their feelings, bruised, +though they did not know it, but ever-living, were the secret spring of +their existence, and made them curious exceptions in the midst of these +other people whose lives were purely material. Frightful condition of +the human race! there is no one of its joys that does not come from some +species of ignorance. + +At the moment when Madame Grandet had won a loto of sixteen sous,--the +largest ever pooled in that house,--and while la Grande Nanon was +laughing with delight as she watched madame pocketing her riches, the +knocker resounded on the house-door with such a noise that the women all +jumped in their chairs. + +"There is no man in Saumur who would knock like that," said the notary. + +"How can they bang in that way!" exclaimed Nanon; "do they want to break +in the door?" + +"Who the devil is it?" cried Grandet. + + + + +III + +Nanon took one of the candles and went to open the door, followed by her +master. + +"Grandet! Grandet!" cried his wife, moved by a sudden impulse of fear, +and running to the door of the room. + +All the players looked at each other. + +"Suppose we all go?" said Monsieur des Grassins; "that knock strikes me +as evil-intentioned." + +Hardly was Monsieur des Grassins allowed to see the figure of a young +man, accompanied by a porter from the coach-office carrying two large +trunks and dragging a carpet-bag after him, than Monsieur Grandet turned +roughly on his wife and said,-- + +"Madame Grandet, go back to your loto; leave me to speak with monsieur." + +Then he pulled the door quickly to, and the excited players returned to +their seats, but did not continue the game. + +"Is it any one belonging to Saumur, Monsieur des Grassins?" asked his +wife. + +"No, it is a traveller." + +"He must have come from Paris." + +"Just so," said the notary, pulling out his watch, which was two inches +thick and looked like a Dutch man-of-war; "it's nine o'clock; the +diligence of the Grand Bureau is never late." + +"Is the gentleman young?" inquired the Abbe Cruchot. + +"Yes," answered Monsieur des Grassins, "and he has brought luggage which +must weigh nearly three tons." + +"Nanon does not come back," said Eugenie. + +"It must be one of your relations," remarked the president. + +"Let us go on with our game," said Madame Grandet gently. "I know from +Monsieur Grandet's tone of voice that he is annoyed; perhaps he would +not like to find us talking of his affairs." + +"Mademoiselle," said Adolphe to his neighbor, "it is no doubt your +cousin Grandet,--a very good-looking young man; I met him at the ball of +Monsieur de Nucingen." Adolphe did not go on, for his mother trod on his +toes; and then, asking him aloud for two sous to put on her stake, she +whispered: "Will you hold your tongue, you great goose!" + +At this moment Grandet returned, without la Grande Nanon, whose steps, +together with those of the porter, echoed up the staircase; and he was +followed by the traveller who had excited such curiosity and so filled +the lively imaginations of those present that his arrival at this +dwelling, and his sudden fall into the midst of this assembly, can only +be likened to that of a snail into a beehive, or the introduction of a +peacock into some village poultry-yard. + +"Sit down near the fire," said Grandet. + +Before seating himself, the young stranger saluted the assembled company +very gracefully. The men rose to answer by a courteous inclination, and +the women made a ceremonious bow. + +"You are cold, no doubt, monsieur," said Madame Grandet; "you have, +perhaps, travelled from--" + +"Just like all women!" said the old wine-grower, looking up from a +letter he was reading. "Do let monsieur rest himself!" + +"But, father, perhaps monsieur would like to take something," said +Eugenie. + +"He has got a tongue," said the old man sternly. + +The stranger was the only person surprised by this scene; all the others +were well-used to the despotic ways of the master. However, after the +two questions and the two replies had been exchanged, the newcomer rose, +turned his back towards the fire, lifted one foot so as to warm the sole +of its boot, and said to Eugenie,-- + +"Thank you, my cousin, but I dined at Tours. And," he added, looking at +Grandet, "I need nothing; I am not even tired." + +"Monsieur has come from the capital?" asked Madame des Grassins. + +Monsieur Charles,--such was the name of the son of Monsieur Grandet of +Paris,--hearing himself addressed, took a little eye-glass, suspended by +a chain from his neck, applied it to his right eye to examine what was +on the table, and also the persons sitting round it. He ogled Madame des +Grassins with much impertinence, and said to her, after he had observed +all he wished,-- + +"Yes, madame. You are playing at loto, aunt," he added. "Do not let me +interrupt you, I beg; go on with your game: it is too amusing to leave." + +"I was certain it was the cousin," thought Madame des Grassins, casting +repeated glances at him. + +"Forty-seven!" cried the old abbe. "Mark it down, Madame des Grassins. +Isn't that your number?" + +Monsieur des Grassins put a counter on his wife's card, who sat watching +first the cousin from Paris and then Eugenie, without thinking of her +loto, a prey to mournful presentiments. From time to time the young +heiress glanced furtively at her cousin, and the banker's wife easily +detected a _crescendo_ of surprise and curiosity in her mind. + +Monsieur Charles Grandet, a handsome young man of twenty-two, presented +at this moment a singular contrast to the worthy provincials, who, +considerably disgusted by his aristocratic manners, were all studying +him with sarcastic intent. This needs an explanation. At twenty-two, +young people are still so near childhood that they often conduct +themselves childishly. In all probability, out of every hundred of +them fully ninety-nine would have behaved precisely as Monsieur Charles +Grandet was now behaving. + +Some days earlier than this his father had told him to go and spend +several months with his uncle at Saumur. Perhaps Monsieur Grandet was +thinking of Eugenie. Charles, sent for the first time in his life into +the provinces, took a fancy to make his appearance with the superiority +of a man of fashion, to reduce the whole arrondissement to despair by +his luxury, and to make his visit an epoch, importing into those country +regions all the refinements of Parisian life. In short, to explain it in +one word, he mean to pass more time at Saumur in brushing his nails than +he ever thought of doing in Paris, and to assume the extra nicety and +elegance of dress which a young man of fashion often lays aside for +a certain negligence which in itself is not devoid of grace. Charles +therefore brought with him a complete hunting-costume, the finest gun, +the best hunting-knife in the prettiest sheath to be found in all +Paris. He brought his whole collection of waistcoats. They were of all +kinds,--gray, black, white, scarabaeus-colored: some were shot with +gold, some spangled, some _chined_; some were double-breasted and +crossed like a shawl, others were straight in the collar; some had +turned-over collars, some buttoned up to the top with gilt buttons. He +brought every variety of collar and cravat in fashion at that epoch. He +brought two of Buisson's coats and all his finest linen He brought his +pretty gold toilet-set,--a present from his mother. He brought all his +dandy knick-knacks, not forgetting a ravishing little desk presented to +him by the most amiable of women,--amiable for him, at least,--a fine +lady whom he called Annette and who at this moment was travelling, +matrimonially and wearily, in Scotland, a victim to certain suspicions +which required a passing sacrifice of happiness; in the desk was much +pretty note-paper on which to write to her once a fortnight. + +In short, it was as complete a cargo of Parisian frivolities as it was +possible for him to get together,--a collection of all the implements +of husbandry with which the youth of leisure tills his life, from +the little whip which helps to begin a duel, to the handsomely chased +pistols which end it. His father having told him to travel alone and +modestly, he had taken the coupe of the diligence all to himself, rather +pleased at not having to damage a delightful travelling-carriage ordered +for a journey on which he was to meet his Annette, the great lady +who, etc.,--whom he intended to rejoin at Baden in the following June. +Charles expected to meet scores of people at his uncle's house, to hunt +in his uncle's forests,--to live, in short, the usual chateau life; he +did not know that his uncle was in Saumur, and had only inquired about +him incidentally when asking the way to Froidfond. Hearing that he was +in town, he supposed that he should find him in a suitable mansion. + +In order that he might make a becoming first appearance before his +uncle either at Saumur or at Froidfond, he had put on his most elegant +travelling attire, simple yet exquisite,--"adorable," to use the word +which in those days summed up the special perfections of a man or a +thing. At Tours a hairdresser had re-curled his beautiful chestnut +locks; there he changed his linen and put on a black satin cravat, +which, combined with a round shirt-collar, framed his fair and smiling +countenance agreeably. A travelling great-coat, only half buttoned up, +nipped in his waist and disclosed a cashmere waistcoat crossed in +front, beneath which was another waistcoat of white material. His watch, +negligently slipped into a pocket, was fastened by a short gold chain to +a buttonhole. His gray trousers, buttoned up at the sides, were set +off at the seams with patterns of black silk embroidery. He gracefully +twirled a cane, whose chased gold knob did not mar the freshness of his +gray gloves. And to complete all, his cap was in excellent taste. None +but a Parisian, and a Parisian of the upper spheres, could thus array +himself without appearing ridiculous; none other could give the harmony +of self-conceit to all these fopperies, which were carried off, however, +with a dashing air,--the air of a young man who has fine pistols, a sure +aim, and Annette. + +Now if you wish to understand the mutual amazement of the provincial +party and the young Parisian; if you would clearly see the brilliance +which the traveller's elegance cast among the gray shadows of the room +and upon the faces of this family group,--endeavor to picture to your +minds the Cruchots. All three took snuff, and had long ceased to repress +the habit of snivelling or to remove the brown blotches which strewed +the frills of their dingy shirts and the yellowing creases of their +crumpled collars. Their flabby cravats were twisted into ropes as soon +as they wound them about their throats. The enormous quantity of linen +which allowed these people to have their clothing washed only once +in six months, and to keep it during that time in the depths of their +closets, also enabled time to lay its grimy and decaying stains upon +it. There was perfect unison of ill-grace and senility about them; their +faces, as faded as their threadbare coats, as creased as their trousers, +were worn-out, shrivelled-up, and puckered. As for the others, the +general negligence of their dress, which was incomplete and wanting +in freshness,--like the toilet of all country places, where insensibly +people cease to dress for others and come to think seriously of the +price of a pair of gloves,--was in keeping with the negligence of +the Cruchots. A horror of fashion was the only point on which the +Grassinists and the Cruchotines agreed. + +When the Parisian took up his eye-glass to examine the strange +accessories of this dwelling,--the joists of the ceiling, the color +of the woodwork, and the specks which the flies had left there in +sufficient number to punctuate the "Moniteur" and the "Encyclopaedia of +Sciences,"--the loto-players lifted their noses and looked at him with +as much curiosity as they might have felt about a giraffe. Monsieur des +Grassins and his son, to whom the appearance of a man of fashion was not +wholly unknown, were nevertheless as much astonished as their neighbors, +whether it was that they fell under the indefinable influence of the +general feeling, or that they really shared it as with satirical glances +they seemed to say to their compatriots,-- + +"That is what you see in Paris!" + +They were able to examine Charles at their leisure without fearing to +displease the master of the house. Grandet was absorbed in the long +letter which he held in his hand; and to read it he had taken the +only candle upon the card-table, paying no heed to his guests or their +pleasure. Eugenie, to whom such a type of perfection, whether of dress +or of person, was absolutely unknown, thought she beheld in her cousin +a being descended from seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the +fragrance wafted from the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She +would have liked to touch the soft kid of the delicate gloves. She +envied Charles his small hands, his complexion, the freshness and +refinement of his features. In short,--if it is possible to sum up +the effect this elegant being produced upon an ignorant young girl +perpetually employed in darning stockings or in mending her father's +clothes, and whose life flowed on beneath these unclean rafters, seeing +none but occasional passers along the silent street,--this vision of +her cousin roused in her soul an emotion of delicate desire like that +inspired in a young man by the fanciful pictures of women drawn by +Westall for the English "Keepsakes," and that engraved by the Findens +with so clever a tool that we fear, as we breathe upon the paper, that +the celestial apparitions may be wafted away. Charles drew from his +pocket a handkerchief embroidered by the great lady now travelling in +Scotland. As Eugenie saw this pretty piece of work, done in the vacant +hours which were lost to love, she looked at her cousin to see if it +were possible that he meant to make use of it. The manners of the +young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up his eye-glass, his +affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance at the coffer which +had just given so much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he +evidently regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,--all these +things, which shocked the Cruchots and the des Grassins, pleased Eugenie +so deeply that before she slept she dreamed long dreams of her phoenix +cousin. + +The loto-numbers were drawn very slowly, and presently the game came +suddenly to an end. La Grand Nanon entered and said aloud: "Madame, I +want the sheets for monsieur's bed." + +Madame Grandet followed her out. Madame des Grassins said in a low +voice: "Let us keep our sous and stop playing." Each took his or her two +sous from the chipped saucer in which they had been put; then the party +moved in a body toward the fire. + +"Have you finished your game?" said Grandet, without looking up from his +letter. + +"Yes, yes!" replied Madame des Grassins, taking a seat near Charles. + +Eugenie, prompted by a thought often born in the heart of a young girl +when sentiment enters it for the first time, left the room to go and +help her mother and Nanon. Had an able confessor then questioned her +she would, no doubt, have avowed to him that she thought neither of her +mother nor of Nanon, but was pricked by a poignant desire to look after +her cousin's room and concern herself with her cousin; to supply what +might be needed, to remedy any forgetfulness, to see that all was done +to make it, as far as possible, suitable and elegant; and, in fact, she +arrived in time to prove to her mother and Nanon that everything still +remained to be done. She put into Nanon's head the notion of passing a +warming-pan between the sheets. She herself covered the old table with a +cloth and requested Nanon to change it every morning; she convinced her +mother that it was necessary to light a good fire, and persuaded Nanon +to bring up a great pile of wood into the corridor without saying +anything to her father. She ran to get, from one of the corner-shelves +of the hall, a tray of old lacquer which was part of the inheritance +of the late Monsieur de la Bertelliere, catching up at the same time +a six-sided crystal goblet, a little tarnished gilt spoon, an antique +flask engraved with cupids, all of which she put triumphantly on the +corner of her cousin's chimney-piece. More ideas surged through her head +in one quarter of an hour than she had ever had since she came into the +world. + +"Mamma," she said, "my cousin will never bear the smell of a tallow +candle; suppose we buy a wax one?" And she darted, swift as a bird, to +get the five-franc piece which she had just received for her monthly +expenses. "Here, Nanon," she cried, "quick!" + +"What will your father say?" This terrible remonstrance was uttered +by Madame Grandet as she beheld her daughter armed with an old +Sevres sugar-basin which Grandet had brought home from the chateau of +Froidfond. "And where will you get the sugar? Are you crazy?" + +"Mamma, Nanon can buy some sugar as well as the candle." + +"But your father?" + +"Surely his nephew ought not to go without a glass of _eau sucree_? +Besides, he will not notice it." + +"Your father sees everything," said Madame Grandet, shaking her head. + +Nanon hesitated; she knew her master. + +"Come, Nanon, go,--because it is my birthday." + +Nanon gave a loud laugh as she heard the first little jest her young +mistress had ever made, and then obeyed her. + +While Eugenie and her mother were trying to embellish the bedroom +assigned by Monsieur Grandet for his nephew, Charles himself was the +object of Madame des Grassins' attentions; to all appearances she was +setting her cap at him. + +"You are very courageous, monsieur," she said to the young dandy, "to +leave the pleasures of the capital at this season and take up your abode +in Saumur. But if we do not frighten you away, you will find there are +some amusements even here." + +She threw him the ogling glance of the provinces, where women put so +much prudence and reserve into their eyes that they impart to them the +prudish concupiscence peculiar to certain ecclesiastics to whom all +pleasure is either a theft or an error. Charles was so completely out +of his element in this abode, and so far from the vast chateau and the +sumptuous life with which his fancy had endowed his uncle, that as he +looked at Madame des Grassins he perceived a dim likeness to Parisian +faces. He gracefully responded to the species of invitation addressed +to him, and began very naturally a conversation, in which Madame des +Grassins gradually lowered her voice so as to bring it into harmony with +the nature of the confidences she was making. With her, as with Charles, +there was the need of conference; so after a few moments spent in +coquettish phrases and a little serious jesting, the clever provincial +said, thinking herself unheard by the others, who were discussing the +sale of wines which at that season filled the heads of every one in +Saumur,-- + +"Monsieur if you will do us the honor to come and see us, you will give +as much pleasure to my husband as to myself. Our salon is the only one +in Saumur where you will find the higher business circles mingling with +the nobility. We belong to both societies, who meet at our house simply +because they find it amusing. My husband--I say it with pride--is as +much valued by the one class as by the other. We will try to relieve +the monotony of your visit here. If you stay all the time with Monsieur +Grandet, good heavens! what will become of you? Your uncle is a sordid +miser who thinks of nothing but his vines; your aunt is a pious soul who +can't put two ideas together; and your cousin is a little fool, without +education, perfectly common, no fortune, who will spend her life in +darning towels." + +"She is really very nice, this woman," thought Charles Grandet as he +duly responded to Madame des Grassins' coquetries. + +"It seems to me, wife, that you are taking possession of monsieur," said +the stout banker, laughing. + +On this remark the notary and the president said a few words that were +more or less significant; but the abbe, looking at them slyly, brought +their thoughts to a focus by taking a pinch of snuff and saying as +he handed round his snuff-box: "Who can do the honors of Saumur for +monsieur so well as madame?" + +"Ah! what do you mean by that, monsieur l'abbe?" demanded Monsieur des +Grassins. + +"I mean it in the best possible sense for you, for madame, for the town +of Saumur, and for monsieur," said the wily old man, turning to Charles. + +The Abbe Cruchot had guessed the conversation between Charles and Madame +des Grassins without seeming to pay attention to it. + +"Monsieur," said Adolphe to Charles with an air which he tried to make +free and easy, "I don't know whether you remember me, but I had the +honor of dancing as your _vis-a-vis_ at a ball given by the Baron de +Nucingen, and--" + +"Perfectly; I remember perfectly, monsieur," answered Charles, pleased +to find himself the object of general attention. + +"Monsieur is your son?" he said to Madame des Grassins. + +The abbe looked at her maliciously. + +"Yes, monsieur," she answered. + +"Then you were very young when you were in Paris?" said Charles, +addressing Adolphe. + +"You must know, monsieur," said the abbe, "that we send them to Babylon +as soon as they are weaned." + +Madame des Grassins examined the abbe with a glance of extreme +penetration. + +"It is only in the provinces," he continued, "that you will find women +of thirty and more years as fresh as madame, here, with a son about to +take his degree. I almost fancy myself back in the days when the young +men stood on chairs in the ball-room to see you dance, madame," said the +abbe, turning to his female adversary. "To me, your triumphs are but of +yesterday--" + +"The old rogue!" thought Madame Grassins; "can he have guessed my +intentions?" + +"It seems that I shall have a good deal of success in Saumur," thought +Charles as he unbuttoned his great-coat, put a hand into his waistcoat, +and cast a glance into the far distance, to imitate the attitude which +Chantrey has given to Lord Byron. + +The inattention of Pere Grandet, or, to speak more truly, the +preoccupation of mind into which the reading of the letter had plunged +him, did not escape the vigilance of the notary and the president, who +tried to guess the contents of the letter by the almost imperceptible +motions of the miser's face, which was then under the full light of the +candle. He maintained the habitual calm of his features with evident +difficulty; we may, in fact, picture to ourselves the countenance such +a man endeavored to preserve as he read the fatal letter which here +follows:-- + + My Brother,--It is almost twenty-three years since we have seen + each other. My marriage was the occasion of our last interview, + after which we parted, and both of us were happy. Assuredly I + could not then foresee that you would one day be the prop of the + family whose prosperity you then predicted. + + When you hold this letter within your hands I shall be no longer + living. In the position I now hold I cannot survive the disgrace + of bankruptcy. I have waited on the edge of the gulf until the + last moment, hoping to save myself. The end has come, I must sink + into it. The double bankruptcies of my broker and of Roguin, my + notary, have carried off my last resources and left me nothing. I + have the bitterness of owing nearly four millions, with assets not + more than twenty-five per cent in value to pay them. The wines in + my warehouses suffer from the fall in prices caused by the + abundance and quality of your vintage. In three days Paris will + cry out: "Monsieur Grandet was a knave!" and I, an honest man, + shall be lying in my winding-sheet of infamy. I deprive my son of + a good name, which I have stained, and the fortune of his mother, + which I have lost. He knows nothing of all this,--my unfortunate + child whom I idolize! We parted tenderly. He was ignorant, + happily, that the last beatings of my heart were spent in that + farewell. Will he not some day curse me? My brother, my brother! + the curses of our children are horrible; they can appeal against + ours, but theirs are irrevocable. Grandet, you are my elder + brother, you owe me your protection; act for me so that Charles + may cast no bitter words upon my grave! My brother, if I were + writing with my blood, with my tears, no greater anguish could I + put into this letter,--nor as great, for then I should weep, I + should bleed, I should die, I should suffer no more, but now I + suffer and look at death with dry eyes. + + From henceforth you are my son's father; he has no relations, as + you well know, on his mother's side. Why did I not consider social + prejudices? Why did I yield to love? Why did I marry the natural + daughter of a great lord? Charles has no family. Oh, my unhappy + son! my son! Listen, Grandet! I implore nothing for myself, + --besides, your property may not be large enough to carry a mortgage + of three millions,--but for my son! Brother, my suppliant hands + are clasped as I think of you; behold them! Grandet, I confide my + son to you in dying, and I look at the means of death with less + pain as I think that you will be to him a father. He loved me + well, my Charles; I was good to him, I never thwarted him; he will + not curse me. Ah, you see! he is gentle, he is like his mother, he + will cause you no grief. Poor boy! accustomed to all the + enjoyments of luxury, he knows nothing of the privations to which + you and I were condemned by the poverty of our youth. And I leave + him ruined! alone! Yes, all my friends will avoid him, and it is I + who have brought this humiliation upon him! Would that I had the + force to send him with one thrust into the heavens to his mother's + side! Madness! I come back to my disaster--to his. I send him to + you that you may tell him in some fitting way of my death, of his + future fate. Be a father to him, but a good father. Do not tear + him all at once from his idle life, it would kill him. I beg him + on my knees to renounce all rights that, as his mother's heir, he + may have on my estate. But the prayer is superfluous; he is + honorable, and he will feel that he must not appear among my + creditors. Bring him to see this at the right time; reveal to him + the hard conditions of the life I have made for him: and if he + still has tender thoughts of me, tell him in my name that all is + not lost for him. Yes, work, labor, which saved us both, may give + him back the fortune of which I have deprived him; and if he + listens to his father's voice as it reaches him from the grave, he + will go the Indies. My brother, Charles is an upright and + courageous young man; give him the wherewithal to make his + venture; he will die sooner than not repay you the funds which you + may lend him. Grandet! if you will not do this, you will lay up + for yourself remorse. Ah, should my child find neither tenderness + nor succor in you, I would call down the vengeance of God upon + your cruelty! + + If I had been able to save something from the wreck, I might have + had the right to leave him at least a portion of his mother's + property; but my last monthly payments have absorbed everything. I + did not wish to die uncertain of my child's fate; I hoped to feel + a sacred promise in a clasp of your hand which might have warmed + my heart: but time fails me. While Charles is journeying to you I + shall be preparing my assignment. I shall endeavor to show by the + order and good faith of my accounts that my disaster comes neither + from a faulty life nor from dishonesty. It is for my son's sake + that I strive to do this. + + Farewell, my brother! May the blessing of God be yours for the + generous guardianship I lay upon you, and which, I doubt not, you + will accept. A voice will henceforth and forever pray for you in + that world where we must all go, and where I am now as you read + these lines. + +Victor-Ange-Guillaume Grandet. + + +"So you are talking?" said Pere Grandet as he carefully folded the +letter in its original creases and put it into his waistcoat-pocket. He +looked at his nephew with a humble, timid air, beneath which he hid his +feelings and his calculations. "Have you warmed yourself?" he said to +him. + +"Thoroughly, my dear uncle." + +"Well, where are the women?" said his uncle, already forgetting that +his nephew was to sleep at the house. At this moment Eugenie and Madame +Grandet returned. + +"Is the room all ready?" said Grandet, recovering his composure. + +"Yes, father." + +"Well then, my nephew, if you are tired, Nanon shall show you your room. +It isn't a dandy's room; but you will excuse a poor wine-grower who +never has a penny to spare. Taxes swallow up everything." + +"We do not wish to intrude, Grandet," said the banker; "you may want to +talk to your nephew, and therefore we will bid you good-night." + +At these words the assembly rose, and each made a parting bow in keeping +with his or her own character. The old notary went to the door to fetch +his lantern and came back to light it, offering to accompany the des +Grassins on their way. Madame des Grassins had not foreseen the incident +which brought the evening prematurely to an end, her servant therefore +had not arrived. + +"Will you do me the honor to take my arm, madame?" said the abbe. + +"Thank you, monsieur l'abbe, but I have my son," she answered dryly. + +"Ladies cannot compromise themselves with me," said the abbe. + +"Take Monsieur Cruchot's arm," said her husband. + +The abbe walked off with the pretty lady so quickly that they were soon +some distance in advance of the caravan. + +"That is a good-looking young man, madame," he said, pressing her arm. +"Good-by to the grapes, the vintage is done. It is all over with us. We +may as well say adieu to Mademoiselle Grandet. Eugenie will belong to +the dandy. Unless this cousin is enamoured of some Parisian woman, your +son Adolphe will find another rival in--" + +"Not at all, monsieur l'abbe. This young man cannot fail to see that +Eugenie is a little fool,--a girl without the least freshness. Did you +notice her to-night? She was as yellow as a quince." + +"Perhaps you made the cousin notice it?" + +"I did not take the trouble--" + +"Place yourself always beside Eugenie, madame, and you need never take +the trouble to say anything to the young man against his cousin; he will +make his own comparisons, which--" + +"Well, he has promised to dine with me the day after to-morrow." + +"Ah! if you only _would_, madame--" said the abbe. + +"What is it that you wish me to do, monsieur l'abbe? Do you mean to +offer me bad advice? I have not reached the age of thirty-nine, without +a stain upon my reputation, thank God! to compromise myself now, even +for the empire of the Great Mogul. You and I are of an age when we both +know the meaning of words. For an ecclesiastic, you certainly have ideas +that are very incongruous. Fie! it is worthy of Faublas!" + +"You have read Faublas?" + +"No, monsieur l'abbe; I meant to say the _Liaisons dangereuses_." + +"Ah! that book is infinitely more moral," said the abbe, laughing. "But +you make me out as wicked as a young man of the present day; I only +meant--" + +"Do you dare to tell me you were not thinking of putting wicked things +into my head? Isn't it perfectly clear? If this young man--who I admit +is very good-looking--were to make love to me, he would not think of his +cousin. In Paris, I know, good mothers do devote themselves in this +way to the happiness and welfare of their children; but we live in the +provinces, monsieur l'abbe." + +"Yes, madame." + +"And," she continued, "I do not want, and Adolphe himself would not +want, a hundred millions brought at such a price." + +"Madame, I said nothing about a hundred millions; that temptation might +be too great for either of us to withstand. Only, I do think that an +honest woman may permit herself, in all honor, certain harmless little +coquetries, which are, in fact, part of her social duty and which--" + +"Do you think so?" + +"Are we not bound, madame, to make ourselves agreeable to each +other?--Permit me to blow my nose.--I assure you, madame," he resumed, +"that the young gentleman ogled you through his glass in a more +flattering manner than he put on when he looked at me; but I forgive him +for doing homage to beauty in preference to old age--" + +"It is quite apparent," said the president in his loud voice, "that +Monsieur Grandet of Paris has sent his son to Saumur with extremely +matrimonial intentions." + +"But in that case the cousin wouldn't have fallen among us like a +cannon-ball," answered the notary. + +"That doesn't prove anything," said Monsieur des Grassins; "the old +miser is always making mysteries." + +"Des Grassins, my friend, I have invited the young man to dinner. You +must go and ask Monsieur and Madame de Larsonniere and the du Hautoys, +with the beautiful demoiselle du Hautoy, of course. I hope she will be +properly dressed; that jealous mother of hers does make such a fright of +her! Gentlemen, I trust that you will all do us the honor to come," she +added, stopping the procession to address the two Cruchots. + +"Here you are at home, madame," said the notary. + +After bowing to the three des Grassins, the three Cruchots returned +home, applying their provincial genius for analysis to studying, under +all its aspects, the great event of the evening, which undoubtedly +changed the respective positions of Grassinists and Cruchotines. The +admirable common-sense which guided all the actions of these great +machinators made each side feel the necessity of a momentary alliance +against a common enemy. Must they not mutually hinder Eugenie from +loving her cousin, and the cousin from thinking of Eugenie? Could the +Parisian resist the influence of treacherous insinuations, soft-spoken +calumnies, slanders full of faint praise and artless denials, which +should be made to circle incessantly about him and deceive him? + + + + +IV + +When the four relations were left alone, Monsieur Grandet said to his +nephew,-- + +"We must go to bed. It is too late to talk about the matters which have +brought you here; to-morrow we will take a suitable moment. We breakfast +at eight o'clock; at midday we eat a little fruit or a bit of bread, and +drink a glass of white wine; and we dine, like the Parisians, at five +o'clock. That's the order of the day. If you like to go and see the +town and the environs you are free to do so. You will excuse me if my +occupations do not permit me to accompany you. You may perhaps hear +people say that I am rich,--Monsieur Grandet this, Monsieur Grandet +that. I let them talk; their gossip does not hurt my credit. But I have +not a penny; I work in my old age like an apprentice whose worldly goods +are a bad plane and two good arms. Perhaps you'll soon know yourself +what a franc costs when you have got to sweat for it. Nanon, where are +the candles?" + +"I trust, my nephew, that you will find all you want," said Madame +Grandet; "but if you should need anything else, you can call Nanon." + +"My dear aunt, I shall need nothing; I have, I believe, brought +everything with me. Permit me to bid you good-night, and my young cousin +also." + +Charles took a lighted wax candle from Nanon's hand,--an Anjou candle, +very yellow in color, and so shopworn that it looked like tallow and +deceived Monsieur Grandet, who, incapable of suspecting its presence +under his roof, did not perceive this magnificence. + +"I will show you the way," he said. + +Instead of leaving the hall by the door which opened under the archway, +Grandet ceremoniously went through the passage which divided the hall +from the kitchen. A swing-door, furnished with a large oval pane of +glass, shut this passage from the staircase, so as to fend off the cold +air which rushed through it. But the north wind whistled none the less +keenly in winter, and, in spite of the sand-bags at the bottom of the +doors of the living-room, the temperature within could scarcely be kept +at a proper height. Nanon went to bolt the outer door; then she closed +the hall and let loose a wolf-dog, whose bark was so strangled that +he seemed to have laryngitis. This animal, noted for his ferocity, +recognized no one but Nanon; the two untutored children of the fields +understood each other. + +When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the +staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall +of his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He fancied +himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned an +inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not guess +the cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an expression of +friendliness, which they answered by a smile that made him desperate. + +"Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?" he said to +himself. + +When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted in +Etruscan red and without casings,--doors sunk in the dusty walls and +provided with iron bars, which in fact were bolts, each ending with the +pattern of a flame, as did both ends of the long sheath of the lock. +The first door at the top of the staircase, which opened into a room +directly above the kitchen, was evidently walled up. In fact, the only +entrance to that room was through Grandet's bedchamber; the room itself +was his office. The single window which lighted it, on the side of the +court, was protected by a lattice of strong iron bars. No one, not even +Madame Grandet, had permission to enter it. The old man chose to be +alone, like an alchemist in his laboratory. There, no doubt, some +hiding-place had been ingeniously constructed; there the title-deeds of +property were stored; there hung the scales on which to weigh the louis; +there were devised, by night and secretly, the estimates, the profits, +the receipts, so that business men, finding Grandet prepared at all +points, imagined that he got his cue from fairies or demons; there, no +doubt, while Nanon's loud snoring shook the rafters, while the wolf-dog +watched and yawned in the courtyard, while Madame and Mademoiselle +Grandet were quietly sleeping, came the old cooper to cuddle, to con +over, to caress and clutch and clasp his gold. The walls were thick, the +screens sure. He alone had the key of this laboratory, where--so people +declared--he studied the maps on which his fruit-trees were marked, and +calculated his profits to a vine, and almost to a twig. + +The door of Eugenie's chamber was opposite to the walled-up entrance to +this room. At the other end of the landing were the appartements of +the married pair, which occupied the whole front of the house. Madame +Grandet had a room next to that of Eugenie, which was entered through a +glass door. The master's chamber was separated from that of his wife by +a partition, and from the mysterious strong-room by a thick wall. Pere +Grandet lodged his nephew on the second floor, in the high mansarde +attic which was above his own bedroom, so that he might hear him if the +young man took it into his head to go and come. When Eugenie and her +mother reached the middle of the landing they kissed each other for +good-night; then with a few words of adieu to Charles, cold upon the +lips, but certainly very warm in the heart of the young girl, they +withdrew into their own chambers. + +"Here you are in your room, my nephew," said Pere Grandet as he opened +the door. "If you need to go out, call Nanon; without her, beware! the +dog would eat you up without a word. Sleep well. Good-night. Ha! why, +they have made you a fire!" he cried. + +At this moment Nanon appeared with the warming pan. + +"Here's something more!" said Monsieur Grandet. "Do you take my nephew +for a lying-in woman? Carry off your brazier, Nanon!" + +"But, monsieur, the sheets are damp, and this gentleman is as delicate +as a woman." + +"Well, go on, as you've taken it into your head," said Grandet, pushing +her by the shoulders; "but don't set things on fire." So saying, the +miser went down-stairs, grumbling indistinct sentences. + +Charles stood aghast in the midst of his trunks. After casting his +eyes on the attic-walls covered with that yellow paper sprinkled with +bouquets so well known in dance-houses, on the fireplace of ribbed +stone whose very look was chilling, on the chairs of yellow wood with +varnished cane seats that seemed to have more than the usual four +angles, on the open night-table capacious enough to hold a small +sergeant-at-arms, on the meagre bit of rag-carpet beside the bed, on the +tester whose cloth valance shook as if, devoured by moths, it was about +to fall, he turned gravely to la Grande Nanon and said,-- + +"Look here! my dear woman, just tell me, am I in the house of Monsieur +Grandet, formerly mayor of Saumur, and brother to Monsieur Grandet of +Paris?" + +"Yes, monsieur; and a very good, a very kind, a very perfect gentleman. +Shall I help you to unpack your trunks?" + +"Faith! yes, if you will, my old trooper. Didn't you serve in the +marines of the Imperial Guard?" + +"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed Nanon. "What's that,--the marines of the guard? Is +it salt? Does it go in the water?" + +"Here, get me my dressing-gown out of that valise; there's the key." + +Nanon was wonder-struck by the sight of a dressing-gown made of green +silk, brocaded with gold flowers of an antique design. + +"Are you going to put that on to go to bed with?" she asked. + +"Yes." + +"Holy Virgin! what a beautiful altar-cloth it would make for the parish +church! My dear darling monsieur, give it to the church, and you'll save +your soul; if you don't, you'll lose it. Oh, how nice you look in it! I +must call mademoiselle to see you." + +"Come, Nanon, if Nanon you are, hold your tongue; let me go to bed. I'll +arrange my things to-morrow. If my dressing-gown pleases you so much, +you shall save your soul. I'm too good a Christian not to give it to you +when I go away, and you can do what you like with it." + +Nanon stood rooted to the ground, gazing at Charles and unable to put +faith into his words. + +"Good night, Nanon." + +"What in the world have I come here for?" thought Charles as he went +to sleep. "My father is not a fool; my journey must have some object. +Pshaw! put off serious thought till the morrow, as some Greek idiot +said." + +"Blessed Virgin! how charming he is, my cousin!" Eugenie was saying, +interrupting her prayers, which that night at least were never finished. + +Madame Grandet had no thoughts at all as she went to bed. She heard the +miser walking up and down his room through the door of communication +which was in the middle of the partition. Like all timid women, she +had studied the character of her lord. Just as the petrel foresees the +storm, she knew by imperceptible signs when an inward tempest shook +her husband; and at such times, to use an expression of her own, she +"feigned dead." + +Grandet gazed at the door lined with sheet-iron which he lately put to +his sanctum, and said to himself,-- + +"What a crazy idea of my brother to bequeath his son to me! A fine +legacy! I have not fifty francs to give him. What are fifty francs to a +dandy who looked at my barometer as if he meant to make firewood of it!" + +In thinking over the consequences of that legacy of anguish Grandet was +perhaps more agitated than his brother had been at the moment of writing +it. + +"I shall have that golden robe," thought Nanon, who went to sleep +tricked out in her altar-cloth, dreaming for the first time in her life +of flowers, embroidery, and damask, just as Eugenie was dreaming of +love. + + * * * * * + +In the pure and monotonous life of young girls there comes a delicious +hour when the sun sheds its rays into their soul, when the flowers +express their thoughts, when the throbbings of the heart send upward to +the brain their fertilizing warmth and melt all thoughts into a vague +desire,--day of innocent melancholy and of dulcet joys! When babes begin +to see, they smile; when a young girl first perceives the sentiment of +nature, she smiles as she smiled when an infant. If light is the first +love of life, is not love a light to the heart? The moment to see within +the veil of earthly things had come for Eugenie. + +An early riser, like all provincial girls, she was up betimes and said +her prayers, and then began the business of dressing,--a business which +henceforth was to have a meaning. First she brushed and smoothed her +chestnut hair and twisted its heavy masses to the top of her head with +the utmost care, preventing the loose tresses from straying, and giving +to her head a symmetry which heightened the timid candor of her face; +for the simplicity of these accessories accorded well with the innocent +sincerity of its lines. As she washed her hands again and again in +the cold water which hardened and reddened the skin, she looked at her +handsome round arms and asked herself what her cousin did to make his +hands so softly white, his nails so delicately curved. She put on +new stockings and her prettiest shoes. She laced her corset straight, +without skipping a single eyelet. And then, wishing for the first time +in her life to appear to advantage, she felt the joy of having a new +gown, well made, which rendered her attractive. + +As she finished her toilet the clock of the parish church struck the +hour; to her astonishment, it was only seven. The desire of having +plenty of time for dressing carefully had led her to get up too early. +Ignorant of the art of retouching every curl and studying every effect, +Eugenie simply crossed her arms, sat down by the window, and looked +at the court-yard, the narrow garden, and the high terraced walls that +over-topped it: a dismal, hedged-in prospect, yet not wholly devoid +of those mysterious beauties which belong to solitary or uncultivated +nature. Near the kitchen was a well surrounded by a curb, with a +pulley fastened to a bent iron rod clasped by a vine whose leaves +were withered, reddened, and shrivelled by the season. From thence the +tortuous shoots straggled to the wall, clutched it, and ran the whole +length of the house, ending near the wood-pile, where the logs were +ranged with as much precision as the books in a library. The pavement +of the court-yard showed the black stains produced in time by lichens, +herbage, and the absence of all movement or friction. The thick walls +wore a coating of green moss streaked with waving brown lines, and the +eight stone steps at the bottom of the court-yard which led up to the +gate of the garden were disjointed and hidden beneath tall plants, like +the tomb of a knight buried by his widow in the days of the Crusades. +Above a foundation of moss-grown, crumbling stones was a trellis of +rotten wood, half fallen from decay; over them clambered and intertwined +at will a mass of clustering creepers. On each side of the latticed gate +stretched the crooked arms of two stunted apple-trees. Three parallel +walks, gravelled and separated from each other by square beds, where +the earth was held in by box-borders, made the garden, which terminated, +beneath a terrace of the old walls, in a group of lindens. At the +farther end were raspberry-bushes; at the other, near the house, an +immense walnut-tree drooped its branches almost into the window of the +miser's sanctum. + +A clear day and the beautiful autumnal sun common to the banks of the +Loire was beginning to melt the hoar-frost which the night had laid on +these picturesque objects, on the walls, and on the plants which swathed +the court-yard. Eugenie found a novel charm in the aspect of things +lately so insignificant to her. A thousand confused thoughts came to +birth in her mind and grew there, as the sunbeams grew without along the +wall. She felt that impulse of delight, vague, inexplicable, which wraps +the moral being as a cloud wraps the physical body. Her thoughts were +all in keeping with the details of this strange landscape, and the +harmonies of her heart blended with the harmonies of nature. When the +sun reached an angle of the wall where the "Venus-hair" of southern +climes drooped its thick leaves, lit with the changing colors of a +pigeon's breast, celestial rays of hope illumined the future to her +eyes, and thenceforth she loved to gaze upon that piece of wall, on its +pale flowers, its blue harebells, its wilting herbage, with which she +mingled memories as tender as those of childhood. The noise made by each +leaf as it fell from its twig in the void of that echoing court gave +answer to the secret questionings of the young girl, who could have +stayed there the livelong day without perceiving the flight of time. +Then came tumultuous heavings of the soul. She rose often, went to her +glass, and looked at herself, as an author in good faith looks at his +work to criticise it and blame it in his own mind. + +"I am not beautiful enough for him!" Such was Eugenie's thought,--a +humble thought, fertile in suffering. The poor girl did not do herself +justice; but modesty, or rather fear, is among the first of love's +virtues. Eugenie belonged to the type of children with sturdy +constitutions, such as we see among the lesser bourgeoisie, whose +beauties always seem a little vulgar; and yet, though she resembled +the Venus of Milo, the lines of her figure were ennobled by the softer +Christian sentiment which purifies womanhood and gives it a distinction +unknown to the sculptors of antiquity. She had an enormous head, with +the masculine yet delicate forehead of the Jupiter of Phidias, and gray +eyes, to which her chaste life, penetrating fully into them, carried a +flood of light. The features of her round face, formerly fresh and rosy, +were at one time swollen by the small-pox, which destroyed the velvet +texture of the skin, though it kindly left no other traces, and her +cheek was still so soft and delicate that her mother's kiss made a +momentary red mark upon it. Her nose was somewhat too thick, but it +harmonized well with the vermilion mouth, whose lips, creased in many +lines, were full of love and kindness. The throat was exquisitely round. +The bust, well curved and carefully covered, attracted the eye and +inspired reverie. It lacked, no doubt, the grace which a fitting dress +can bestow; but to a connoisseur the non-flexibility of her figure +had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had none of the +prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was beautiful with a beauty +which the spirit recognizes, and none but artists truly love. A painter +seeking here below for a type of Mary's celestial purity, searching +womankind for those proud modest eyes which Raphael divined, for those +virgin lines, often due to chances of conception, which the modesty of +Christian life alone can bestow or keep unchanged,--such a painter, in +love with his ideal, would have found in the face of Eugenie the innate +nobleness that is ignorant of itself; he would have seen beneath the +calmness of that brow a world of love; he would have felt, in the shape +of the eyes, in the fall of the eyelids, the presence of the nameless +something that we call divine. Her features, the contour of her head, +which no expression of pleasure had ever altered or wearied, were like +the lines of the horizon softly traced in the far distance across the +tranquil lakes. That calm and rosy countenance, margined with light like +a lovely full-blown flower, rested the mind, held the eye, and imparted +the charm of the conscience that was there reflected. Eugenie was +standing on the shore of life where young illusions flower, where +daisies are gathered with delights ere long to be unknown; and thus she +said, looking at her image in the glass, unconscious as yet of love: "I +am too ugly; he will not notice me." + +Then she opened the door of her chamber which led to the staircase, and +stretched out her neck to listen for the household noises. "He is not +up," she thought, hearing Nanon's morning cough as the good soul went +and came, sweeping out the halls, lighting her fire, chaining the dog, +and speaking to the beasts in the stable. Eugenie at once went down and +ran to Nanon, who was milking the cow. + +"Nanon, my good Nanon, make a little cream for my cousin's breakfast." + +"Why, mademoiselle, you should have thought of that yesterday," said +Nanon, bursting into a loud peal of laughter. "I can't make cream. Your +cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have seen +him in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He wears +linen as fine as the surplice of monsieur le cure." + +"Nanon, please make us a _galette_." + +"And who'll give me wood for the oven, and flour and butter for the +cakes?" said Nanon, who in her function of prime-minister to Grandet +assumed at times enormous importance in the eyes of Eugenie and her +mother. "Mustn't rob the master to feast the cousin. You ask him for +butter and flour and wood: he's your father, perhaps he'll give you +some. See! there he is now, coming to give out the provisions." + +Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard the +staircase shaking under her father's step. Already she felt the effects +of that virgin modesty and that special consciousness of happiness which +lead us to fancy, not perhaps without reason, that our thoughts are +graven on our foreheads and are open to the eyes of all. Perceiving for +the first time the cold nakedness of her father's house, the poor +girl felt a sort of rage that she could not put it in harmony with her +cousin's elegance. She felt the need of doing something for him,--what, +she did not know. Ingenuous and truthful, she followed her angelic +nature without mistrusting her impressions or her feelings. The mere +sight of her cousin had wakened within her the natural yearnings of a +woman,--yearnings that were the more likely to develop ardently because, +having reached her twenty-third year, she was in the plenitude of her +intelligence and her desires. For the first time in her life her heart +was full of terror at the sight of her father; in him she saw the master +of the fate, and she fancied herself guilty of wrong-doing in hiding +from his knowledge certain thoughts. She walked with hasty steps, +surprised to breathe a purer air, to feel the sun's rays quickening her +pulses, to absorb from their heat a moral warmth and a new life. As +she turned over in her mind some stratagem by which to get the cake, a +quarrel--an event as rare as the sight of swallows in winter--broke out +between la Grande Nanon and Grandet. Armed with his keys, the master had +come to dole out provisions for the day's consumption. + +"Is there any bread left from yesterday?" he said to Nanon. + +"Not a crumb, monsieur." + +Grandet took a large round loaf, well floured and moulded in one of the +flat baskets which they use for baking in Anjou, and was about to cut +it, when Nanon said to him,-- + +"We are five, to-day, monsieur." + +"That's true," said Grandet, "but your loaves weigh six pounds; there'll +be some left. Besides, these young fellows from Paris don't eat bread, +you'll see." + +"Then they must eat _frippe_?" said Nanon. + +_Frippe_ is a word of the local lexicon of Anjou, and means any +accompaniment of bread, from butter which is spread upon it, the +commonest kind of _frippe_, to peach preserve, the most distinguished of +all the _frippes_; those who in their childhood have licked the _frippe_ +and left the bread, will comprehend the meaning of Nanon's speech. + +"No," answered Grandet, "they eat neither bread nor _frippe_; they are +something like marriageable girls." + +After ordering the meals for the day with his usual parsimony, the +goodman, having locked the closets containing the supplies, was about to +go towards the fruit-garden, when Nanon stopped him to say,-- + +"Monsieur, give me a little flour and some butter, and I'll make a +_galette_ for the young ones." + +"Are you going to pillage the house on account of my nephew?" + +"I wasn't thinking any more of your nephew than I was of your dog,--not +more than you think yourself; for, look here, you've only forked out six +bits of sugar. I want eight." + +"What's all this, Nanon? I have never seen you like this before. What +have you got in your head? Are you the mistress here? You sha'n't have +more than six pieces of sugar." + +"Well, then, how is your nephew to sweeten his coffee?" + +"With two pieces; I'll go without myself." + +"Go without sugar at your age! I'd rather buy you some out of my own +pocket." + +"Mind your own business." + +In spite of the recent fall in prices, sugar was still in Grandet's eyes +the most valuable of all the colonial products; to him it was always +six francs a pound. The necessity of economizing it, acquired under the +Empire, had grown to be the most inveterate of his habits. All women, +even the greatest ninnies, know how to dodge and dodge to get their +ends; Nanon abandoned the sugar for the sake of getting the _galette_. + +"Mademoiselle!" she called through the window, "do you want some +_galette_?" + +"No, no," answered Eugenie. + +"Come, Nanon," said Grandet, hearing his daughter's voice. "See here." +He opened the cupboard where the flour was kept, gave her a cupful, and +added a few ounces of butter to the piece he had already cut off. + +"I shall want wood for the oven," said the implacable Nanon. + +"Well, take what you want," he answered sadly; "but in that case you +must make us a fruit-tart, and you'll cook the whole dinner in the oven. +In that way you won't need two fires." + +"Goodness!" cried Nanon, "you needn't tell me that." + +Grandet cast a look that was well-nigh paternal upon his faithful +deputy. + +"Mademoiselle," she cried, when his back was turned, "we shall have the +_galette_." + +Pere Grandet returned from the garden with the fruit and arranged a +plateful on the kitchen-table. + +"Just see, monsieur," said Nanon, "what pretty boots your nephew has. +What leather! why it smells good! What does he clean it with, I wonder? +Am I to put your egg-polish on it?" + +"Nanon, I think eggs would injure that kind of leather. Tell him you +don't know how to black morocco; yes, that's morocco. He will get you +something himself in Saumur to polish those boots with. I have heard +that they put sugar into the blacking to make it shine." + +"They look good to eat," said the cook, putting the boots to her nose. +"Bless me! if they don't smell like madame's eau-de-cologne. Ah! how +funny!" + +"Funny!" said her master. "Do you call it funny to put more money into +boots than the man who stands in them is worth?" + +"Monsieur," she said, when Grandet returned the second time, after +locking the fruit-garden, "won't you have the _pot-au-feu_ put on once +or twice a week on account of your nephew?" + +"Yes." + +"Am I to go to the butcher's?" + +"Certainly not. We will make the broth of fowls; the farmers will bring +them. I shall tell Cornoiller to shoot some crows; they make the best +soup in the world." + +"Isn't it true, monsieur, that crows eat the dead?" + +"You are a fool, Nanon. They eat what they can get, like the rest of the +world. Don't we all live on the dead? What are legacies?" + +Monsieur Grandet, having no further orders to give, drew out his watch, +and seeing that he had half an hour to dispose of before breakfast, he +took his hat, went and kissed his daughter, and said to her: + +"Do you want to come for a walk in the fields, down by the Loire? I have +something to do there." + +Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the +father and daughter went down the winding street to the shore. + +"Where are you going at this early hour?" said Cruchot, the notary, +meeting them. + +"To see something," answered Grandet, not duped by the matutinal +appearance of his friend. + +When Pere Grandet went to "see something," the notary knew by experience +there was something to be got by going with him; so he went. + +"Come, Cruchot," said Grandet, "you are one of my friends. I'll show you +what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good ground." + +"Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for those that +were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?" said Maitre Cruchot, +opening his eyes with amazement. "What luck you have had! To cut down +your trees at the very time they ran short of white-wood at Nantes, and +to sell them at thirty francs!" + +Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most solemn +moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to bring down +upon her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet had now reached +the magnificent fields which he owned on the banks of the Loire, where +thirty workmen were employed in clearing away, filling up, and levelling +the spots formerly occupied by the poplars. + +"Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! Jean," he +cried to a laborer, "m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, b-both ways." + +"Four times eight feet," said the man. + +"Thirty-two feet lost," said Grandet to Cruchot. "I had three hundred +poplars in this one line, isn't that so? Well, then, three h-h-hundred +times thir-thirty-two lost m-m-me five hundred in h-h-hay; add twice as +much for the side rows,--fifteen hundred; the middle rows as much more. +So we may c-c-call it a th-thousand b-b-bales of h-h-hay--" + +"Very good," said Cruchot, to help out his friend; "a thousand bales are +worth about six hundred francs." + +"Say t-t-twelve hundred, be-c-cause there's three or four hundred francs +on the second crop. Well, then, c-c-calculate that t-twelve thousand +francs a year for f-f-forty years with interest c-c-comes to--" + +"Say sixty thousand francs," said the notary. + +"I am willing; c-c-comes t-t-to sixty th-th-thousand. Very good," +continued Grandet, without stuttering: "two thousand poplars forty years +old will only yield me fifty thousand francs. There's a loss. I have +found that myself," said Grandet, getting on his high horse. "Jean, fill +up all the holes except those at the bank of the river; there you are +to plant the poplars I have bought. Plant 'em there, and they'll get +nourishment from the government," he said, turning to Cruchot, and +giving a slight motion to the wen on his nose, which expressed more than +the most ironical of smiles. + +"True enough; poplars should only be planted on poor soil," said +Cruchot, amazed at Grandet's calculations. + +"Y-y-yes, monsieur," answered the old man satirically. + +Eugenie, who was gazing at the sublime scenery of the Loire, and paying +no attention to her father's reckonings, presently turned an ear to the +remarks of Cruchot when she heard him say,-- + +"So you have brought a son-in-law from Paris. All Saumur is talking +about your nephew. I shall soon have the marriage-contract to draw up, +hey! Pere Grandet?" + +"You g-g-got up very early to t-t-tell me that," said Grandet, +accompanying the remark with a motion of his wen. "Well, old +c-c-comrade, I'll be frank, and t-t-tell you what you want t-t-to know. +I would rather, do you see, f-f-fling my daughter into the Loire than +g-g-give her to her c-c-cousin. You may t-t-tell that everywhere,--no, +never mind; let the world t-t-talk." + +This answer dazzled and blinded the young girl with sudden light. The +distant hopes upspringing in her heart bloomed suddenly, became real, +tangible, like a cluster of flowers, and she saw them cut down and +wilting on the earth. Since the previous evening she had attached +herself to Charles by those links of happiness which bind soul to soul; +from henceforth suffering was to rivet them. Is it not the noble destiny +of women to be more moved by the dark solemnities of grief than by the +splendors of fortune? How was it that fatherly feeling had died out of +her father's heart? Of what crime had Charles been guilty? Mysterious +questions! Already her dawning love, a mystery so profound, was wrapping +itself in mystery. She walked back trembling in all her limbs; and when +she reached the gloomy street, lately so joyous to her, she felt its +sadness, she breathed the melancholy which time and events had printed +there. None of love's lessons lacked. A few steps from their own door +she went on before her father and waited at the threshold. But Grandet, +who saw a newspaper in the notary's hand, stopped short and asked,-- + +"How are the Funds?" + +"You never listen to my advice, Grandet," answered Cruchot. "Buy soon; +you will still make twenty per cent in two years, besides getting an +excellent rate of interest,--five thousand a year for eighty thousand +francs fifty centimes." + +"We'll see about that," answered Grandet, rubbing his chin. + +"Good God!" exclaimed the notary. + +"Well, what?" cried Grandet; and at the same moment Cruchot put the +newspaper under his eyes and said: + +"Read that!" + + "Monsieur Grandet, one of the most respected merchants in Paris, + blew his brains out yesterday, after making his usual appearance + at the Bourse. He had sent his resignation to the president of the + Chamber of Deputies, and had also resigned his functions as a + judge of the commercial courts. The failures of Monsieur Roguin + and Monsieur Souchet, his broker and his notary, had ruined him. + The esteem felt for Monsieur Grandet and the credit he enjoyed + were nevertheless such that he might have obtained the necessary + assistance from other business houses. It is much to be regretted + that so honorable a man should have yielded to momentary despair," + etc. + +"I knew it," said the old wine-grower to the notary. + +The words sent a chill of horror through Maitre Cruchot, who, +notwithstanding his impassibility as a notary, felt the cold running +down his spine as he thought that Grandet of Paris had possibly implored +in vain the millions of Grandet of Saumur. + +"And his son, so joyous yesterday--" + +"He knows nothing as yet," answered Grandet, with the same composure. + +"Adieu! Monsieur Grandet," said Cruchot, who now understood the state of +the case, and went off to reassure Monsieur de Bonfons. + +On entering, Grandet found breakfast ready. Madame Grandet, round whose +neck Eugenie had flung her arms, kissing her with the quick effusion of +feeling often caused by secret grief, was already seated in her chair on +castors, knitting sleeves for the coming winter. + +"You can begin to eat," said Nanon, coming downstairs four steps at a +time; "the young one is sleeping like a cherub. Isn't he a darling with +his eyes shut? I went in and I called him: no answer." + +"Let him sleep," said Grandet; "he'll wake soon enough to hear +ill-tidings." + +"What is it?" asked Eugenie, putting into her coffee the two little bits +of sugar weighing less than half an ounce which the old miser amused +himself by cutting up in his leisure hours. Madame Grandet, who did not +dare to put the question, gazed at her husband. + +"His father has blown his brains out." + +"My uncle?" said Eugenie. + +"Poor young man!" exclaimed Madame Grandet. + +"Poor indeed!" said Grandet; "he isn't worth a sou!" + +"Eh! poor boy, and he's sleeping like the king of the world!" said Nanon +in a gentle voice. + +Eugenie stopped eating. Her heart was wrung, as the young heart is wrung +when pity for the suffering of one she loves overflows, for the first +time, the whole being of a woman. The poor girl wept. + +"What are you crying about? You didn't know your uncle," said her +father, giving her one of those hungry tigerish looks he doubtless threw +upon his piles of gold. + +"But, monsieur," said Nanon, "who wouldn't feel pity for the poor young +man, sleeping there like a wooden shoe, without knowing what's coming?" + +"I didn't speak to you, Nanon. Hold your tongue!" + +Eugenie learned at that moment that the woman who loves must be able to +hide her feelings. She did not answer. + +"You will say nothing to him about it, Ma'ame Grandet, till I return," +said the old man. "I have to go and straighten the line of my hedge +along the high-road. I shall be back at noon, in time for the second +breakfast, and then I will talk with my nephew about his affairs. As +for you, Mademoiselle Eugenie, if it is for that dandy you are crying, +that's enough, child. He's going off like a shot to the Indies. You will +never see him again." + +The father took his gloves from the brim of his hat, put them on with +his usual composure, pushed them in place by shoving the fingers of both +hands together, and went out. + +"Mamma, I am suffocating!" cried Eugenie when she was alone with her +mother; "I have never suffered like this." + +Madame Grandet, seeing that she turned pale, opened the window and let +her breathe fresh air. + +"I feel better!" said Eugenie after a moment. + +This nervous excitement in a nature hitherto, to all appearance, calm +and cold, reacted on Madame Grandet; she looked at her daughter with the +sympathetic intuition with which mothers are gifted for the objects of +their tenderness, and guessed all. In truth the life of the Hungarian +sisters, bound together by a freak of nature, could scarcely have been +more intimate than that of Eugenie and her mother,--always together +in the embrasure of that window, and sleeping together in the same +atmosphere. + +"My poor child!" said Madame Grandet, taking Eugenie's head and laying +it upon her bosom. + +At these words the young girl raised her head, questioned her mother by +a look, and seemed to search out her inmost thought. + +"Why send him to the Indies?" she said. "If he is unhappy, ought he not +to stay with us? Is he not our nearest relation?" + +"Yes, my child, it seems natural; but your father has his reasons: we +must respect them." + +The mother and daughter sat down in silence, the former upon her raised +seat, the latter in her little armchair, and both took up their work. +Swelling with gratitude for the full heart-understanding her mother had +given her, Eugenie kissed the dear hand, saying,-- + +"How good you are, my kind mamma!" + +The words sent a glow of light into the motherly face, worn and blighted +as it was by many sorrows. + +"You like him?" asked Eugenie. + +Madame Grandet only smiled in reply. Then, after a moment's silence, she +said in a low voice: "Do you love him already? That is wrong." + +"Wrong?" said Eugenie. "Why is it wrong? You are pleased with him, Nanon +is pleased with him; why should he not please me? Come, mamma, let us +set the table for his breakfast." + +She threw down her work, and her mother did the same, saying, "Foolish +child!" But she sanctioned the child's folly by sharing it. Eugenie +called Nanon. + +"What do you want now, mademoiselle?" + +"Nanon, can we have cream by midday?" + +"Ah! midday, to be sure you can," answered the old servant. + +"Well, let him have his coffee very strong; I heard Monsieur des +Grassins say that they make the coffee very strong in Paris. Put in a +great deal." + +"Where am I to get it?" + +"Buy some." + +"Suppose monsieur meets me?" + +"He has gone to his fields." + +"I'll run, then. But Monsieur Fessard asked me yesterday if the Magi +had come to stay with us when I bought the wax candle. All the town will +know our goings-on." + +"If your father finds it out," said Madame Grandet, "he is capable of +beating us." + +"Well, let him beat us; we will take his blows on our knees." + +Madame Grandet for all answer raised her eyes to heaven. Nanon put on +her hood and went off. Eugenie got out some clean table-linen, and went +to fetch a few bunches of grapes which she had amused herself by hanging +on a string across the attic; she walked softly along the corridor, so +as not to waken her cousin, and she could not help listening at the door +to his quiet breathing. + +"Sorrow is watching while he sleeps," she thought. + +She took the freshest vine-leaves and arranged her dish of grapes as +coquettishly as a practised house-keeper might have done, and placed it +triumphantly on the table. She laid hands on the pears counted out by +her father, and piled them in a pyramid mixed with leaves. She went +and came, and skipped and ran. She would have liked to lay under +contribution everything in her father's house; but the keys were in his +pocket. Nanon came back with two fresh eggs. At sight of them Eugenie +almost hugged her round the neck. + +"The farmer from Lande had them in his basket. I asked him for them, and +he gave them to me, the darling, for nothing, as an attention!" + + + + +V + +After two hours' thought and care, during which Eugenie jumped up twenty +times from her work to see if the coffee were boiling, or to go and +listen to the noise her cousin made in dressing, she succeeded in +preparing a simple little breakfast, very inexpensive, but which, +nevertheless, departed alarmingly from the inveterate customs of the +house. The midday breakfast was always taken standing. Each took a slice +of bread, a little fruit or some butter, and a glass of wine. As Eugenie +looked at the table drawn up near the fire with an arm-chair placed +before her cousin's plate, at the two dishes of fruit, the egg-cup, the +bottle of white wine, the bread, and the sugar heaped up in a saucer, +she trembled in all her limbs at the mere thought of the look her father +would give her if he should come in at that moment. She glanced often +at the clock to see if her cousin could breakfast before the master's +return. + +"Don't be troubled, Eugenie; if your father comes in, I will take it all +upon myself," said Madame Grandet. + +Eugenie could not repress a tear. + +"Oh, my good mother!" she cried, "I have never loved you enough." + +Charles, who had been tramping about his room for some time, singing to +himself, now came down. Happily, it was only eleven o'clock. The true +Parisian! he had put as much dandyism into his dress as if he were in +the chateau of the noble lady then travelling in Scotland. He came into +the room with the smiling, courteous manner so becoming to youth, +which made Eugenie's heart beat with mournful joy. He had taken the +destruction of his castles in Anjou as a joke, and came up to his aunt +gaily. + +"Have you slept well, dear aunt? and you, too, my cousin?" + +"Very well, monsieur; did you?" said Madame Grandet. + +"I? perfectly." + +"You must be hungry, cousin," said Eugenie; "will you take your seat?" + +"I never breakfast before midday; I never get up till then. However, I +fared so badly on the journey that I am glad to eat something at once. +Besides--" here he pulled out the prettiest watch Breguet ever made. +"Dear me! I am early, it is only eleven o'clock!" + +"Early?" said Madame Grandet. + +"Yes; but I wanted to put my things in order. Well, I shall be glad to +have anything to eat,--anything, it doesn't matter what, a chicken, a +partridge." + +"Holy Virgin!" exclaimed Nanon, overhearing the words. + +"A partridge!" whispered Eugenie to herself; she would gladly have given +the whole of her little hoard for a partridge. + +"Come and sit down," said his aunt. + +The young dandy let himself drop into an easy-chair, just as a pretty +woman falls gracefully upon a sofa. Eugenie and her mother took ordinary +chairs and sat beside him, near the fire. + +"Do you always live here?" said Charles, thinking the room uglier by +daylight than it had seemed the night before. + +"Always," answered Eugenie, looking at him, "except during the vintage. +Then we go and help Nanon, and live at the Abbaye des Noyers." + +"Don't you ever take walks?" + +"Sometimes on Sunday after vespers, when the weather is fine," +said Madame Grandet, "we walk on the bridge, or we go and watch the +haymakers." + +"Have you a theatre?" + +"Go to the theatre!" exclaimed Madame Grandet, "see a play! Why, +monsieur, don't you know it is a mortal sin?" + +"See here, monsieur," said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, "here are your +chickens,--in the shell." + +"Oh! fresh eggs," said Charles, who, like all people accustomed to +luxury, had already forgotten about his partridge, "that is delicious: +now, if you will give me the butter, my good girl." + +"Butter! then you can't have the _galette_." + +"Nanon, bring the butter," cried Eugenie. + +The young girl watched her cousin as he cut his sippets, with as much +pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where innocence and virtue +triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming mother, improved, and trained +by a woman of fashion, had the elegant, dainty, foppish movements of +a coxcomb. The compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a young girl +possess a power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles, finding +himself the object of the attentions of his aunt and cousin, could not +escape the influence of feelings which flowed towards him, as it were, +and inundated him. He gave Eugenie a bright, caressing look full of +kindness,--a look which seemed itself a smile. He perceived, as his eyes +lingered upon her, the exquisite harmony of features in the pure face, +the grace of her innocent attitude, the magic clearness of the eyes, +where young love sparkled and desire shone unconsciously. + +"Ah! my dear cousin, if you were in full dress at the Opera, I assure +you my aunt's words would come true,--you would make the men commit the +mortal sin of envy, and the women the sin of jealousy." + +The compliment went to Eugenie's heart and set it beating, though she +did not understand its meaning. + +"Oh! cousin," she said, "you are laughing at a poor little country +girl." + +"If you knew me, my cousin, you would know that I abhor ridicule; it +withers the heart and jars upon all my feelings." Here he swallowed his +buttered sippet very gracefully. "No, I really have not enough mind to +make fun of others; and doubtless it is a great defect. In Paris, when +they want to disparage a man, they say: 'He has a good heart.' The +phrase means: 'The poor fellow is as stupid as a rhinoceros.' But as I +am rich, and known to hit the bull's-eye at thirty paces with any kind +of pistol, and even in the open fields, ridicule respects me." + +"My dear nephew, that bespeaks a good heart." + +"You have a very pretty ring," said Eugenie; "is there any harm in +asking to see it?" + +Charles held out his hand after loosening the ring, and Eugenie blushed +as she touched the pink nails of her cousin with the tips of her +fingers. + +"See, mamma, what beautiful workmanship." + +"My! there's a lot of gold!" said Nanon, bringing in the coffee. + +"What is that?" exclaimed Charles, laughing, as he pointed to an oblong +pot of brown earthenware, glazed on the inside, and edged with a fringe +of ashes, from the bottom of which the coffee-grounds were bubbling up +and falling in the boiling liquid. + +"It is boiled coffee," said Nanon. + +"Ah! my dear aunt, I shall at least leave one beneficent trace of my +visit here. You are indeed behind the age! I must teach you to make good +coffee in a Chaptal coffee-pot." + +He tried to explain the process of a Chaptal coffee-pot. + +"Gracious! if there are so many things as all that to do," said Nanon, +"we may as well give up our lives to it. I shall never make coffee that +way; I know that! Pray, who is to get the fodder for the cow while I +make the coffee?" + +"I will make it," said Eugenie. + +"Child!" said Madame Grandet, looking at her daughter. + +The word recalled to their minds the sorrow that was about to fall upon +the unfortunate young man; the three women were silent, and looked at +him with an air of commiseration that caught his attention. + +"Is anything the matter, my cousin?" he said. + +"Hush!" said Madame Grandet to Eugenie, who was about to answer; +"you know, my daughter, that your father charged us not to speak to +monsieur--" + +"Say Charles," said young Grandet. + +"Ah! you are called Charles? What a beautiful name!" cried Eugenie. + +Presentiments of evil are almost always justified. At this moment Nanon, +Madame Grandet, and Eugenie, who had all three been thinking with a +shudder of the old man's return, heard the knock whose echoes they knew +but too well. + +"There's papa!" said Eugenie. + +She removed the saucer filled with sugar, leaving a few pieces on the +table-cloth; Nanon carried off the egg-cup; Madame Grandet sat up like a +frightened hare. It was evidently a panic, which amazed Charles, who was +wholly unable to understand it. + +"Why! what is the matter?" he asked. + +"My father has come," answered Eugenie. + +"Well, what of that?" + +Monsieur Grandet entered the room, threw his keen eye upon the table, +upon Charles, and saw the whole thing. + +"Ha! ha! so you have been making a feast for your nephew; very good, +very good, very good indeed!" he said, without stuttering. "When the +cat's away, the mice will play." + +"Feast!" thought Charles, incapable of suspecting or imagining the rules +and customs of the household. + +"Give me my glass, Nanon," said the master + +Eugenie brought the glass. Grandet drew a horn-handled knife with a big +blade from his breeches' pocket, cut a slice of bread, took a small bit +of butter, spread it carefully on the bread, and ate it standing. At +this moment Charlie was sweetening his coffee. Pere Grandet saw the +bits of sugar, looked at his wife, who turned pale, and made three steps +forward; he leaned down to the poor woman's ear and said,-- + +"Where did you get all that sugar?" + +"Nanon fetched it from Fessard's; there was none." + +It is impossible to picture the profound interest the three women took +in this mute scene. Nanon had left her kitchen and stood looking into +the room to see what would happen. Charles, having tasted his coffee, +found it bitter and glanced about for the sugar, which Grandet had +already put away. + +"What do you want?" said his uncle. + +"The sugar." + +"Put in more milk," answered the master of the house; "your coffee will +taste sweeter." + +Eugenie took the saucer which Grandet had put away and placed it on the +table, looking calmly at her father as she did so. Most assuredly, +the Parisian woman who held a silken ladder with her feeble arms to +facilitate the flight of her lover, showed no greater courage than +Eugenie displayed when she replaced the sugar upon the table. The lover +rewarded his mistress when she proudly showed him her beautiful bruised +arm, and bathed every swollen vein with tears and kisses till it was +cured with happiness. Charles, on the other hand, never so much as knew +the secret of the cruel agitation that shook and bruised the heart of +his cousin, crushed as it was by the look of the old miser. + +"You are not eating your breakfast, wife." + +The poor helot came forward with a piteous look, cut herself a piece of +bread, and took a pear. Eugenie boldly offered her father some grapes, +saying,-- + +"Taste my preserves, papa. My cousin, you will eat some, will you not? I +went to get these pretty grapes expressly for you." + +"If no one stops them, they will pillage Saumur for you, nephew. When +you have finished, we will go into the garden; I have something to tell +you which can't be sweetened." + +Eugenie and her mother cast a look on Charles whose meaning the young +man could not mistake. + +"What is it you mean, uncle? Since the death of my poor mother"--at +these words his voice softened--"no other sorrow can touch me." + +"My nephew, who knows by what afflictions God is pleased to try us?" +said his aunt. + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta," said Grandet, "there's your nonsense beginning. I +am sorry to see those white hands of yours, nephew"; and he showed the +shoulder-of-mutton fists which Nature had put at the end of his own +arms. "There's a pair of hands made to pick up silver pieces. You've +been brought up to put your feet in the kid out of which we make the +purses we keep our money in. A bad look-out! Very bad!" + +"What do you mean, uncle? I'll be hanged if I understand a single word +of what you are saying." + +"Come!" said Grandet. + +The miser closed the blade of his knife with a snap, drank the last of +his wine, and opened the door. + +"My cousin, take courage!" + +The tone of the young girl struck terror to Charles's heart, and he +followed his terrible uncle, a prey to disquieting thoughts. Eugenie, +her mother, and Nanon went into the kitchen, moved by irresistible +curiosity to watch the two actors in the scene which was about to take +place in the garden, where at first the uncle walked silently ahead of +the nephew. Grandet was not at all troubled at having to tell Charles of +the death of his father; but he did feel a sort of compassion in knowing +him to be without a penny, and he sought for some phrase or formula by +which to soften the communication of that cruel truth. "You have lost +your father," seemed to him a mere nothing to say; fathers die before +their children. But "you are absolutely without means,"--all the +misfortunes of life were summed up in those words! Grandet walked round +the garden three times, the gravel crunching under his heavy step. + +In the crucial moments of life our minds fasten upon the locality where +joys or sorrows overwhelm us. Charles noticed with minute attention the +box-borders of the little garden, the yellow leaves as they fluttered +down, the dilapidated walls, the gnarled fruit-trees,--picturesque +details which were destined to remain forever in his memory, blending +eternally, by the mnemonics that belong exclusively to the passions, +with the recollections of this solemn hour. + +"It is very fine weather, very warm," said Grandet, drawing a long +breath. + +"Yes, uncle; but why--" + +"Well, my lad," answered his uncle, "I have some bad news to give you. +Your father is ill--" + +"Then why am I here?" said Charles. "Nanon," he cried, "order +post-horses! I can get a carriage somewhere?" he added, turning to his +uncle, who stood motionless. + +"Horses and carriages are useless," answered Grandet, looking at +Charles, who remained silent, his eyes growing fixed. "Yes, my poor boy, +you guess the truth,--he is dead. But that's nothing; there is something +worse: he blew out his brains." + +"My father!" + +"Yes, but that's not the worst; the newspapers are all talking about it. +Here, read that." + +Grandet, who had borrowed the fatal article from Cruchot, thrust the +paper under his nephew's eyes. The poor young man, still a child, still +at an age when feelings wear no mask, burst into tears. + +"That's good!" thought Grandet; "his eyes frightened me. He'll be all +right if he weeps,--That is not the worst, my poor nephew," he said +aloud, not noticing whether Charles heard him, "that is nothing; you +will get over it: but--" + +"Never, never! My father! Oh, my father!" + +"He has ruined you, you haven't a penny." + +"What does that matter? My father! Where is my father?" + +His sobs resounded horribly against those dreary walls and reverberated +in the echoes. The three women, filled with pity, wept also; for tears +are often as contagious as laughter. Charles, without listening further +to his uncle, ran through the court and up the staircase to his chamber, +where he threw himself across the bed and hid his face in the sheets, to +weep in peace for his lost parents. + +"The first burst must have its way," said Grandet, entering the +living-room, where Eugenie and her mother had hastily resumed their +seats and were sewing with trembling hands, after wiping their eyes. +"But that young man is good for nothing; his head is more taken up with +the dead than with his money." + +Eugenie shuddered as she heard her father's comment on the most sacred +of all griefs. From that moment she began to judge him. Charles's sobs, +though muffled, still sounded through the sepulchral house; and his deep +groans, which seemed to come from the earth beneath, only ceased towards +evening, after growing gradually feebler. + +"Poor young man!" said Madame Grandet. + +Fatal exclamation! Pere Grandet looked at his wife, at Eugenie, and at +the sugar-bowl. He recollected the extraordinary breakfast prepared for +the unfortunate youth, and he took a position in the middle of the room. + +"Listen to me," he said, with his usual composure. "I hope that you +will not continue this extravagance, Madame Grandet. I don't give you MY +money to stuff that young fellow with sugar." + +"My mother had nothing to do with it," said Eugenie; "it was I who--" + +"Is it because you are of age," said Grandet, interrupting his daughter, +"that you choose to contradict me? Remember, Eugenie--" + +"Father, the son of your brother ought to receive from us--" + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" exclaimed the cooper on four chromatic tones; "the son +of my brother this, my nephew that! Charles is nothing at all to us; he +hasn't a farthing, his father has failed; and when this dandy has cried +his fill, off he goes from here. I won't have him revolutionize my +household." + +"What is 'failing,' father?" asked Eugenie. + +"To fail," answered her father, "is to commit the most dishonorable +action that can disgrace a man." + +"It must be a great sin," said Madame Grandet, "and our brother may be +damned." + +"There, there, don't begin with your litanies!" said Grandet, shrugging +his shoulders. "To fail, Eugenie," he resumed, "is to commit a theft +which the law, unfortunately, takes under its protection. People have +given their property to Guillaume Grandet trusting to his reputation for +honor and integrity; he has made away with it all, and left them nothing +but their eyes to weep with. A highway robber is better than a bankrupt: +the one attacks you and you can defend yourself, he risks his own life; +but the other--in short, Charles is dishonored." + +The words rang in the poor girl's heart and weighed it down with their +heavy meaning. Upright and delicate as a flower born in the depths of +a forest, she knew nothing of the world's maxims, of its deceitful +arguments and specious sophisms; she therefore believed the atrocious +explanation which her father gave her designedly, concealing the +distinction which exists between an involuntary failure and an +intentional one. + +"Father, could you not have prevented such a misfortune?" + +"My brother did not consult me. Besides, he owes four millions." + +"What is a 'million,' father?" she asked, with the simplicity of a child +which thinks it can find out at once all that it wants to know. + +"A million?" said Grandet, "why, it is a million pieces of twenty sous +each, and it takes five twenty sous pieces to make five francs." + +"Dear me!" cried Eugenie, "how could my uncle possibly have had +four millions? Is there any one else in France who ever had so many +millions?" Pere Grandet stroked his chin, smiled, and his wen seemed to +dilate. "But what will become of my cousin Charles?" + +"He is going off to the West Indies by his father's request, and he will +try to make his fortune there." + +"Has he got the money to go with?" + +"I shall pay for his journey as far as--yes, as far as Nantes." + +Eugenie sprang into his arms. + +"Oh, father, how good you are!" + +She kissed him with a warmth that almost made Grandet ashamed of +himself, for his conscience galled him a little. + +"Will it take much time to amass a million?" she asked. + +"Look here!" said the old miser, "you know what a napoleon is? Well, it +takes fifty thousand napoleons to make a million." + +"Mamma, we must say a great many _neuvaines_ for him." + +"I was thinking so," said Madame Grandet. + +"That's the way, always spending my money!" cried the father. "Do you +think there are francs on every bush?" + +At this moment a muffled cry, more distressing than all the others, +echoed through the garrets and struck a chill to the hearts of Eugenie +and her mother. + +"Nanon, go upstairs and see that he does not kill himself," said +Grandet. "Now, then," he added, looking at his wife and daughter, who +had turned pale at his words, "no nonsense, you two! I must leave you; I +have got to see about the Dutchmen who are going away to-day. And then I +must find Cruchot, and talk with him about all this." + +He departed. As soon as he had shut the door Eugenie and her mother +breathed more freely. Until this morning the young girl had never felt +constrained in the presence of her father; but for the last few hours +every moment wrought a change in her feelings and ideas. + +"Mamma, how many louis are there in a cask of wine?" + +"Your father sells his from a hundred to a hundred and fifty francs, +sometimes two hundred,--at least, so I've heard say." + +"Then papa must be rich?" + +"Perhaps he is. But Monsieur Cruchot told me he bought Froidfond two +years ago; that may have pinched him." + +Eugenie, not being able to understand the question of her father's +fortune, stopped short in her calculations. + +"He didn't even see me, the darling!" said Nanon, coming back from her +errand. "He's stretched out like a calf on his bed and crying like the +Madeleine, and that's a blessing! What's the matter with the poor dear +young man!" + +"Let us go and console him, mamma; if any one knocks, we can come down." + +Madame Grandet was helpless against the sweet persuasive tones of her +daughter's voice. Eugenie was sublime: she had become a woman. The two, +with beating hearts, went up to Charles's room. The door was open. +The young man heard and saw nothing; plunged in grief, he only uttered +inarticulate cries. + +"How he loves his father!" said Eugenie in a low voice. + +In the utterance of those words it was impossible to mistake the hopes +of a heart that, unknown to itself, had suddenly become passionate. +Madame Grandet cast a mother's look upon her daughter, and then +whispered in her ear,-- + +"Take care, you will love him!" + +"Love him!" answered Eugenie. "Ah! if you did but know what my father +said to Monsieur Cruchot." + +Charles turned over, and saw his aunt and cousin. + +"I have lost my father, my poor father! If he had told me his secret +troubles we might have worked together to repair them. My God! my poor +father! I was so sure I should see him again that I think I kissed him +quite coldly--" + +Sobs cut short the words. + +"We will pray for him," said Madame Grandet. "Resign yourself to the +will of God." + +"Cousin," said Eugenie, "take courage! Your loss is irreparable; +therefore think only of saving your honor." + +With the delicate instinct of a woman who intuitively puts her mind +into all things, even at the moment when she offers consolation, Eugenie +sought to cheat her cousin's grief by turning his thoughts inward upon +himself. + +"My honor?" exclaimed the young man, tossing aside his hair with an +impatient gesture as he sat up on his bed and crossed his arms. +"Ah! that is true. My uncle said my father had failed." He uttered a +heart-rending cry, and hid his face in his hands. "Leave me, leave me, +cousin! My God! my God! forgive my father, for he must have suffered +sorely!" + +There was something terribly attractive in the sight of this young +sorrow, sincere without reasoning or afterthought. It was a virgin +grief which the simple hearts of Eugenie and her mother were fitted to +comprehend, and they obeyed the sign Charles made them to leave him +to himself. They went downstairs in silence and took their accustomed +places by the window and sewed for nearly an hour without exchanging +a word. Eugenie had seen in the furtive glance that she cast about the +young man's room--that girlish glance which sees all in the twinkling +of an eye--the pretty trifles of his dressing-case, his scissors, his +razors embossed with gold. This gleam of luxury across her cousin's +grief only made him the more interesting to her, possibly by way of +contrast. Never before had so serious an event, so dramatic a sight, +touched the imaginations of these two passive beings, hitherto sunk in +the stillness and calm of solitude. + +"Mamma," said Eugenie, "we must wear mourning for my uncle." + +"Your father will decide that," answered Madame Grandet. + +They relapsed into silence. Eugenie drew her stitches with a uniform +motion which revealed to an observer the teeming thoughts of her +meditation. The first desire of the girl's heart was to share her +cousin's mourning. + + + + +VI + +About four o'clock an abrupt knock at the door struck sharply on the +heart of Madame Grandet. + +"What can have happened to your father?" she said to her daughter. + +Grandet entered joyously. After taking off his gloves, he rubbed his +hands hard enough to take off their skin as well, if his epidermis had +not been tanned and cured like Russia leather,--saving, of course, the +perfume of larch-trees and incense. Presently his secret escaped him. + +"Wife," he said, without stuttering, "I've trapped them all! Our wine +is sold! The Dutch and the Belgians have gone. I walked about the +market-place in front of their inn, pretending to be doing nothing. That +Belgian fellow--you know who I mean--came up to me. The owners of all +the good vineyards have kept back their vintages, intending to wait; +well, I didn't hinder them. The Belgian was in despair; I saw that. In +a minute the bargain was made. He takes my vintage at two hundred francs +the puncheon, half down. He paid me in gold; the notes are drawn. Here +are six louis for you. In three months wines will have fallen." + +These words, uttered in a quiet tone of voice, were nevertheless so +bitterly sarcastic that the inhabitants of Saumur, grouped at this +moment in the market-place and overwhelmed by the news of the sale +Grandet had just effected, would have shuddered had they heard them. +Their panic would have brought the price of wines down fifty per cent at +once. + +"Did you have a thousand puncheons this year, father?" + +"Yes, little one." + +That term applied to his daughter was the superlative expression of the +old miser's joy. + +"Then that makes two hundred thousand pieces of twenty sous each?" + +"Yes, Mademoiselle Grandet." + +"Then, father, you can easily help Charles." + +The amazement, the anger, the stupefaction of Belshazzar when he saw +the _Mene-Tekel-Upharsin_ before his eyes is not to be compared with the +cold rage of Grandet, who, having forgotten his nephew, now found him +enshrined in the heart and calculations of his daughter. + +"What's this? Ever since that dandy put foot in _my_ house everything +goes wrong! You behave as if you had the right to buy sugar-plums and +make feasts and weddings. I won't have that sort of thing. I hope I know +my duty at my time of life! I certainly sha'n't take lessons from my +daughter, or from anybody else. I shall do for my nephew what it is +proper to do, and you have no need to poke your nose into it. As for +you, Eugenie," he added, facing her, "don't speak of this again, or I'll +send you to the Abbaye des Noyers with Nanon, see if I don't; and no +later than to-morrow either, if you disobey me! Where is that fellow, +has he come down yet?" + +"No, my friend," answered Madame Grandet. + +"What is he doing then?" + +"He is weeping for his father," said Eugenie. + +Grandet looked at his daughter without finding a word to say; after all, +he was a father. He made a couple of turns up and down the room, and +then went hurriedly to his secret den to think over an investment he +was meditating in the public Funds. The thinning out of his two thousand +acres of forest land had yielded him six hundred thousand francs: +putting this sum to that derived from the sale of his poplars and to his +other gains for the last year and for the current year, he had amassed a +total of nine hundred thousand francs, without counting the two hundred +thousand he had got by the sale just concluded. The twenty per cent +which Cruchot assured him would gain in a short time from the Funds, +then quoted at seventy, tempted him. He figured out his calculation +on the margin of the newspaper which gave the account of his brother's +death, all the while hearing the moans of his nephew, but without +listening to them. Nanon came and knocked on the wall to summon him to +dinner. On the last step of the staircase he was saying to himself as he +came down,-- + +"I'll do it; I shall get eight per cent interest. In two years I shall +have fifteen hundred thousand francs, which I will then draw out in good +gold,--Well, where's my nephew?" + +"He says he doesn't want anything to eat," answered Nanon; "that's not +good for him." + +"So much saved," retorted her master. + +"That's so," she said. + +"Bah! he won't cry long. Hunger drives the wolves out of the woods." + +The dinner was eaten in silence. + +"My good friend," said Madame Grandet, when the cloth was removed, "we +must put on mourning." + +"Upon my word, Madame Grandet! what will you invent next to spend money +on? Mourning is in the heart, and not in the clothes." + +"But mourning for a brother is indispensable; and the Church commands us +to--" + +"Buy your mourning out of your six louis. Give me a hat-band; that's +enough for me." + +Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven without uttering a word. Her generous +instincts, slumbering and long repressed but now suddenly and for the +first time awakened, were galled at every turn. The evening passed to +all appearance like a thousand other evenings of their monotonous life, +yet it was certainly the most horrible. Eugenie sewed without raising +her head, and did not use the workbox which Charles had despised the +night before. Madame Grandet knitted her sleeves. Grandet twirled his +thumbs for four hours, absorbed in calculations whose results were on +the morrow to astonish Saumur. No one came to visit the family that +day. The whole town was ringing with the news of the business trick just +played by Grandet, the failure of his brother, and the arrival of his +nephew. Obeying the desire to gossip over their mutual interests, all +the upper and middle-class wine-growers in Saumur met at Monsieur des +Grassins, where terrible imprecations were being fulminated against the +ex-mayor. Nanon was spinning, and the whirr of her wheel was the only +sound heard beneath the gray rafters of that silent hall. + +"We don't waste our tongues," she said, showing her teeth, as large and +white as peeled almonds. + +"Nothing should be wasted," answered Grandet, rousing himself from his +reverie. He saw a perspective of eight millions in three years, and he +was sailing along that sheet of gold. "Let us go to bed. I will bid +my nephew good-night for the rest of you, and see if he will take +anything." + +Madame Grandet remained on the landing of the first storey to hear the +conversation that was about to take place between the goodman and his +nephew. Eugenie, bolder than her mother, went up two stairs. + +"Well, nephew, you are in trouble. Yes, weep, that's natural. A father +is a father; but we must bear our troubles patiently. I am a good uncle +to you, remember that. Come, take courage! Will you have a little glass +of wine?" (Wine costs nothing in Saumur, and they offer it as tea is +offered in China.) "Why!" added Grandet, "you have got no light! That's +bad, very bad; you ought to see what you are about," and he walked to +the chimney-piece. "What's this?" he cried. "A wax candle! How the +devil did they filch a wax candle? The spendthrifts would tear down the +ceilings of my house to boil the fellow's eggs." + +Hearing these words, mother and daughter slipped back into their rooms +and burrowed in their beds, with the celerity of frightened mice getting +back to their holes. + +"Madame Grandet, have you found a mine?" said the man, coming into the +chamber of his wife. + +"My friend, wait; I am saying my prayers," said the poor mother in a +trembling voice. + +"The devil take your good God!" growled Grandet in reply. + +Misers have no belief in a future life; the present is their all in all. +This thought casts a terrible light upon our present epoch, in which, +far more than at any former period, money sways the laws and politics +and morals. Institutions, books, men, and dogmas, all conspire to +undermine belief in a future life,--a belief upon which the social +edifice has rested for eighteen hundred years. The grave, as a means of +transition, is little feared in our day. The future, which once opened +to us beyond the requiems, has now been imported into the present. To +obtain _per fas et nefas_ a terrestrial paradise of luxury and earthly +enjoyment, to harden the heart and macerate the body for the sake of +fleeting possessions, as the martyrs once suffered all things to reach +eternal joys, this is now the universal thought--a thought written +everywhere, even in the very laws which ask of the legislator, "What do +you pay?" instead of asking him, "What do you think?" When this doctrine +has passed down from the bourgeoisie to the populace, where will this +country be? + +"Madame Grandet, have you done?" asked the old man. + +"My friend, I am praying for you." + +"Very good! Good-night; to-morrow morning we will have a talk." + +The poor woman went to sleep like a schoolboy who, not having learned +his lessons, knows he will see his master's angry face on the morrow. At +the moment when, filled with fear, she was drawing the sheet above her +head that she might stifle hearing, Eugenie, in her night-gown and with +naked feet, ran to her side and kissed her brow. + +"Oh! my good mother," she said, "to-morrow I will tell him it was I." + +"No; he would send you to Noyers. Leave me to manage it; he cannot eat +me." + +"Do you hear, mamma?" + +"What?" + +"_He_ is weeping still." + +"Go to bed, my daughter; you will take cold in your feet: the floor is +damp." + + * * * * * + +Thus passed the solemn day which was destined to weight upon the whole +life of the rich and poor heiress, whose sleep was never again to be +so calm, nor yet so pure, as it had been up to this moment. It often +happens that certain actions of human life seem, literally speaking, +improbable, though actual. Is not this because we constantly omit +to turn the stream of psychological light upon our impulsive +determinations, and fail to explain the subtile reasons, mysteriously +conceived in our minds, which impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie's deep +passion should be analyzed in its most delicate fibres; for it became, +scoffers might say, a malady which influenced her whole existence. Many +people prefer to deny results rather than estimate the force of ties and +links and bonds, which secretly join one fact to another in the moral +order. Here, therefore, Eugenie's past life will offer to observers +of human nature an explanation of her naive want of reflection and the +suddenness of the emotions which overflowed her soul. The more tranquil +her life had been, the more vivid was her womanly pity, the more +simple-minded were the sentiments now developed in her soul. + +Made restless by the events of the day, she woke at intervals to listen +to her cousin, thinking she heard the sighs which still echoed in her +heart. Sometimes she saw him dying of his trouble, sometimes she dreamed +that he fainted from hunger. Towards morning she was certain that she +heard a startling cry. She dressed at once and ran, in the dawning +light, with a swift foot to her cousin's chamber, the door of which +he had left open. The candle had burned down to the socket. Charles, +overcome by nature, was sleeping, dressed and sitting in an armchair +beside the bed, on which his head rested; he dreamed as men dream on +an empty stomach. Eugenie might weep at her ease; she might admire +the young and handsome face blotted with grief, the eyes swollen with +weeping, that seemed, sleeping as they were, to well forth tears. +Charles felt sympathetically the young girl's presence; he opened his +eyes and saw her pitying him. + +"Pardon me, my cousin," he said, evidently not knowing the hour nor the +place in which he found himself. + +"There are hearts who hear you, cousin, and _we_ thought you might need +something. You should go to bed; you tire yourself by sitting thus." + +"That is true." + +"Well, then, adieu!" + +She escaped, ashamed and happy at having gone there. Innocence alone can +dare to be so bold. Once enlightened, virtue makes her calculations as +well as vice. Eugenie, who had not trembled beside her cousin, could +scarcely stand upon her legs when she regained her chamber. Her ignorant +life had suddenly come to an end; she reasoned, she rebuked herself with +many reproaches. + +"What will he think of me? He will think that I love him!" + +That was what she most wished him to think. An honest love has its own +prescience, and knows that love begets love. What an event for this poor +solitary girl thus to have entered the chamber of a young man! Are there +not thoughts and actions in the life of love which to certain souls bear +the full meaning of the holiest espousals? An hour later she went to +her mother and dressed her as usual. Then they both came down and sat +in their places before the window waiting for Grandet, with that cruel +anxiety which, according to the individual character, freezes the +heart or warms it, shrivels or dilates it, when a scene is feared, a +punishment expected,--a feeling so natural that even domestic animals +possess it, and whine at the slightest pain of punishment, though they +make no outcry when they inadvertently hurt themselves. The goodman came +down; but he spoke to his wife with an absent manner, kissed Eugenie, +and sat down to table without appearing to remember his threats of the +night before. + +"What has become of my nephew? The lad gives no trouble." + +"Monsieur, he is asleep," answered Nanon. + +"So much the better; he won't want a wax candle," said Grandet in a +jeering tone. + +This unusual clemency, this bitter gaiety, struck Madame Grandet with +amazement, and she looked at her husband attentively. The goodman--here +it may be well to explain that in Touraine, Anjou, Pitou, and Bretagne +the word "goodman," already used to designate Grandet, is bestowed as +often upon harsh and cruel men as upon those of kindly temperament, when +either have reached a certain age; the title means nothing on the score +of individual gentleness--the goodman took his hat and gloves, saying as +he went out,-- + +"I am going to loiter about the market-place and find Cruchot." + +"Eugenie, your father certainly has something on his mind." + +Grandet, who was a poor sleeper, employed half his nights in the +preliminary calculations which gave such astonishing accuracy to his +views and observations and schemes, and secured to them the unfailing +success at sight of which his townsmen stood amazed. All human power is +a compound of time and patience. Powerful beings will and wait. The life +of a miser is the constant exercise of human power put to the service of +self. It rests on two sentiments only,--self-love and self-interest; +but self-interest being to a certain extent compact and intelligent +self-love, the visible sign of real superiority, it follows that +self-love and self-interest are two parts of the same whole,--egotism. +From this arises, perhaps, the excessive curiosity shown in the habits +of a miser's life whenever they are put before the world. Every nature +holds by a thread to those beings who challenge all human sentiments by +concentrating all in one passion. Where is the man without desire? and +what social desire can be satisfied without money? + +Grandet unquestionably "had something on his mind," to use his wife's +expression. There was in him, as in all misers, a persistent craving to +play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally. To +impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual proof +that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who suffer +themselves to be preyed upon in this world. Oh! who has ever truly +understood the lamb lying peacefully at the feet of God?--touching +emblem of all terrestrial victims, myth of their future, suffering and +weakness glorified! This lamb it is which the miser fattens, puts in his +fold, slaughters, cooks, eats, and then despises. The pasture of misers +is compounded of money and disdain. During the night Grandet's ideas had +taken another course, which was the reason of his sudden clemency. He +had hatched a plot by which to trick the Parisians, to decoy and dupe +and snare them, to drive them into a trap, and make them go and come and +sweat and hope and turn pale,--a plot by which to amuse himself, the old +provincial cooper, sitting there beneath his gloomy rafters, or passing +up and down the rotten staircase of his house in Saumur. His nephew +filled his mind. He wished to save the honor of his dead brother without +the cost of a penny to the son or to himself. His own funds he was about +to invest for three years; he had therefore nothing further to do than +to manage his property in Saumur. He needed some nutriment for his +malicious activity, and he found it suddenly in his brother's failure. +Feeling nothing to squeeze between his own paws, he resolved to crush +the Parisians in behalf of Charles, and to play the part of a good +brother on the cheapest terms. The honor of the family counted for so +little in this scheme that his good intentions might be likened to the +interest a gambler takes in seeing a game well played in which he has no +stake. The Cruchots were a necessary part of his plan; but he would not +seek them,--he resolved to make them come to him, and to lead up that +very evening to a comedy whose plot he had just conceived, which should +make him on the morrow an object of admiration to the whole town without +its costing him a single penny. + +In her father's absence Eugenie had the happiness of busying herself +openly with her much-loved cousin, of spending upon him fearlessly +the treasures of her pity,--woman's sublime superiority, the sole she +desires to have recognized, the sole she pardons man for letting +her assume. Three or four times the young girl went to listen to her +cousin's breathing, to know if he were sleeping or awake; then, when he +had risen, she turned her thoughts to the cream, the eggs, the fruits, +the plates, the glasses,--all that was a part of his breakfast became +the object of some special care. At length she ran lightly up the old +staircase to listen to the noise her cousin made. Was he dressing? Did +he still weep? She reached the door. + +"My cousin!" + +"Yes, cousin." + +"Will you breakfast downstairs, or in your room?" + +"Where you like." + +"How do you feel?" + +"Dear cousin, I am ashamed of being hungry." + +This conversation, held through the closed door, was like an episode in +a poem to Eugenie. + +"Well, then, we will bring your breakfast to your own room, so as not to +annoy my father." + +She ran to the kitchen with the swiftness and lightness of a bird. + +"Nanon, go and do his room!" + +That staircase, so often traversed, which echoed to the slightest noise, +now lost its decaying aspect in the eyes of Eugenie. It grew luminous; +it had a voice and spoke to her; it was young like herself,--young like +the love it was now serving. Her mother, her kind, indulgent mother, +lent herself to the caprices of the child's love, and after the room +was put in order, both went to sit with the unhappy youth and keep him +company. Does not Christian charity make consolation a duty? The two +women drew a goodly number of little sophistries from their religion +wherewith to justify their conduct. Charles was made the object of the +tenderest and most loving care. His saddened heart felt the sweetness +of the gentle friendship, the exquisite sympathy which these two souls, +crushed under perpetual restraint, knew so well how to display when, for +an instant, they were left unfettered in the regions of suffering, their +natural sphere. + +Claiming the right of relationship, Eugenie began to fold the linen and +put in order the toilet articles which Charles had brought; thus she +could marvel at her ease over each luxurious bauble and the various +knick-knacks of silver or chased gold, which she held long in her hand +under a pretext of examining them. Charles could not see without emotion +the generous interest his aunt and cousin felt in him; he knew society +in Paris well enough to feel assured that, placed as he now was, he +would find all hearts indifferent or cold. Eugenie thus appeared to him +in the splendor of a special beauty, and from thenceforth he admired +the innocence of life and manners which the previous evening he had been +inclined to ridicule. So when Eugenie took from Nanon the bowl of coffee +and cream, and began to pour it out for her cousin with the simplicity +of real feeling, giving him a kindly glance, the eyes of the Parisian +filled with tears; he took her hand and kissed it. + +"What troubles you?" she said. + +"Oh! these are tears of gratitude," he answered. + +Eugenie turned abruptly to the chimney-piece to take the candlesticks. + +"Here, Nanon, carry them away!" she said. + +When she looked again towards her cousin she was still blushing, but her +looks could at least deceive, and did not betray the excess of joy which +innundated her heart; yet the eyes of both expressed the same sentiment +as their souls flowed together in one thought,--the future was theirs. +This soft emotion was all the more precious to Charles in the midst +of his heavy grief because it was wholly unexpected. The sound of the +knocker recalled the women to their usual station. Happily they were +able to run downstairs with sufficient rapidity to be seated at their +work when Grandet entered; had he met them under the archway it would +have been enough to rouse his suspicions. After breakfast, which the +goodman took standing, the keeper from Froidfond, to whom the promised +indemnity had never yet been paid, made his appearance, bearing a hare +and some partridges shot in the park, with eels and two pike sent as +tribute by the millers. + +"Ha, ha! poor Cornoiller; here he comes, like fish in Lent. Is all that +fit to eat?" + +"Yes, my dear, generous master; it has been killed two days." + +"Come, Nanon, bestir yourself," said Grandet; "take these things, +they'll do for dinner. I have invited the two Cruchots." + +Nanon opened her eyes, stupid with amazement, and looked at everybody in +the room. + +"Well!" she said, "and how am I to get the lard and the spices?" + +"Wife," said Grandet, "give Nanon six francs, and remind me to get some +of the good wine out of the cellar." + +"Well, then, Monsieur Grandet," said the keeper, who had come prepared +with an harangue for the purpose of settling the question of the +indemnity, "Monsieur Grandet--" + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" said Grandet; "I know what you want to say. You are a +good fellow; we will see about it to-morrow, I'm too busy to-day. Wife, +give him five francs," he added to Madame Grandet as he decamped. + +The poor woman was only too happy to buy peace at the cost of eleven +francs. She knew that Grandet would let her alone for a fortnight after +he had thus taken back, franc by franc, the money he had given her. + +"Here, Cornoiller," she said, slipping ten francs into the man's hand, +"some day we will reward your services." + +Cornoiller could say nothing, so he went away. + +"Madame," said Nanon, who had put on her black coif and taken her +basket, "I want only three francs. You keep the rest; it'll go fast +enough somehow." + +"Have a good dinner, Nanon; my cousin will come down," said Eugenie. + +"Something very extraordinary is going on, I am certain of it," said +Madame Grandet. "This is only the third time since our marriage that +your father has given a dinner." + + * * * * * + +About four o'clock, just as Eugenie and her mother had finished setting +the table for six persons, and after the master of the house had brought +up a few bottles of the exquisite wine which provincials cherish with +true affection, Charles came down into the hall. The young fellow was +pale; his gestures, the expression of his face, his glance, and the +tones of his voice, all had a sadness which was full of grace. He was +not pretending grief, he truly suffered; and the veil of pain cast over +his features gave him an interesting air dear to the heart of women. +Eugenie loved him the more for it. Perhaps she felt that sorrow drew him +nearer to her. Charles was no longer the rich and distinguished young +man placed in a sphere far above her, but a relation plunged into +frightful misery. Misery begets equality. Women have this in common with +the angels,--suffering humanity belongs to them. Charles and Eugenie +understood each other and spoke only with their eyes; for the poor +fallen dandy, orphaned and impoverished, sat apart in a corner of the +room, and was proudly calm and silent. Yet, from time to time, the +gentle and caressing glance of the young girl shone upon him and +constrained him away from his sad thoughts, drawing him with her into +the fields of hope and of futurity, where she loved to hold him at her +side. + + + + +VII + +At this moment the town of Saumur was more excited about the dinner +given by Grandet to the Cruchots than it had been the night before at +the sale of his vintage, though that constituted a crime of high-treason +against the whole wine-growing community. If the politic old miser had +given his dinner from the same idea that cost the dog of Alcibiades his +tail, he might perhaps have been called a great man; but the fact is, +considering himself superior to a community which he could trick on all +occasions, he paid very little heed to what Saumur might say. + +The des Grassins soon learned the facts of the failure and the violent +death of Guillaume Grandet, and they determined to go to their client's +house that very evening to commiserate his misfortune and show him some +marks of friendship, with a view of ascertaining the motives which had +led him to invite the Cruchots to dinner. At precisely five o'clock +Monsieur C. de Bonfons and his uncle the notary arrived in their +Sunday clothes. The party sat down to table and began to dine with good +appetites. Grandet was grave, Charles silent, Eugenie dumb, and Madame +Grandet did not say more than usual; so that the dinner was, very +properly, a repast of condolence. When they rose from table Charles said +to his aunt and uncle,-- + +"Will you permit me to retire? I am obliged to undertake a long and +painful correspondence." + +"Certainly, nephew." + +As soon as the goodman was certain that Charles could hear nothing and +was probably deep in his letter-writing, he said, with a dissimulating +glance at his wife,-- + +"Madame Grandet, what we have to talk about will be Latin to you; it +is half-past seven; you can go and attend to your household accounts. +Good-night, my daughter." + +He kissed Eugenie, and the two women departed. A scene now took place in +which Pere Grandet brought to bear, more than at any other moment of his +life, the shrewd dexterity he had acquired in his intercourse with +men, and which had won him from those whose flesh he sometimes bit +too sharply the nickname of "the old dog." If the mayor of Saumur had +carried his ambition higher still, if fortunate circumstances, drawing +him towards the higher social spheres, had sent him into congresses +where the affairs of nations were discussed, and had he there employed +the genius with which his personal interests had endowed him, he would +undoubtedly have proved nobly useful to his native land. Yet it is +perhaps equally certain that outside of Saumur the goodman would have +cut a very sorry figure. Possibly there are minds like certain animals +which cease to breed when transplanted from the climates in which they +are born. + +"M-m-mon-sieur le p-p-president, you said t-t-that b-b-bankruptcy--" + +The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited +him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes +complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural +defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that +while they listened they unconsciously made faces and moved their lips, +as if pronouncing the words over which he was hesitating and stuttering +at will. Here it may be well to give the history of this impediment +of the speech and hearing of Monsieur Grandet. No one in Anjou heard +better, or could pronounce more crisply the French language (with an +Angevin accent) than the wily old cooper. Some years earlier, in spite +of his shrewdness, he had been taken in by an Israelite, who in the +course of the discussion held his hand behind his ear to catch sounds, +and mangled his meaning so thoroughly in trying to utter his words that +Grandet fell a victim to his humanity and was compelled to prompt the +wily Jew with the words and ideas he seemed to seek, to complete himself +the arguments of the said Jew, to say what that cursed Jew ought to have +said for himself; in short, to be the Jew instead of being Grandet. When +the cooper came out of this curious encounter he had concluded the only +bargain of which in the course of a long commercial life he ever had +occasion to complain. But if he lost at the time pecuniarily, he gained +morally a valuable lesson; later, he gathered its fruits. Indeed, the +goodman ended by blessing that Jew for having taught him the art of +irritating his commercial antagonist and leading him to forget his own +thoughts in his impatience to suggest those over which his tormentor +was stuttering. No affair had ever needed the assistance of deafness, +impediments of speech, and all the incomprehensible circumlocutions with +which Grandet enveloped his ideas, as much as the affair now in hand. In +the first place, he did not mean to shoulder the responsibility of +his own scheme; in the next, he was determined to remain master of the +conversation and to leave his real intentions in doubt. + +"M-m-monsieur de B-B-Bonfons,"--for the second time in three years +Grandet called the Cruchot nephew Monsieur de Bonfons; the +president felt he might consider himself the artful old fellow's +son-in-law,--"you-ou said th-th-that b-b-bankruptcy c-c-could, in some +c-c-cases, b-b-be p-p-prevented b-b-by--" + +"By the courts of commerce themselves. It is done constantly," said +Monsieur C. de Bonfons, bestriding Grandet's meaning, or thinking he +guessed it, and kindly wishing to help him out with it. "Listen." + +"Y-yes," said Grandet humbly, with the mischievous expression of a boy +who is inwardly laughing at his teacher while he pays him the greatest +attention. + +"When a man so respected and important as, for example, your late +brother--" + +"M-my b-b-brother, yes." + +"--is threatened with insolvency--" + +"They c-c-call it in-ins-s-solvency?" + +"Yes; when his failure is imminent, the court of commerce, to which he +is amenable (please follow me attentively), has the power, by a decree, +to appoint a receiver. Liquidation, you understand, is not the same +as failure. When a man fails, he is dishonored; but when he merely +liquidates, he remains an honest man." + +"T-t-that's very d-d-different, if it d-d-doesn't c-c-cost m-m-more," +said Grandet. + +"But a liquidation can be managed without having recourse to the courts +at all. For," said the president, sniffing a pinch of snuff, "don't you +know how failures are declared?" + +"N-n-no, I n-n-never t-t-thought," answered Grandet. + +"In the first place," resumed the magistrate, "by filing the schedule +in the record office of the court, which the merchant may do himself, or +his representative for him with a power of attorney duly certified. In +the second place, the failure may be declared under compulsion from the +creditors. Now if the merchant does not file his schedule, and if no +creditor appears before the courts to obtain a decree of insolvency +against the merchant, what happens?" + +"W-w-what h-h-happens?" + +"Why, the family of the deceased, his representatives, his heirs, or +the merchant himself, if he is not dead, or his friends if he is only +hiding, liquidate his business. Perhaps you would like to liquidate your +brother's affairs?" + +"Ah! Grandet," said the notary, "that would be the right thing to do. +There is honor down here in the provinces. If you save your name--for it +is your name--you will be a man--" + +"A noble man!" cried the president, interrupting his uncle. + +"Certainly," answered the old man, "my b-b-brother's name was +G-G-Grandet, like m-m-mine. Th-that's c-c-certain; I d-d-don't d-d-deny +it. And th-th-this l-l-liquidation might be, in m-m-many ways, v-v-very +advan-t-t-tageous t-t-to the interests of m-m-my n-n-nephew, whom +I l-l-love. But I must consider. I don't k-k-know the t-t-tricks of +P-P-Paris. I b-b-belong to Sau-m-mur, d-d-don't you see? M-m-my vines, +my d-d-drains--in short, I've my own b-b-business. I never g-g-give +n-n-notes. What are n-n-notes? I t-t-take a good m-m-many, but I +have never s-s-signed one. I d-d-don't understand such things. I have +h-h-heard say that n-n-notes c-c-can be b-b-bought up." + +"Of course," said the president. "Notes can be bought in the market, +less so much per cent. Don't you understand?" + +Grandet made an ear-trumpet of his hand, and the president repeated his +words. + +"Well, then," replied the man, "there's s-s-something to be g-g-got out +of it? I k-know n-nothing at my age about such th-th-things. I l-l-live +here and l-l-look after the v-v-vines. The vines g-g-grow, and it's the +w-w-wine that p-p-pays. L-l-look after the v-v-vintage, t-t-that's my +r-r-rule. My c-c-chief interests are at Froidfond. I c-c-can't l-l-leave +my h-h-house to m-m-muddle myself with a d-d-devilish b-b-business +I kn-know n-n-nothing about. You say I ought to l-l-liquidate my +b-b-brother's af-f-fairs, to p-p-prevent the f-f-failure. I c-c-can't be +in two p-p-places at once, unless I were a little b-b-bird, and--" + +"I understand," cried the notary. "Well, my old friend, you have +friends, old friends, capable of devoting themselves to your interests." + +"All right!" thought Grandet, "make haste and come to the point!" + +"Suppose one of them went to Paris and saw your brother Guillaume's +chief creditor and said to him--" + +"One m-m-moment," interrupted the goodman, "said wh-wh-what? Something +l-l-like this. Monsieur Gr-Grandet of Saumur this, Monsieur Grandet of +Saumur that. He l-loves his b-b-brother, he loves his n-nephew. Grandet +is a g-g-good uncle; he m-m-means well. He has sold his v-v-vintage. +D-d-don't declare a f-f-failure; c-c-call a meeting; l-l-liquidate; and +then Gr-Gr-Grandet will see what he c-c-can do. B-b-better liquidate +than l-let the l-l-law st-st-stick its n-n-nose in. Hein? isn't it so?" + +"Exactly so," said the president. + +"B-because, don't you see, Monsieur de B-Bonfons, a man must l-l-look +b-b-before he l-leaps. If you c-c-can't, you c-c-can't. M-m-must know +all about the m-m-matter, all the resources and the debts, if you +d-d-don't want to be r-r-ruined. Hein? isn't it so?" + +"Certainly," said the president. "I'm of opinion that in a few months +the debts might be bought up for a certain sum, and then paid in full +by an agreement. Ha! ha! you can coax a dog a long way if you show him a +bit of lard. If there has been no declaration of failure, and you hold +a lien on the debts, you come out of the business as white as the driven +snow." + +"Sn-n-now," said Grandet, putting his hand to his ear, "wh-wh-what about +s-now?" + +"But," cried the president, "do pray attend to what I am saying." + +"I am at-t-tending." + +"A note is merchandise,--an article of barter which rises and falls in +prices. That is a deduction from Jeremy Bentham's theory about usury. +That writer has proved that the prejudice which condemned usurers to +reprobation was mere folly." + +"Whew!" ejaculated the goodman. + +"Allowing that money, according to Bentham, is an article of +merchandise, and that whatever represents money is equally merchandise," +resumed the president; "allowing also that it is notorious that the +commercial note, bearing this or that signature, is liable to the +fluctuation of all commercial values, rises or falls in the market, +is dear at one moment, and is worth nothing at another, the courts +decide--ah! how stupid I am, I beg your pardon--I am inclined to think +you could buy up your brother's debts for twenty-five per cent." + +"D-d-did you c-c-call him Je-Je-Jeremy B-Ben?" + +"Bentham, an Englishman.' + +"That's a Jeremy who might save us a lot of lamentations in business," +said the notary, laughing. + +"Those Englishmen s-sometimes t-t-talk sense," said Grandet. "So, +ac-c-cording to Ben-Bentham, if my b-b-brother's n-notes are worth +n-n-nothing; if Je-Je--I'm c-c-correct, am I not? That seems c-c-clear +to my m-m-mind--the c-c-creditors would be--No, would not be; I +understand." + +"Let me explain it all," said the president. "Legally, if you acquire a +title to all the debts of the Maison Grandet, your brother or his heirs +will owe nothing to any one. Very good." + +"Very g-good," repeated Grandet. + +"In equity, if your brother's notes are negotiated--negotiated, do you +clearly understand the term?--negotiated in the market at a reduction +of so much per cent in value, and if one of your friends happening to be +present should buy them in, the creditors having sold them of their +own free-will without constraint, the estate of the late Grandet is +honorably released." + +"That's t-true; b-b-business is b-business," said the cooper. "B-b-but, +st-still, you know, it is d-d-difficult. I h-have n-no m-m-money and +n-no t-t-time." + +"Yes, but you need not undertake it. I am quite ready to go to Paris +(you may pay my expenses, they will only be a trifle). I will see +the creditors and talk with them and get an extension of time, and +everything can be arranged if you will add something to the assets so as +to buy up all title to the debts." + +"We-we'll see about th-that. I c-c-can't and I w-w-won't bind myself +without--He who c-c-can't, can't; don't you see?" + +"That's very true." + +"I'm all p-p-put ab-b-bout by what you've t-t-told me. This is the +f-first t-t-time in my life I have b-been obliged to th-th-think--" + +"Yes, you are not a lawyer." + +"I'm only a p-p-poor wine-g-grower, and know n-nothing about wh-what you +have just t-told me; I m-m-must th-think about it." + +"Very good," said the president, preparing to resume his argument. + +"Nephew!" said the notary, interrupting him in a warning tone. + +"Well, what, uncle?" answered the president. + +"Let Monsieur Grandet explain his own intentions. The matter in question +is of the first importance. Our good friend ought to define his meaning +clearly, and--" + +A loud knock, which announced the arrival of the des Grassins family, +succeeded by their entrance and salutations, hindered Cruchot from +concluding his sentence. The notary was glad of the interruption, for +Grandet was beginning to look suspiciously at him, and the wen gave +signs of a brewing storm. In the first place, the notary did not think +it becoming in a president of the Civil courts to go to Paris and +manipulate creditors and lend himself to an underhand job which clashed +with the laws of strict integrity; moreover, never having known old +Grandet to express the slightest desire to pay anything, no matter what, +he instinctively feared to see his nephew taking part in the affair. +He therefore profited by the entrance of the des Grassins to take the +nephew by the arm and lead him into the embrasure of the window,-- + +"You have said enough, nephew; you've shown enough devotion. Your desire +to win the girl blinds you. The devil! you mustn't go at it tooth and +nail. Let me sail the ship now; you can haul on the braces. Do you think +it right to compromise your dignity as a magistrate in such a--" + +He stopped, for he heard Monsieur des Grassins saying to the old cooper +as they shook hands,-- + +"Grandet, we have heard of the frightful misfortunes which have just +befallen your family,--the failure of the house of Guillaume Grandet and +the death of your brother. We have come to express our grief at these +sad events." + +"There is but one sad event," said the notary, interrupting the +banker,--"the death of Monsieur Grandet, junior; and he would never have +killed himself had he thought in time of applying to his brother for +help. Our old friend, who is honorable to his finger-nails, intends +to liquidate the debts of the Maison Grandet of Paris. To save him the +worry of legal proceedings, my nephew, the president, has just offered +to go to Paris and negotiate with the creditors for a satisfactory +settlement." + +These words, corroborated by Grandet's attitude as he stood silently +nursing his chin, astonished the three des Grassins, who had been +leisurely discussing the old man's avarice as they came along, very +nearly accusing him of fratricide. + +"Ah! I was sure of it," cried the banker, looking at his wife. "What did +I tell you just now, Madame des Grassins? Grandet is honorable to the +backbone, and would never allow his name to remain under the slightest +cloud! Money without honor is a disease. There is honor in the +provinces! Right, very right, Grandet. I'm an old soldier, and I can't +disguise my thoughts; I speak roughly. Thunder! it is sublime!" + +"Th-then s-s-sublime th-things c-c-cost d-dear," answered the goodman, +as the banker warmly wrung his hand. + +"But this, my dear Grandet,--if the president will excuse me,--is a +purely commercial matter, and needs a consummate business man. Your +agent must be some one fully acquainted with the markets,--with +disbursements, rebates, interest calculations, and so forth. I am going +to Paris on business of my own, and I can take charge of--" + +"We'll see about t-t-trying to m-m-manage it b-b-between us, under the +p-p-peculiar c-c-circumstances, b-b-but without b-b-binding m-m-myself +to anything th-that I c-c-could not do," said Grandet, stuttering; +"because, you see, monsieur le president naturally expects me to pay the +expenses of his journey." + +The goodman did not stammer over the last words. + +"Eh!" cried Madame des Grassins, "why it is a pleasure to go to Paris. I +would willingly pay to go myself." + +She made a sign to her husband, as if to encourage him in cutting +the enemy out of the commission, _coute que coute_; then she glanced +ironically at the two Cruchots, who looked chap-fallen. Grandet seized +the banker by a button and drew him into a corner of the room. + +"I have a great deal more confidence in you than in the president," he +said; "besides, I've other fish to fry," he added, wriggling his wen. "I +want to buy a few thousand francs in the Funds while they are at eighty. +They fall, I'm told, at the end of each month. You know all about these +things, don't you?" + +"Bless me! then, am I to invest enough to give you a few thousand francs +a year?" + +"That's not much to begin with. Hush! I don't want any one to know I am +going to play that game. You can make the investment by the end of +the month. Say nothing to the Cruchots; that'll annoy them. If you are +really going to Paris, we will see if there is anything to be done for +my poor nephew." + +"Well, it's all settled. I'll start to-morrow by the mail-post," said +des Grassins aloud, "and I will come and take your last directions +at--what hour will suit you?" + +"Five o'clock, just before dinner," said Grandet, rubbing his hands. + +The two parties stayed on for a short time. Des Grassins said, after a +pause, striking Grandet on the shoulder,-- + +"It is a good thing to have a relation like him." + +"Yes, yes; without making a show," said Grandet, "I am a g-good +relation. I loved my brother, and I will prove it, unless it +c-c-costs--" + +"We must leave you, Grandet," said the banker, interrupting him +fortunately before he got to the end of his sentence. "If I hurry my +departure, I must attend to some matters at once." + +"Very good, very good! I myself--in c-consequence of what I t-told +you--I must retire to my own room and 'd-d-deliberate,' as President +Cruchot says." + +"Plague take him! I am no longer Monsieur de Bonfons," thought the +magistrate ruefully, his face assuming the expression of a judge bored +by an argument. + +The heads of the two factions walked off together. Neither gave any +further thought to the treachery Grandet had been guilty of in the +morning against the whole wine-growing community; each tried to fathom +what the other was thinking about the real intentions of the wily old +man in this new affair, but in vain. + +"Will you go with us to Madame Dorsonval's?" said des Grassins to the +notary. + +"We will go there later," answered the president. "I have promised to +say good-evening to Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt, and we will go there +first, if my uncle is willing." + +"Farewell for the present!" said Madame des Grassins. + +When the Cruchots were a few steps off, Adolphe remarked to his +father,-- + +"Are not they fuming, hein?" + +"Hold your tongue, my son!" said his mother; "they might hear you. +Besides, what you say is not in good taste,--law-school language." + +"Well, uncle," cried the president when he saw the des Grassins +disappearing, "I began by being de Bonfons, and I have ended as nothing +but Cruchot." + +"I saw that that annoyed you; but the wind has set fair for the des +Grassins. What a fool you are, with all your cleverness! Let them sail +off on Grandet's 'We'll see about it,' and keep yourself quiet, young +man. Eugenie will none the less be your wife." + +In a few moments the news of Grandet's magnanimous resolve was +disseminated in three houses at the same moment, and the whole town +began to talk of his fraternal devotion. Every one forgave Grandet for +the sale made in defiance of the good faith pledged to the community; +they admired his sense of honor, and began to laud a generosity of which +they had never thought him capable. It is part of the French nature to +grow enthusiastic, or angry, or fervent about some meteor of the moment. +Can it be that collective beings, nationalities, peoples, are devoid of +memory? + +When Pere Grandet had shut the door he called Nanon. + +"Don't let the dog loose, and don't go to bed; we have work to do +together. At eleven o'clock Cornoiller will be at the door with the +chariot from Froidfond. Listen for him and prevent his knocking; tell +him to come in softly. Police regulations don't allow nocturnal racket. +Besides, the whole neighborhood need not know that I am starting on a +journey." + +So saying, Grandet returned to his private room, where Nanon heard +him moving about, rummaging, and walking to and fro, though with much +precaution, for he evidently did not wish to wake his wife and daughter, +and above all not to rouse the attention of his nephew, whom he had +begun to anathematize when he saw a thread of light under his door. +About the middle of the night Eugenie, intent on her cousin, fancied +she heard a cry like that of a dying person. It must be Charles, she +thought; he was so pale, so full of despair when she had seen him +last,--could he have killed himself? She wrapped herself quickly in a +loose garment,--a sort of pelisse with a hood,--and was about to leave +the room when a bright light coming through the chinks of her door made +her think of fire. But she recovered herself as she heard Nanon's heavy +steps and gruff voice mingling with the snorting of several horses. + +"Can my father be carrying off my cousin?" she said to herself, opening +her door with great precaution lest it should creak, and yet enough to +let her see into the corridor. + +Suddenly her eye encountered that of her father; and his glance, vague +and unnoticing as it was, terrified her. The goodman and Nanon were +yoked together by a stout stick, each end of which rested on their +shoulders; a stout rope was passed over it, on which was slung a small +barrel or keg like those Pere Grandet still made in his bakehouse as an +amusement for his leisure hours. + +"Holy Virgin, how heavy it is!" said the voice of Nanon. + +"What a pity that it is only copper sous!" answered Grandet. "Take care +you don't knock over the candlestick." + +The scene was lighted by a single candle placed between two rails of the +staircase. + +"Cornoiller," said Grandet to his keeper _in partibus_, "have you +brought your pistols?" + +"No, monsieur. Mercy! what's there to fear for your copper sous?" + +"Oh! nothing," said Pere Grandet. + +"Besides, we shall go fast," added the man; "your farmers have picked +out their best horses." + +"Very good. You did not tell them where I was going?" + +"I didn't know where." + +"Very good. Is the carriage strong?" + +"Strong? hear to that, now! Why, it can carry three thousand weight. How +much does that old keg weigh?" + +"Goodness!" exclaimed Nanon. "I ought to know! There's pretty nigh +eighteen hundred--" + +"Will you hold your tongue, Nanon! You are to tell my wife I have gone +into the country. I shall be back to dinner. Drive fast, Cornoiller; I +must get to Angers before nine o'clock." + +The carriage drove off. Nanon bolted the great door, let loose the dog, +and went off to bed with a bruised shoulder, no one in the neighborhood +suspecting either the departure of Grandet or the object of his journey. +The precautions of the old miser and his reticence were never relaxed. +No one had ever seen a penny in that house, filled as it was with gold. +Hearing in the morning, through the gossip of the port, that exchange +on gold had doubled in price in consequence of certain military +preparations undertaken at Nantes, and that speculators had arrived +at Angers to buy coin, the old wine-grower, by the simple process of +borrowing horses from his farmers, seized the chance of selling his gold +and of bringing back in the form of treasury notes the sum he intended +to put into the Funds, having swelled it considerably by the exchange. + + + + +VIII + +"My father has gone," thought Eugenie, who heard all that took place +from the head of the stairs. Silence was restored in the house, and the +distant rumbling of the carriage, ceasing by degrees, no longer echoed +through the sleeping town. At this moment Eugenie heard in her heart, +before the sound caught her ears, a cry which pierced the partitions and +came from her cousin's chamber. A line of light, thin as the blade of +a sabre, shone through a chink in the door and fell horizontally on the +balusters of the rotten staircase. + +"He suffers!" she said, springing up the stairs. A second moan brought +her to the landing near his room. The door was ajar, she pushed it open. +Charles was sleeping; his head hung over the side of the old armchair, +and his hand, from which the pen had fallen, nearly touched the +floor. The oppressed breathing caused by the strained posture suddenly +frightened Eugenie, who entered the room hastily. + +"He must be very tired," she said to herself, glancing at a dozen +letters lying sealed upon the table. She read their addresses: "To +Messrs. Farry, Breilmann, & Co., carriage-makers"; "To Monsieur Buisson, +tailor," etc. + +"He has been settling all his affairs, so as to leave France at once," +she thought. Her eyes fell upon two open letters. The words, "My dear +Annette," at the head of one of them, blinded her for a moment. Her +heart beat fast, her feet were nailed to the floor. + +"His dear Annette! He loves! he is loved! No hope! What does he say to +her?" + +These thoughts rushed through her head and heart. She saw the words +everywhere, even on the bricks of the floor, in letters of fire. + +"Resign him already? No, no! I will not read the letter. I ought to go +away--What if I do read it?" + +She looked at Charles, then she gently took his head and placed it +against the back of the chair; he let her do so, like a child which, +though asleep, knows its mother's touch and receives, without awaking, +her kisses and watchful care. Like a mother Eugenie raised the drooping +hand, and like a mother she gently kissed the chestnut hair--"Dear +Annette!" a demon shrieked the words in her ear. + +"I am doing wrong; but I must read it, that letter," she said. She +turned away her head, for her noble sense of honor reproached her. +For the first time in her life good and evil struggled together in her +heart. Up to that moment she had never had to blush for any action. +Passion and curiosity triumphed. As she read each sentence her heart +swelled more and more, and the keen glow which filled her being as she +did so, only made the joys of first love still more precious. + + My dear Annette,--Nothing could ever have separated us but the + great misfortune which has now overwhelmed me, and which no human + foresight could have prevented. My father has killed himself; his + fortune and mine are irretrievably lost. I am orphaned at an age + when, through the nature of my education, I am still a child; and + yet I must lift myself as a man out of the abyss into which I am + plunged. I have just spent half the night in facing my position. + If I wish to leave France an honest man,--and there is no doubt of + that,--I have not a hundred francs of my own with which to try my + fate in the Indies or in America. Yes, my poor Anna, I must seek + my fortune in those deadly climates. Under those skies, they tell + me, I am sure to make it. As for remaining in Paris, I cannot do + so. Neither my nature nor my face are made to bear the affronts, + the neglect, the disdain shown to a ruined man, the son of a + bankrupt! Good God! think of owing two millions! I should be + killed in a duel the first week; therefore I shall not return + there. Your love--the most tender and devoted love which ever + ennobled the heart of man--cannot draw me back. Alas! my beloved, + I have no money with which to go to you, to give and receive a + last kiss from which I might derive some strength for my forlorn + enterprise. + +"Poor Charles! I did well to read the letter. I have gold; I will give +it to him," thought Eugenie. + +She wiped her eyes, and went on reading. + + I have never thought of the miseries of poverty. If I have the + hundred louis required for the mere costs of the journey, I have + not a sou for an outfit. But no, I have not the hundred louis, not + even one louis. I don't know that anything will be left after I + have paid my debts in Paris. If I have nothing, I shall go quietly + to Nantes and ship as a common sailor; and I will begin in the new + world like other men who have started young without a sou and + brought back the wealth of the Indies. During this long day I have + faced my future coolly. It seems more horrible for me than for + another, because I have been so petted by a mother who adored me, + so indulged by the kindest of fathers, so blessed by meeting, on + my entrance into life, with the love of an Anna! The flowers of + life are all I have ever known. Such happiness could not last. + Nevertheless, my dear Annette, I feel more courage than a careless + young man is supposed to feel,--above all a young man used to the + caressing ways of the dearest woman in all Paris, cradled in + family joys, on whom all things smiled in his home, whose wishes + were a law to his father--oh, my father! Annette, he is dead! + + Well, I have thought over my position, and yours as well. I have + grown old in twenty-four hours. Dear Anna, if in order to keep me + with you in Paris you were to sacrifice your luxury, your dress, + your opera-box, we should even then not have enough for the + expenses of my extravagant ways of living. Besides, I would never + accept such sacrifices. No, we must part now and forever-- + +"He gives her up! Blessed Virgin! What happiness!" + +Eugenie quivered with joy. Charles made a movement, and a chill of +terror ran through her. Fortunately, he did not wake, and she resumed +her reading. + + When shall I return? I do not know. The climate of the West Indies + ages a European, so they say; especially a European who works + hard. Let us think what may happen ten years hence. In ten years + your daughter will be eighteen; she will be your companion, your + spy. To you society will be cruel, and your daughter perhaps more + cruel still. We have seen cases of the harsh social judgment and + ingratitude of daughters; let us take warning by them. Keep in the + depths of your soul, as I shall in mine, the memory of four years + of happiness, and be faithful, if you can, to the memory of your + poor friend. I cannot exact such faithfulness, because, do you + see, dear Annette, I must conform to the exigencies of my new + life; I must take a commonplace view of them and do the best I + can. Therefore I must think of marriage, which becomes one of the + necessities of my future existence; and I will admit to you that I + have found, here in Saumur, in my uncle's house, a cousin whose + face, manners, mind, and heart would please you, and who, besides, + seems to me-- + +"He must have been very weary to have ceased writing to her," thought +Eugenie, as she gazed at the letter which stopped abruptly in the middle +of the last sentence. + +Already she defended him. How was it possible that an innocent girl +should perceive the cold-heartedness evinced by this letter? To young +girls religiously brought up, whose minds are ignorant and pure, all is +love from the moment they set their feet within the enchanted regions +of that passion. They walk there bathed in a celestial light shed from +their own souls, which reflects its rays upon their lover; they color +all with the flame of their own emotion and attribute to him their +highest thoughts. A woman's errors come almost always from her belief +in good or her confidence in truth. In Eugenie's simple heart the words, +"My dear Annette, my loved one," echoed like the sweetest language of +love; they caressed her soul as, in childhood, the divine notes of the +_Venite adoremus_, repeated by the organ, caressed her ear. Moreover, +the tears which still lingered on the young man's lashes gave signs of +that nobility of heart by which young girls are rightly won. How could +she know that Charles, though he loved his father and mourned him truly, +was moved far more by paternal goodness than by the goodness of his own +heart? Monsieur and Madame Guillaume Grandet, by gratifying every fancy +of their son, and lavishing upon him the pleasures of a large fortune, +had kept him from making the horrible calculations of which so many +sons in Paris become more or less guilty when, face to face with the +enjoyments of the world, they form desires and conceive schemes which +they see with bitterness must be put off or laid aside during the +lifetime of their parents. The liberality of the father in this instance +had shed into the heart of the son a real love, in which there was no +afterthought of self-interest. + +Nevertheless, Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs +of society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already +an old man under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful +education of social life, of that world where in one evening more crimes +are committed in thought and speech than justice ever punishes at the +assizes; where jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest ideas; +where no one is counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and to see +clear in that world is to believe in nothing, neither in feelings, nor +in men, nor even in events,--for events are falsified. There, to "see +clear" we must weigh a friend's purse daily, learn how to keep ourselves +adroitly on the top of the wave, cautiously admire nothing, neither +works of art nor glorious actions, and remember that self-interest is +the mainspring of all things here below. After committing many follies, +the great lady--the beautiful Annette--compelled Charles to think +seriously; with her perfumed hand among his curls, she talked to him of +his future position; as she rearranged his locks, she taught him lessons +of worldly prudence; she made him effeminate and materialized him,--a +double corruption, but a delicate and elegant corruption, in the best +taste. + +"You are very foolish, Charles," she would say to him. "I shall have +a great deal of trouble in teaching you to understand the world. You +behaved extremely ill to Monsieur des Lupeaulx. I know very well he is +not an honorable man; but wait till he is no longer in power, then you +may despise him as much as you like. Do you know what Madame Campan used +to tell us?--'My dears, as long as a man is a minister, adore him; when +he falls, help to drag him in the gutter. Powerful, he is a sort of god; +fallen, he is lower than Marat in the sewer, because he is living, and +Marat is dead. Life is a series of combinations, and you must study +them and understand them if you want to keep yourselves always in good +position.'" + +Charles was too much a man of the world, his parents had made him too +happy, he had received too much adulation in society, to be possessed of +noble sentiments. The grain of gold dropped by his mother into his heart +was beaten thin in the smithy of Parisian society; he had spread it +superficially, and it was worn away by the friction of life. Charles +was only twenty-one years old. At that age the freshness of youth seems +inseparable from candor and sincerity of soul. The voice, the glance, +the face itself, seem in harmony with the feelings; and thus it happens +that the sternest judge, the most sceptical lawyer, the least complying +of usurers, always hesitate to admit decrepitude of heart or the +corruption of worldly calculation while the eyes are still bathed +in purity and no wrinkles seam the brow. Charles, so far, had had no +occasion to apply the maxims of Parisian morality; up to this time he +was still endowed with the beauty of inexperience. And yet, unknown to +himself, he had been inoculated with selfishness. The germs of Parisian +political economy, latent in his heart, would assuredly burst forth, +sooner or later, whenever the careless spectator became an actor in the +drama of real life. + +Nearly all young girls succumb to the tender promises such an outward +appearance seems to offer: even if Eugenie had been as prudent and +observing as provincial girls are often found to be, she was not likely +to distrust her cousin when his manners, words, and actions were still +in unison with the aspirations of a youthful heart. A mere chance--a +fatal chance--threw in her way the last effusions of real feeling which +stirred the young man's soul; she heard as it were the last breathings +of his conscience. She laid down the letter--to her so full of love--and +began smilingly to watch her sleeping cousin; the fresh illusions of +life were still, for her at least, upon his face; she vowed to herself +to love him always. Then she cast her eyes on the other letter, without +attaching much importance to this second indiscretion; and though she +read it, it was only to obtain new proofs of the noble qualities which, +like all women, she attributed to the man her heart had chosen. + + + My dear Alphonse,--When you receive this letter I shall be without + friends; but let me assure you that while I doubt the friendship + of the world, I have never doubted yours. I beg you therefore to + settle all my affairs, and I trust to you to get as much as you + can out of my possessions. By this time you know my situation. I + have nothing left, and I intend to go at once to the Indies. I + have just written to all the people to whom I think I owe money, + and you will find enclosed a list of their names, as correct as I + can make it from memory. My books, my furniture, my pictures, my + horses, etc., ought, I think, to pay my debts. I do not wish to + keep anything, except, perhaps, a few baubles which might serve as + the beginning of an outfit for my enterprise. My dear Alphonse, I + will send you a proper power of attorney under which you can make + these sales. Send me all my weapons. Keep Briton for yourself; + nobody would pay the value of that noble beast, and I would rather + give him to you--like a mourning-ring bequeathed by a dying man to + his executor. Farry, Breilmann, & Co. built me a very comfortable + travelling-carriage, which they have not yet delivered; persuade + them to keep it and not ask for any payment on it. If they refuse, + do what you can in the matter, and avoid everything that might + seem dishonorable in me under my present circumstances. I owe the + British Islander six louis, which I lost at cards; don't fail to + pay him-- + + +"Dear cousin!" whispered Eugenie, throwing down the letter and running +softly back to her room, carrying one of the lighted candles. A thrill +of pleasure passed over her as she opened the drawer of an old oak +cabinet, a fine specimen of the period called the Renaissance, on which +could still be seen, partly effaced, the famous royal salamander. She +took from the drawer a large purse of red velvet with gold tassels, +edged with a tarnished fringe of gold wire,--a relic inherited from her +grandmother. She weighed it proudly in her hand, and began with delight +to count over the forgotten items of her little hoard. First she took +out twenty _portugaises_, still new, struck in the reign of John V., +1725, worth by exchange, as her father told her, five _lisbonnines_, +or a hundred and sixty-eight francs, sixty-four centimes each; their +conventional value, however, was a hundred and eighty francs apiece, on +account of the rarity and beauty of the coins, which shone like little +suns. Item, five _genovines_, or five hundred-franc pieces of Genoa; +another very rare coin worth eighty-seven francs on exchange, but +a hundred francs to collectors. These had formerly belonged to old +Monsieur de la Bertelliere. Item, three gold _quadruples_, Spanish, of +Philip V., struck in 1729, given to her one by one by Madame Gentillet, +who never failed to say, using the same words, when she made the gift, +"This dear little canary, this little yellow-boy, is worth ninety-eight +francs! Keep it, my pretty one, it will be the flower of your treasure." +Item (that which her father valued most of all, the gold of these coins +being twenty-three carats and a fraction), a hundred Dutch ducats, +made in the year 1756, and worth thirteen francs apiece. Item, a great +curiosity, a species of medal precious to the soul of misers,--three +rupees with the sign of the Scales, and five rupees with the sign of the +Virgin, all in pure gold of twenty-four carats; the magnificent money +of the Great Mogul, each of which was worth by mere weight thirty-seven +francs, forty centimes, but at least fifty francs to those connoisseurs +who love to handle gold. Item, the napoleon of forty francs received +the day before, which she had forgotten to put away in the velvet purse. +This treasure was all in virgin coins, true works of art, which Grandet +from time to time inquired after and asked to see, pointing out to his +daughter their intrinsic merits,--such as the beauty of the milled edge, +the clearness of the flat surface, the richness of the lettering, whose +angles were not yet rubbed off. + +Eugenie gave no thought to these rarities, nor to her father's mania for +them, nor to the danger she incurred in depriving herself of a treasure +so dear to him; no, she thought only of her cousin, and soon made out, +after a few mistakes of calculation, that she possessed about five +thousand eight hundred francs in actual value, which might be sold for +their additional value to collectors for nearly six thousand. She looked +at her wealth and clapped her hands like a happy child forced to +spend its overflowing joy in artless movements of the body. Father and +daughter had each counted up their fortune this night,--he, to sell his +gold; Eugenie to fling hers into the ocean of affection. She put the +pieces back into the old purse, took it in her hand, and ran upstairs +without hesitation. The secret misery of her cousin made her forget the +hour and conventional propriety; she was strong in her conscience, in +her devotion, in her happiness. + +As she stood upon the threshold of the door, holding the candle in one +hand and the purse in the other, Charles woke, caught sight of her, and +remained speechless with surprise. Eugenie came forward, put the candle +on the table, and said in a quivering voice: + +"My cousin, I must beg pardon for a wrong I have done you; but God will +pardon me--if you--will help me to wipe it out." + +"What is it?" asked Charles, rubbing his eyes. + +"I have read those letters." + +Charles colored. + +"How did it happen?" she continued; "how came I here? Truly, I do not +know. I am tempted not to regret too much that I have read them; they +have made me know your heart, your soul, and--" + +"And what?" asked Charles. + +"Your plans, your need of a sum--" + +"My dear cousin--" + +"Hush, hush! my cousin, not so loud; we must not wake others. See," she +said, opening her purse, "here are the savings of a poor girl who wants +nothing. Charles, accept them! This morning I was ignorant of the value +of money; you have taught it to me. It is but a means, after all. A +cousin is almost a brother; you can surely borrow the purse of your +sister." + +Eugenie, as much a woman as a young girl, never dreamed of refusal; but +her cousin remained silent. + +"Oh! you will not refuse?" cried Eugenie, the beatings of whose heart +could be heard in the deep silence. + +Her cousin's hesitation mortified her; but the sore need of his position +came clearer still to her mind, and she knelt down. + +"I will never rise till you have taken that gold!" she said. "My cousin, +I implore you, answer me! let me know if you respect me, if you are +generous, if--" + +As he heard this cry of noble distress the young man's tears fell upon +his cousin's hands, which he had caught in his own to keep her from +kneeling. As the warm tears touched her, Eugenie sprang to the purse and +poured its contents upon the table. + +"Ah! yes, yes, you consent?" she said, weeping with joy. "Fear nothing, +my cousin, you will be rich. This gold will bring you happiness; some +day you shall bring it back to me,--are we not partners? I will obey all +conditions. But you should not attach such value to the gift." + +Charles was at last able to express his feelings. + +"Yes, Eugenie; my soul would be small indeed if I did not accept. And +yet,--gift for gift, confidence for confidence." + +"What do you mean?" she said, frightened. + +"Listen, dear cousin; I have here--" He interrupted himself to point +out a square box covered with an outer case of leather which was on the +drawers. "There," he continued, "is something as precious to me as +life itself. This box was a present from my mother. All day I have been +thinking that if she could rise from her grave, she would herself sell +the gold which her love for me lavished on this dressing-case; but were +I to do so, the act would seem to me a sacrilege." Eugenie pressed +his hand as she heard these last words. "No," he added, after a slight +pause, during which a liquid glance of tenderness passed between them, +"no, I will neither sell it nor risk its safety on my journey. Dear +Eugenie, you shall be its guardian. Never did friend commit anything +more sacred to another. Let me show it to you." + +He went to the box, took it from its outer coverings, opened it, and +showed his delighted cousin a dressing-case where the rich workmanship +gave to the gold ornaments a value far above their weight. + +"What you admire there is nothing," he said, pushing a secret spring +which opened a hidden drawer. "Here is something which to me is worth +the whole world." He drew out two portraits, masterpieces of Madame +Mirbel, richly set with pearls. + +"Oh, how beautiful! Is it the lady to whom you wrote that--" + +"No," he said, smiling; "this is my mother, and here is my father, your +aunt and uncle. Eugenie, I beg you on my knees, keep my treasure safely. +If I die and your little fortune is lost, this gold and these pearls +will repay you. To you alone could I leave these portraits; you are +worthy to keep them. But destroy them at last, so that they may pass +into no other hands." Eugenie was silent. "Ah, yes, say yes! You +consent?" he added with winning grace. + +Hearing the very words she had just used to her cousin now addressed to +herself, she turned upon him a look of love, her first look of loving +womanhood,--a glance in which there is nearly as much of coquetry as of +inmost depth. He took her hand and kissed it. + +"Angel of purity! between us two money is nothing, never can be +anything. Feeling, sentiment, must be all henceforth." + +"You are like your mother,--was her voice as soft as yours?" + +"Oh! much softer--" + +"Yes, for you," she said, dropping her eyelids. "Come, Charles, go to +bed; I wish it; you must be tired. Good-night." She gently disengaged +her hand from those of her cousin, who followed her to her room, +lighting the way. When they were both upon the threshold,-- + +"Ah!" he said, "why am I ruined?" + +"What matter?--my father is rich; I think so," she answered. + +"Poor child!" said Charles, making a step into her room and leaning +his back against the wall, "if that were so, he would never have let my +father die; he would not let you live in this poor way; he would live +otherwise himself." + +"But he owns Froidfond." + +"What is Froidfond worth?" + +"I don't know; but he has Noyers." + +"Nothing but a poor farm!" + +"He has vineyards and fields." + +"Mere nothing," said Charles disdainfully. "If your father had only +twenty-four thousand francs a year do you suppose you would live in this +cold, barren room?" he added, making a step in advance. "Ah! there you +will keep my treasures," he said, glancing at the old cabinet, as if to +hide his thoughts. + +"Go and sleep," she said, hindering his entrance into the disordered +room. + +Charles stepped back, and they bid each other good-night with a mutual +smile. + +Both fell asleep in the same dream; and from that moment the youth began +to wear roses with his mourning. The next day, before breakfast, Madame +Grandet found her daughter in the garden in company with Charles. +The young man was still sad, as became a poor fellow who, plunged in +misfortune, measures the depths of the abyss into which he has fallen, +and sees the terrible burden of his whole future life. + +"My father will not be home till dinner-time," said Eugenie, perceiving +the anxious look on her mother's face. + +It was easy to trace in the face and manners of the young girl and in +the singular sweetness of her voice a unison of thought between her and +her cousin. Their souls had espoused each other, perhaps before they +even felt the force of the feelings which bound them together. Charles +spent the morning in the hall, and his sadness was respected. Each of +the three women had occupations of her own. Grandet had left all his +affairs unattended to, and a number of persons came on business,--the +plumber, the mason, the slater, the carpenter, the diggers, the +dressers, the farmers; some to drive a bargain about repairs, others to +pay their rent or to be paid themselves for services. Madame Grandet and +Eugenie were obliged to go and come and listen to the interminable talk +of all these workmen and country folk. Nanon put away in her kitchen +the produce which they brought as tribute. She always waited for her +master's orders before she knew what portion was to be used in the house +and what was to be sold in the market. It was the goodman's custom, like +that of a great many country gentlemen, to drink his bad wine and eat +his spoiled fruit. + +Towards five in the afternoon Grandet returned from Angers, having made +fourteen thousand francs by the exchange on his gold, bringing home +in his wallet good treasury-notes which bore interest until the day he +should invest them in the Funds. He had left Cornoiller at Angers to +look after the horses, which were well-nigh foundered, with orders to +bring them home slowly after they were rested. + +"I have got back from Angers, wife," he said; "I am hungry." + +Nanon called out to him from the kitchen: "Haven't you eaten anything +since yesterday?" + +"Nothing," answered the old man. + +Nanon brought in the soup. Des Grassins came to take his client's orders +just as the family sat down to dinner. Grandet had not even observed his +nephew. + +"Go on eating, Grandet," said the banker; "we can talk. Do you know what +gold is worth in Angers? They have come from Nantes after it? I shall +send some of ours." + +"Don't send any," said Grandet; "they have got enough. We are such old +friends, I ought to save you from such a loss of time." + +"But gold is worth thirteen francs fifty centimes." + +"Say _was_ worth--" + +"Where the devil have they got any?" + +"I went to Angers last night," answered Grandet in a low voice. + +The banker shook with surprise. Then a whispered conversation began +between the two, during which Grandet and des Grassins frequently +looked at Charles. Presently des Grassins gave a start of astonishment; +probably Grandet was then instructing him to invest the sum which was to +give him a hundred thousand francs a year in the Funds. + +"Monsieur Grandet," said the banker to Charles, "I am starting for +Paris; if you have any commissions--" + +"None, monsieur, I thank you," answered Charles. + +"Thank him better than that, nephew. Monsieur is going to settle the +affairs of the house of Guillaume Grandet." + +"Is there any hope?" said Charles eagerly. + +"What!" exclaimed his uncle, with well-acted pride, "are you not my +nephew? Your honor is ours. Is not your name Grandet?" + +Charles rose, seized Pere Grandet, kissed him, turned pale, and left the +room. Eugenie looked at her father with admiration. + +"Well, good-by, des Grassins; it is all in your hands. Decoy those +people as best you can; lead 'em by the nose." + +The two diplomatists shook hands. The old cooper accompanied the banker +to the front door. Then, after closing it, he came back and plunged into +his armchair, saying to Nanon,-- + +"Get me some black-currant ratafia." + +Too excited, however, to remain long in one place, he got up, looked +at the portrait of Monsieur de la Bertelliere, and began to sing, doing +what Nanon called his dancing steps,-- + + "Dans les gardes francaises + J'avais un bon papa." + +Nanon, Madame Grandet, and Eugenie looked at each other in silence. +The hilarity of the master always frightened them when it reached its +climax. The evening was soon over. Pere Grandet chose to go to bed +early, and when he went to bed, everybody else was expected to go too; +like as when Augustus drank, Poland was drunk. On this occasion Nanon, +Charles, and Eugenie were not less tired than the master. As for Madame +Grandet, she slept, ate, drank, and walked according to the will of her +husband. However, during the two hours consecrated to digestion, the +cooper, more facetious than he had ever been in his life, uttered a +number of his own particular apothegms,--a single one of which will give +the measure of his mind. When he had drunk his ratafia, he looked at his +glass and said,-- + +"You have no sooner put your lips to a glass than it is empty! Such is +life. You can't have and hold. Gold won't circulate and stay in your +purse. If it were not for that, life would be too fine." + +He was jovial and benevolent. When Nanon came with her spinning-wheel, +"You must be tired," he said; "put away your hemp." + +"Ah, bah! then I shall get sleepy," she answered. + +"Poor Nanon! Will you have some ratafia?" + +"I won't refuse a good offer; madame makes it a deal better than the +apothecaries. What they sell is all drugs." + +"They put too much sugar," said the master; "you can't taste anything +else." + + + + +IX + +The following day the family, meeting at eight o'clock for the early +breakfast, made a picture of genuine domestic intimacy. Grief had +drawn Madame Grandet, Eugenie, and Charles _en rapport_; even Nanon +sympathized, without knowing why. The four now made one family. As to +the old man, his satisfied avarice and the certainty of soon getting rid +of the dandy without having to pay more than his journey to Nantes, made +him nearly indifferent to his presence in the house. He left the two +children, as he called Charles and Eugenie, free to conduct themselves +as they pleased, under the eye of Madame Grandet, in whom he had +implicit confidence as to all that concerned public and religious +morality. He busied himself in straightening the boundaries of his +fields and ditches along the high-road, in his poplar-plantations beside +the Loire, in the winter work of his vineyards, and at Froidfond. All +these things occupied his whole time. + +For Eugenie the springtime of love had come. Since the scene at night +when she gave her little treasure to her cousin, her heart had followed +the treasure. Confederates in the same secret, they looked at each +other with a mutual intelligence which sank to the depth of their +consciousness, giving a closer communion, a more intimate relation +to their feelings, and putting them, so to speak, beyond the pale of +ordinary life. Did not their near relationship warrant the gentleness +in their tones, the tenderness in their glances? Eugenie took delight +in lulling her cousin's pain with the pretty childish joys of a new-born +love. Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love and the +birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and softest +glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden future? Hope +herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its head? Does it +not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow and its tears of +joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the pretty pebbles with which +to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers forgotten as soon as +plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming time, to spring forward +into life? Love is our second transformation. Childhood and love +were one and the same thing to Eugenie and to Charles; it was a first +passion, with all its child-like play,--the more caressing to their +hearts because they now were wrapped in sadness. Struggling at birth +against the gloom of mourning, their love was only the more in harmony +with the provincial plainness of that gray and ruined house. As they +exchanged a few words beside the well in the silent court, or lingered +in the garden for the sunset hour, sitting on a mossy seat saying to +each other the infinite nothings of love, or mused in the silent calm +which reigned between the house and the ramparts like that beneath the +arches of a church, Charles comprehended the sanctity of love; for his +great lady, his dear Annette, had taught him only its stormy troubles. +At this moment he left the worldly passion, coquettish, vain, and showy +as it was, and turned to the true, pure love. He loved even the house, +whose customs no longer seemed to him ridiculous. He got up early in the +mornings that he might talk with Eugenie for a moment before her father +came to dole out the provisions; when the steps of the old man sounded +on the staircase he escaped into the garden. The small criminality of +this morning _tete-a-tete_ which Nanon pretended not to see, gave to +their innocent love the lively charm of a forbidden joy. + +After breakfast, when Grandet had gone to his fields and his other +occupations, Charles remained with the mother and daughter, finding an +unknown pleasure in holding their skeins, in watching them at work, in +listening to their quiet prattle. The simplicity of this half-monastic +life, which revealed to him the beauty of these souls, unknown and +unknowing of the world, touched him keenly. He had believed such morals +impossible in France, and admitted their existence nowhere but in +Germany; even so, they seemed to him fabulous, only real in the novels +of Auguste Lafontaine. Soon Eugenie became to him the Margaret of +Goethe--before her fall. Day by day his words, his looks enraptured the +poor girl, who yielded herself up with delicious non-resistance to +the current of love; she caught her happiness as a swimmer seizes the +overhanging branch of a willow to draw himself from the river and lie at +rest upon its shore. Did no dread of a coming absence sadden the happy +hours of those fleeting days? Daily some little circumstance reminded +them of the parting that was at hand. + +Three days after the departure of des Grassins, Grandet took his nephew +to the Civil courts, with the solemnity which country people attach to +all legal acts, that he might sign a deed surrendering his rights in his +father's estate. Terrible renunciation! species of domestic apostasy! +Charles also went before Maitre Cruchot to make two powers of +attorney,--one for des Grassins, the other for the friend whom he had +charged with the sale of his belongings. After that he attended to all +the formalities necessary to obtain a passport for foreign countries; +and finally, when he received his simple mourning clothes from Paris, he +sent for the tailor of Saumur and sold to him his useless wardrobe. This +last act pleased Grandet exceedingly. + +"Ah! now you look like a man prepared to embark and make your fortune," +he said, when Charles appeared in a surtout of plain black cloth. "Good! +very good!" + +"I hope you will believe, monsieur," answered his nephew, "that I shall +always try to conform to my situation." + +"What's that?" said his uncle, his eyes lighting up at a handful of gold +which Charles was carrying. + +"Monsieur, I have collected all my buttons and rings and other +superfluities which may have some value; but not knowing any one in +Saumur, I wanted to ask you to--" + +"To buy them?" said Grandet, interrupting him. + +"No, uncle; only to tell me of an honest man who--" + +"Give me those things, I will go upstairs and estimate their value; I +will come back and tell you what it is to a fraction. Jeweller's gold," +examining a long chain, "eighteen or nineteen carats." + +The goodman held out his huge hand and received the mass of gold, which +he carried away. + +"Cousin," said Grandet, "may I offer you these two buttons? They can +fasten ribbons round your wrists; that sort of bracelet is much the +fashion just now." + +"I accept without hesitation," she answered, giving him an understanding +look. + +"Aunt, here is my mother's thimble; I have always kept it carefully in +my dressing-case," said Charles, presenting a pretty gold thimble to +Madame Grandet, who for many years had longed for one. + +"I cannot thank you; no words are possible, my nephew," said the poor +mother, whose eyes filled with tears. "Night and morning in my prayers I +shall add one for you, the most earnest of all--for those who travel. If +I die, Eugenie will keep this treasure for you." + +"They are worth nine hundred and eighty-nine francs, seventy-five +centimes," said Grandet, opening the door. "To save you the pain of +selling them, I will advance the money--in _livres_." + +The word _livres_ on the littoral of the Loire signifies that crown +prices of six _livres_ are to be accepted as six francs without +deduction. + +"I dared not propose it to you," answered Charles; "but it was most +repugnant to me to sell my jewels to some second-hand dealer in your own +town. People should wash their dirty linen at home, as Napoleon said. I +thank you for your kindness." + +Grandet scratched his ear, and there was a moment's silence. + +"My dear uncle," resumed Charles, looking at him with an uneasy air, as +if he feared to wound his feelings, "my aunt and cousin have been kind +enough to accept a trifling remembrance of me. Will you allow me to give +you these sleeve-buttons, which are useless to me now? They will remind +you of a poor fellow who, far away, will always think of those who are +henceforth all his family." + +"My lad, my lad, you mustn't rob yourself this way! Let me see, wife, +what have you got?" he added, turning eagerly to her. "Ah! a gold +thimble. And you, little girl? What! diamond buttons? Yes, I'll accept +your present, nephew," he answered, shaking Charles by the hand. +"But--you must let me--pay--your--yes, your passage to the Indies. Yes, +I wish to pay your passage because--d'ye see, my boy?--in valuing +your jewels I estimated only the weight of the gold; very likely the +workmanship is worth something. So let us settle it that I am to give +you fifteen hundred francs--in _livres_; Cruchot will lend them to me. I +haven't got a copper farthing here,--unless Perrotet, who is behindhand +with his rent, should pay up. By the bye, I'll go and see him." + +He took his hat, put on his gloves, and went out. + +"Then you are really going?" said Eugenie to her cousin, with a sad +look, mingled with admiration. + +"I must," he said, bowing his head. + +For some days past, Charles's whole bearing, manners, and speech had +become those of a man who, in spite of his profound affliction, feels +the weight of immense obligations and has the strength to gather courage +from misfortune. He no longer repined, he became a man. Eugenie never +augured better of her cousin's character than when she saw him come +down in the plain black clothes which suited well with his pale face and +sombre countenance. On that day the two women put on their own mourning, +and all three assisted at a Requiem celebrated in the parish church for +the soul of the late Guillaume Grandet. + +At the second breakfast Charles received letters from Paris and began to +read them. + +"Well, cousin, are you satisfied with the management of your affairs?" +said Eugenie in a low voice. + +"Never ask such questions, my daughter," said Grandet. "What the devil! +do I tell you my affairs? Why do you poke your nose into your cousin's? +Let the lad alone!" + +"Oh! I haven't any secrets," said Charles. + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta, nephew; you'll soon find out that you must hold your +tongue in business." + +When the two lovers were alone in the garden, Charles said to Eugenie, +drawing her down on the old bench beneath the walnut-tree,-- + +"I did right to trust Alphonse; he has done famously. He has managed my +affairs with prudence and good faith. I now owe nothing in Paris. All my +things have been sold; and he tells me that he has taken the advice +of an old sea-captain and spent three thousand francs on a commercial +outfit of European curiosities which will be sure to be in demand in the +Indies. He has sent my trunks to Nantes, where a ship is loading for San +Domingo. In five days, Eugenie, we must bid each other farewell--perhaps +forever, at least for years. My outfit and ten thousand francs, which +two of my friends send me, are a very small beginning. I cannot look to +return for many years. My dear cousin, do not weight your life in the +scales with mine; I may perish; some good marriage may be offered to +you--" + +"Do you love me?" she said. + +"Oh, yes! indeed, yes!" he answered, with a depth of tone that revealed +an equal depth of feeling. + +"I shall wait, Charles--Good heavens! there is my father at his window," +she said, repulsing her cousin, who leaned forward to kiss her. + +She ran quickly under the archway. Charles followed her. When she +saw him, she retreated to the foot of the staircase and opened the +swing-door; then, scarcely knowing where she was going, Eugenie reached +the corner near Nanon's den, in the darkest end of the passage. There +Charles caught her hand and drew her to his heart. Passing his arm about +her waist, he made her lean gently upon him. Eugenie no longer resisted; +she received and gave the purest, the sweetest, and yet, withal, the +most unreserved of kisses. + +"Dear Eugenie, a cousin is better than a brother, for he can marry you," +said Charles. + +"So be it!" cried Nanon, opening the door of her lair. + +The two lovers, alarmed, fled into the hall, where Eugenie took up her +work and Charles began to read the litanies of the Virgin in Madame +Grandet's prayer-book. + +"Mercy!" cried Nanon, "now they're saying their prayers." + +As soon as Charles announced his immediate departure, Grandet bestirred +himself to testify much interest in his nephew. He became very liberal +of all that cost him nothing; took pains to find a packer; declared the +man asked too much for his cases; insisted on making them himself out +of old planks; got up early in the morning to fit and plane and nail +together the strips, out of which he made, to his own satisfaction, some +strong cases, in which he packed all Charles's effects; he also took +upon himself to send them by boat down the Loire, to insure them, and +get them to Nantes in proper time. + +After the kiss taken in the passage, the hours fled for Eugenie with +frightful rapidity. Sometimes she thought of following her cousin. +Those who have known that most endearing of all passions,--the one whose +duration is each day shortened by time, by age, by mortal illness, by +human chances and fatalities,--they will understand the poor girl's +tortures. She wept as she walked in the garden, now so narrow to her, +as indeed the court, the house, the town all seemed. She launched in +thought upon the wide expanse of the ocean he was about to traverse. +At last the eve of his departure came. That morning, in the absence +of Grandet and of Nanon, the precious case which contained the two +portraits was solemnly installed in the only drawer of the old cabinet +which could be locked, where the now empty velvet purse was lying. This +deposit was not made without a goodly number of tears and kisses. When +Eugenie placed the key within her bosom she had no courage to forbid the +kiss with which Charles sealed the act. + +"It shall never leave that place, my friend," she said. + +"Then my heart will be always there." + +"Ah! Charles, it is not right," she said, as though she blamed him. + +"Are we not married?" he said. "I have thy promise,--then take mine." + +"Thine; I am thine forever!" they each said, repeating the words twice +over. + +No promise made upon this earth was ever purer. The innocent sincerity +of Eugenie had sanctified for a moment the young man's love. + +On the morrow the breakfast was sad. Nanon herself, in spite of the +gold-embroidered robe and the Jeannette cross bestowed by Charles, had +tears in her eyes. + +"The poor dear monsieur who is going on the seas--oh, may God guide +him!" + +At half-past ten the whole family started to escort Charles to the +diligence for Nantes. Nanon let loose the dog, locked the door, and +insisted on carrying the young man's carpet-bag. All the tradesmen in +the tortuous old street were on the sill of their shop-doors to watch +the procession, which was joined in the market-place by Maitre Cruchot. + +"Eugenie, be sure you don't cry," said her mother. + +"Nephew," said Grandet, in the doorway of the inn from which the coach +started, kissing Charles on both cheeks, "depart poor, return rich; +you will find the honor of your father safe. I answer for that myself, +I--Grandet; for it will only depend on you to--" + +"Ah! my uncle, you soften the bitterness of my departure. Is it not the +best gift that you could make me?" + +Not understanding his uncle's words which he had thus interrupted, +Charles shed tears of gratitude upon the tanned cheeks of the old miser, +while Eugenie pressed the hand of her cousin and that of her father with +all her strength. The notary smiled, admiring the sly speech of the old +man, which he alone had understood. The family stood about the coach +until it started; then as it disappeared upon the bridge, and its rumble +grew fainter in the distance, Grandet said: + +"Good-by to you!" + +Happily no one but Maitre Cruchot heard the exclamation. Eugenie and her +mother had gone to a corner of the quay from which they could still see +the diligence and wave their white handkerchiefs, to which Charles made +answer by displaying his. + +"Ah! mother, would that I had the power of God for a single moment," +said Eugenie, when she could no longer see her lover's handkerchief. + + * * * * * + +Not to interrupt the current of events which are about to take place in +the bosom of the Grandet family, it is necessary to cast a forestalling +eye upon the various operations which the goodman carried on in Paris +by means of Monsieur des Grassins. A month after the latter's departure +from Saumur, Grandet, became possessed of a certificate of a hundred +thousand francs a year from his investment in the Funds, bought +at eighty francs net. The particulars revealed at his death by the +inventory of his property threw no light upon the means which his +suspicious nature took to remit the price of the investment and receive +the certificate thereof. Maitre Cruchot was of opinion that Nanon, +unknown to herself, was the trusty instrument by which the money was +transported; for about this time she was absent five days, under a +pretext of putting things to rights at Froidfond,--as if the goodman +were capable of leaving anything lying about or out of order! + +In all that concerned the business of the house of Guillaume Grandet +the old cooper's intentions were fulfilled to the letter. The Bank of +France, as everybody knows, affords exact information about all the +large fortunes in Paris and the provinces. The names of des Grassins +and Felix Grandet of Saumur were well known there, and they enjoyed the +esteem bestowed on financial celebrities whose wealth comes from immense +and unencumbered territorial possessions. The arrival of the Saumur +banker for the purpose, it was said, of honorably liquidating the +affairs of Grandet of Paris, was enough to avert the shame of protested +notes from the memory of the defunct merchant. The seals on the property +were taken off in presence of the creditors, and the notary employed by +Grandet went to work at once on the inventory of the assets. Soon after +this, des Grassins called a meeting of the creditors, who unanimously +elected him, conjointly with Francois Keller, the head of a rich +banking-house and one of those principally interested in the affair, as +liquidators, with full power to protect both the honor of the family +and the interests of the claimants. The credit of Grandet of Saumur, +the hopes he diffused by means of des Grassins in the minds of all +concerned, facilitated the transactions. Not a single creditor proved +recalcitrant; no one thought of passing his claim to his profit-and-loss +account; each and all said confidently, "Grandet of Saumur will pay." + +Six months went by. The Parisians had redeemed the notes in circulation +as they fell due, and held them under lock and key in their desks. First +result aimed at by the old cooper! Nine months after this preliminary +meeting, the two liquidators distributed forty-seven per cent to each +creditor on his claim. This amount was obtained by the sale of the +securities, property, and possessions of all kinds belonging to the +late Guillaume Grandet, and was paid over with scrupulous fidelity. +Unimpeachable integrity was shown in the transaction. The creditors +gratefully acknowledged the remarkable and incontestable honor displayed +by the Grandets. When these praises had circulated for a certain length +of time, the creditors asked for the rest of their money. It became +necessary to write a collective letter to Grandet of Saumur. + +"Here it comes!" said the old man as he threw the letter into the fire. +"Patience, my good friends!" + +In answer to the proposals contained in the letter, Grandet of Saumur +demanded that all vouchers for claims against the estate of his brother +should be deposited with a notary, together with acquittances for the +forty-seven per cent already paid; he made this demand under pretence of +sifting the accounts and finding out the exact condition of the estate. +It roused at once a variety of difficulties. Generally speaking, the +creditor is a species of maniac, ready to agree to anything one day, on +the next breathing fire and slaughter; later on, he grows amicable and +easy-going. To-day his wife is good-humored, his last baby has cut its +first tooth, all is well at home, and he is determined not to lose a +sou; on the morrow it rains, he can't go out, he is gloomy, he says yes +to any proposal that is made to him, so long as it will put an end to +the affair; on the third day he declares he must have guarantees; by +the end of the month he wants his debtor's head, and becomes at heart an +executioner. The creditor is a good deal like the sparrow on whose tail +confiding children are invited to put salt,--with this difference, that +he applies the image to his claim, the proceeds of which he is never +able to lay hold of. Grandet had studied the atmospheric variations +of creditors, and the creditors of his brother justified all his +calculations. Some were angry, and flatly refused to give in their +vouchers. + +"Very good; so much the better," said Grandet, rubbing his hands over +the letter in which des Grassins announced the fact. + +Others agreed to the demand, but only on condition that their rights +should be fully guaranteed; they renounced none, and even reserved +the power of ultimately compelling a failure. On this began a long +correspondence, which ended in Grandet of Saumur agreeing to all +conditions. By means of this concession the placable creditors were +able to bring the dissatisfied creditors to reason. The deposit was then +made, but not without sundry complaints. + +"Your goodman," they said to des Grassins, "is tricking us." + +Twenty-three months after the death of Guillaume Grandet many of the +creditors, carried away by more pressing business in the markets of +Paris, had forgotten their Grandet claims, or only thought of them to +say: + +"I begin to believe that forty-seven per cent is all I shall ever get +out of that affair." + +The old cooper had calculated on the power of time, which, as he used to +say, is a pretty good devil after all. By the end of the third year des +Grassins wrote to Grandet that he had brought the creditors to agree to +give up their claims for ten per cent on the two million four hundred +thousand francs still due by the house of Grandet. Grandet answered that +the notary and the broker whose shameful failures had caused the death +of his brother were still living, that they might now have recovered +their credit, and that they ought to be sued, so as to get something out +of them towards lessening the total of the deficit. + +By the end of the fourth year the liabilities were definitely estimated +at a sum of twelve hundred thousand francs. Many negotiations, lasting +over six months, took place between the creditors and the liquidators, +and between the liquidators and Grandet. To make a long story short, +Grandet of Saumur, anxious by this time to get out of the affair, told +the liquidators, about the ninth month of the fourth year, that his +nephew had made a fortune in the Indies and was disposed to pay his +father's debts in full; he therefore could not take upon himself to make +any settlement without previously consulting him; he had written to him, +and was expecting an answer. The creditors were held in check until the +middle of the fifth year by the words, "payment in full," which the wily +old miser threw out from time to time as he laughed in his beard, saying +with a smile and an oath, "Those Parisians!" + +But the creditors were reserved for a fate unexampled in the annals +of commerce. When the events of this history bring them once more into +notice, they will be found still in the position Grandet had resolved to +force them into from the first. + +As soon as the Funds reached a hundred and fifteen, Pere Grandet sold +out his interests and withdrew two million four hundred thousand francs +in gold, to which he added, in his coffers, the six hundred thousand +francs compound interest which he had derived from the capital. Des +Grassins now lived in Paris. In the first place he had been made a +deputy; then he became infatuated (father of a family as he was, though +horribly bored by the provincial life of Saumur) with a pretty actress +at the Theatre de Madame, known as Florine, and he presently relapsed +into the old habits of his army life. It is useless to speak of his +conduct; Saumur considered it profoundly immoral. His wife was fortunate +in the fact of her property being settled upon herself, and in having +sufficient ability to keep up the banking-house in Saumur, which was +managed in her name and repaired the breach in her fortune caused by the +extravagance of her husband. The Cruchotines made so much talk about +the false position of the quasi-widow that she married her daughter very +badly, and was forced to give up all hope of an alliance between Eugenie +Grandet and her son. Adolphe joined his father in Paris and became, it +was said, a worthless fellow. The Cruchots triumphed. + +"Your husband hasn't common sense," said Grandet as he lent Madame des +Grassins some money on a note securely endorsed. "I am very sorry for +you, for you are a good little woman." + +"Ah, monsieur," said the poor lady, "who could have believed that when +he left Saumur to go to Paris on your business he was going to his +ruin?" + +"Heaven is my witness, madame, that up to the last moment I did all I +could to prevent him from going. Monsieur le president was most anxious +to take his place; but he was determined to go, and now we all see why." + +In this way Grandet made it quite plain that he was under no obligation +to des Grassins. + + * * * * * + +In all situations women have more cause for suffering than men, and they +suffer more. Man has strength and the power of exercising it; he acts, +moves, thinks, occupies himself; he looks ahead, and sees consolation in +the future. It was thus with Charles. But the woman stays at home; she +is always face to face with the grief from which nothing distracts +her; she goes down to the depths of the abyss which yawns before her, +measures it, and often fills it with her tears and prayers. Thus did +Eugenie. She initiated herself into her destiny. To feel, to love, to +suffer, to devote herself,--is not this the sum of woman's life? Eugenie +was to be in all things a woman, except in the one thing that consoles +for all. Her happiness, picked up like nails scattered on a wall--to use +the fine simile of Bossuet--would never so much as fill even the hollow +of her hand. Sorrows are never long in coming; for her they came soon. +The day after Charles's departure the house of Monsieur Grandet resumed +its ordinary aspect in the eyes of all, except in those of Eugenie, to +whom it grew suddenly empty. She wished, if it could be done unknown to +her father, that Charles's room might be kept as he had left it. Madame +Grandet and Nanon were willing accomplices in this _statu quo_. + +"Who knows but he may come back sooner than we think for?" she said. + +"Ah, don't I wish I could see him back!" answered Nanon. "I took to him! +He was such a dear, sweet young man,--pretty too, with his curly hair." +Eugenie looked at Nanon. "Holy Virgin! don't look at me that way, +mademoiselle; your eyes are like those of a lost soul." + +From that day the beauty of Mademoiselle Grandet took a new character. +The solemn thoughts of love which slowly filled her soul, and the +dignity of the woman beloved, gave to her features an illumination such +as painters render by a halo. Before the coming of her cousin, Eugenie +might be compared to the Virgin before the conception; after he had +gone, she was like the Virgin Mother,--she had given birth to love. +These two Marys so different, so well represented by Spanish art, embody +one of those shining symbols with which Christianity abounds. + +Returning from Mass on the morning after Charles's departure,--having +made a vow to hear it daily,--Eugenie bought a map of the world, which +she nailed up beside her looking-glass, that she might follow her cousin +on his westward way, that she might put herself, were it ever so little, +day by day into the ship that bore him, and see him and ask him a +thousand questions,--"Art thou well? Dost thou suffer? Dost thou think +of me when the star, whose beauty and usefulness thou hast taught me +to know, shines upon thee?" In the mornings she sat pensive beneath the +walnut-tree, on the worm-eaten bench covered with gray lichens, where +they had said to each other so many precious things, so many trifles, +where they had built the pretty castles of their future home. She +thought of the future now as she looked upward to the bit of sky which +was all the high walls suffered her to see; then she turned her eyes +to the angle where the sun crept on, and to the roof above the room in +which he had slept. Hers was the solitary love, the persistent love, +which glides into every thought and becomes the substance, or, as our +fathers might have said, the tissue of life. When the would-be friends +of Pere Grandet came in the evening for their game at cards, she was gay +and dissimulating; but all the morning she talked of Charles with her +mother and Nanon. Nanon had brought herself to see that she could pity +the sufferings of her young mistress without failing in her duty to the +old master, and she would say to Eugenie,-- + +"If I had a man for myself I'd--I'd follow him to hell, yes, I'd +exterminate myself for him; but I've none. I shall die and never know +what life is. Would you believe, mamz'elle, that old Cornoiller (a good +fellow all the same) is always round my petticoats for the sake of my +money,--just for all the world like the rats who come smelling after the +master's cheese and paying court to you? I see it all; I've got a shrewd +eye, though I am as big as a steeple. Well, mamz'elle, it pleases me, +but it isn't love." + + + + +X + +Two months went by. This domestic life, once so monotonous, was now +quickened with the intense interest of a secret that bound these women +intimately together. For them Charles lived and moved beneath the +grim gray rafters of the hall. Night and morning Eugenie opened the +dressing-case and gazed at the portrait of her aunt. One Sunday morning +her mother surprised her as she stood absorbed in finding her cousin's +features in his mother's face. Madame Grandet was then for the first +time admitted into the terrible secret of the exchange made by Charles +against her daughter's treasure. + +"You gave him all!" cried the poor mother, terrified. "What will you say +to your father on New Year's Day when he asks to see your gold?" + +Eugenie's eyes grew fixed, and the two women lived through mortal terror +for more than half the morning. They were so troubled in mind that they +missed high Mass, and only went to the military service. In three days +the year 1819 would come to an end. In three days a terrible drama would +begin, a bourgeois tragedy, without poison, or dagger, or the spilling +of blood; but--as regards the actors in it--more cruel than all the +fabled horrors in the family of the Atrides. + +"What will become of us?" said Madame Grandet to her daughter, letting +her knitting fall upon her knees. + +The poor mother had gone through such anxiety for the past two months +that the woollen sleeves which she needed for the coming winter were not +yet finished. This domestic fact, insignificant as it seems, bore sad +results. For want of those sleeves, a chill seized her in the midst of +a sweat caused by a terrible explosion of anger on the part of her +husband. + +"I have been thinking, my poor child, that if you had confided your +secret to me we should have had time to write to Monsieur des Grassins +in Paris. He might have sent us gold pieces like yours; though Grandet +knows them all, perhaps--" + +"Where could we have got the money?" + +"I would have pledged my own property. Besides, Monsieur des Grassins +would have--" + +"It is too late," said Eugenie in a broken, hollow voice. "To-morrow +morning we must go and wish him a happy New Year in his chamber." + +"But, my daughter, why should I not consult the Cruchots?" + +"No, no; it would be delivering me up to them, and putting ourselves +in their power. Besides, I have chosen my course. I have done right, I +repent of nothing. God will protect me. His will be done! Ah! mother, if +you had read his letter, you, too, would have thought only of him." + +The next morning, January 1, 1820, the horrible fear to which mother and +daughter were a prey suggested to their minds a natural excuse by which +to escape the solemn entrance into Grandet's chamber. The winter of +1819-1820 was one of the coldest of that epoch. The snow encumbered the +roofs. + +Madame Grandet called to her husband as soon as she heard him stirring +in his chamber, and said,-- + +"Grandet, will you let Nanon light a fire here for me? The cold is so +sharp that I am freezing under the bedclothes. At my age I need some +comforts. Besides," she added, after a slight pause, "Eugenie shall come +and dress here; the poor child might get an illness from dressing in her +cold room in such weather. Then we will go and wish you a happy New Year +beside the fire in the hall." + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta, what a tongue! a pretty way to begin the new year, +Madame Grandet! You never talked so much before; but you haven't been +sopping your bread in wine, I know that." + +There was a moment's silence. + +"Well," resumed the goodman, who no doubt had some reason of his own for +agreeing to his wife's request, "I'll do what you ask, Madame Grandet. +You are a good woman, and I don't want any harm to happen to you at your +time of life,--though as a general thing the Bertellieres are as sound +as a roach. Hein! isn't that so?" he added after a pause. "Well, I +forgive them; we got their property in the end." And he coughed. + +"You are very gay this morning, monsieur," said the poor woman gravely. + +"I'm always gay,-- + + "'Gai, gai, gai, le tonnelier, + Raccommodez votre cuvier!'" + +he answered, entering his wife's room fully dressed. "Yes, on my word, +it is cold enough to freeze you solid. We shall have a fine breakfast, +wife. Des Grassins has sent me a pate-de-foie-gras truffled! I am going +now to get it at the coach-office. There'll be a double napoleon for +Eugenie in the package," he whispered in Madame Grandet's ear. "I have +no gold left, wife. I had a few stray pieces--I don't mind telling you +that--but I had to let them go in business." + +Then, by way of celebrating the new year, he kissed her on the forehead. + +"Eugenie," cried the mother, when Grandet was fairly gone, "I don't know +which side of the bed your father got out of, but he is good-tempered +this morning. Perhaps we shall come out safe after all?" + +"What's happened to the master?" said Nanon, entering her mistress's +room to light the fire. "First place, he said, 'Good-morning; happy New +Year, you big fool! Go and light my wife's fire, she's cold'; and then, +didn't I feel silly when he held out his hand and gave me a six-franc +piece, which isn't worn one bit? Just look at it, madame! Oh, the kind +man! He is a good man, that's a fact. There are some people who the +older they get the harder they grow; but he,--why he's getting soft and +improving with time, like your ratafia! He is a good, good man--" + +The secret of Grandet's joy lay in the complete success of his +speculation. Monsieur des Grassins, after deducting the amount which +the old cooper owed him for the discount on a hundred and fifty thousand +francs in Dutch notes, and for the surplus which he had advanced to make +up the sum required for the investment in the Funds which was to produce +a hundred thousand francs a year, had now sent him, by the diligence, +thirty thousand francs in silver coin, the remainder of his first +half-year's interest, informing him at the same time that the Funds +had already gone up in value. They were then quoted at eighty-nine; +the shrewdest capitalists bought in, towards the last of January, at +ninety-three. Grandet had thus gained in two months twelve per cent on +his capital; he had simplified his accounts, and would in future receive +fifty thousand francs interest every six months, without incurring any +taxes or costs for repairs. He understood at last what it was to invest +money in the public securities,--a system for which provincials have +always shown a marked repugnance,--and at the end of five years he found +himself master of a capital of six millions, which increased without +much effort of his own, and which, joined to the value and proceeds +of his territorial possessions, gave him a fortune that was absolutely +colossal. The six francs bestowed on Nanon were perhaps the reward of +some great service which the poor servant had rendered to her master +unawares. + +"Oh! oh! where's Pere Grandet going? He has been scurrying about since +sunrise as if to a fire," said the tradespeople to each other as they +opened their shops for the day. + +When they saw him coming back from the wharf, followed by a porter from +the coach-office wheeling a barrow which was laden with sacks, they all +had their comments to make:-- + +"Water flows to the river; the old fellow was running after his gold," +said one. + +"He gets it from Paris and Froidfond and Holland," said another. + +"He'll end by buying up Saumur," cried a third. + +"He doesn't mind the cold, he's so wrapped up in his gains," said a wife +to her husband. + +"Hey! hey! Monsieur Grandet, if that's too heavy for you," said a +cloth-dealer, his nearest neighbor, "I'll take it off your hands." + +"Heavy?" said the cooper, "I should think so; it's all sous!" + +"Silver sous," said the porter in a low voice. + +"If you want me to take care of you, keep your tongue between your +teeth," said the goodman to the porter as they reached the door. + +"The old fox! I thought he was deaf; seems he can hear fast enough in +frosty weather." + +"Here's twenty sous for your New Year, and _mum_!" said Grandet. "Be off +with you! Nanon shall take back your barrow. Nanon, are the linnets at +church?" + +"Yes, monsieur." + +"Then lend a hand! go to work!" he cried, piling the sacks upon her. +In a few moments all were carried up to his inner room, where he shut +himself in with them. "When breakfast is ready, knock on the wall," he +said as he disappeared. "Take the barrow back to the coach-office." + +The family did not breakfast that day until ten o'clock. + +"Your father will not ask to see your gold downstairs," said Madame +Grandet as they got back from Mass. "You must pretend to be very chilly. +We may have time to replace the treasure before your fete-day." + +Grandet came down the staircase thinking of his splendid speculation +in government securities, and wondering how he could metamorphose his +Parisian silver into solid gold; he was making up his mind to invest in +this way everything he could lay hands on until the Funds should reach +a par value. Fatal reverie for Eugenie! As soon as he came in, the two +women wished him a happy New Year,--his daughter by putting her arms +round his neck and caressing him; Madame Grandet gravely and with +dignity. + +"Ha! ha! my child," he said, kissing his daughter on both cheeks. "I +work for you, don't you see? I think of your happiness. Must have money +to be happy. Without money there's not a particle of happiness. Here! +there's a new napoleon for you. I sent to Paris for it. On my word of +honor, it's all the gold I have; you are the only one that has got any +gold. I want to see your gold, little one." + +"Oh! it is too cold; let us have breakfast," answered Eugenie. + +"Well, after breakfast, then; it will help the digestion. That fat des +Grassins sent me the pate. Eat as much as you like, my children, it +costs nothing. Des Grassins is getting along very well. I am satisfied +with him. The old fish is doing Charles a good service, and gratis too. +He is making a very good settlement of that poor deceased Grandet's +business. Hoo! hoo!" he muttered, with his mouth full, after a pause, +"how good it is! Eat some, wife; that will feed you for at least two +days." + +"I am not hungry. I am very poorly; you know that." + +"Ah, bah! you can stuff yourself as full as you please without danger, +you're a Bertelliere; they are all hearty. You are a bit yellow, that's +true; but I like yellow, myself." + +The expectation of ignominious and public death is perhaps less horrible +to a condemned criminal than the anticipation of what was coming after +breakfast to Madame Grandet and Eugenie. The more gleefully the old man +talked and ate, the more their hearts shrank within them. The daughter, +however, had an inward prop at this crisis,--she gathered strength +through love. + +"For him! for him!" she cried within her, "I would die a thousand +deaths." + +At this thought, she shot a glance at her mother which flamed with +courage. + +"Clear away," said Grandet to Nanon when, about eleven o'clock, +breakfast was over, "but leave the table. We can spread your little +treasure upon it," he said, looking at Eugenie. "Little? Faith! no; it +isn't little. You possess, in actual value, five thousand nine hundred +and fifty-nine francs and the forty I gave you just now. That makes six +thousand francs, less one. Well, now see here, little one! I'll give you +that one franc to make up the round number. Hey! what are you listening +for, Nanon? Mind your own business; go and do your work." + +Nanon disappeared. + +"Now listen, Eugenie; you must give me back your gold. You won't refuse +your father, my little girl, hein?" + +The two women were dumb. + +"I have no gold myself. I had some, but it is all gone. I'll give you +in return six thousand francs in _livres_, and you are to put them just +where I tell you. You mustn't think anything more about your 'dozen.' +When I marry you (which will be soon) I shall get you a husband who can +give you the finest 'dozen' ever seen in the provinces. Now attend to +me, little girl. There's a fine chance for you; you can put your six +thousand francs into government funds, and you will receive every six +months nearly two hundred francs interest, without taxes, or repairs, +or frost, or hail, or floods, or anything else to swallow up the money. +Perhaps you don't like to part with your gold, hey, my girl? Never mind, +bring it to me all the same. I'll get you some more like it,--like +those Dutch coins and the _portugaises_, the rupees of Mogul, and the +_genovines_,--I'll give you some more on your fete-days, and in three +years you'll have got back half your little treasure. What's that you +say? Look up, now. Come, go and get it, the precious metal. You ought to +kiss me on the eyelids for telling you the secrets and the mysteries of +the life and death of money. Yes, silver and gold live and swarm like +men; they come, and go, and sweat, and multiply--" + +Eugenie rose; but after making a few steps towards the door she turned +abruptly, looked her father in the face, and said,-- + +"I have not got _my_ gold." + +"You have not got your gold!" cried Grandet, starting up erect, like a +horse that hears a cannon fired beside him. + +"No, I have not got it." + +"You are mistaken, Eugenie." + +"No." + +"By the shears of my father!" + +Whenever the old man swore that oath the rafters trembled. + +"Holy Virgin! Madame is turning pale," cried Nanon. + +"Grandet, your anger will kill me," said the poor mother. + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta! nonsense; you never die in your family! Eugenie, what +have you done with your gold?" he cried, rushing upon her. + +"Monsieur," said the daughter, falling at Madame Grandet's knees, "my +mother is ill. Look at her; do not kill her." + +Grandet was frightened by the pallor which overspread his wife's face, +usually so yellow. + +"Nanon, help me to bed," said the poor woman in a feeble voice; "I am +dying--" + +Nanon gave her mistress an arm, Eugenie gave her another; but it was +only with infinite difficulty that they could get her upstairs, she fell +with exhaustion at every step. Grandet remained alone. However, in a few +moments he went up six or eight stairs and called out,-- + +"Eugenie, when your mother is in bed, come down." + +"Yes, father." + +She soon came, after reassuring her mother. + +"My daughter," said Grandet, "you will now tell me what you have done +with your gold." + +"My father, if you make me presents of which I am not the sole mistress, +take them back," she answered coldly, picking up the napoleon from the +chimney-piece and offering it to him. + +Grandet seized the coin and slipped it into his breeches' pocket. + +"I shall certainly never give you anything again. Not so much as that!" +he said, clicking his thumb-nail against a front tooth. "Do you dare to +despise your father? have you no confidence in him? Don't you know what +a father is? If he is nothing for you, he is nothing at all. Where is +your gold?" + +"Father, I love and respect you, in spite of your anger; but I humbly +ask you to remember that I am twenty-three years old. You have told me +often that I have attained my majority, and I do not forget it. I have +used my money as I chose to use it, and you may be sure that it was put +to a good use--" + +"What use?" + +"That is an inviolable secret," she answered. "Have you no secrets?" + +"I am the head of the family; I have my own affairs." + +"And this is mine." + +"It must be something bad if you can't tell it to your father, +Mademoiselle Grandet." + +"It is good, and I cannot tell it to my father." + +"At least you can tell me when you parted with your gold?" + +Eugenie made a negative motion with her head. + +"You had it on your birthday, hein?" + +She grew as crafty through love as her father was through avarice, and +reiterated the negative sign. + +"Was there ever such obstinacy! It's a theft," cried Grandet, his voice +going up in a crescendo which gradually echoed through the house. +"What! here, in my own home, under my very eyes, somebody has taken your +gold!--the only gold we have!--and I'm not to know who has got it! Gold +is a precious thing. Virtuous girls go wrong sometimes, and give--I +don't know what; they do it among the great people, and even among the +bourgeoisie. But give their gold!--for you have given it to some one, +hein?--" + +Eugenie was silent and impassive. + +"Was there ever such a daughter? Is it possible that I am your father? +If you have invested it anywhere, you must have a receipt--" + +"Was I free--yes or no--to do what I would with my own? Was it not +mine?" + +"You are a child." + +"Of age." + +Dumbfounded by his daughter's logic, Grandet turned pale and stamped and +swore. When at last he found words, he cried: "Serpent! Cursed girl! Ah, +deceitful creature! You know I love you, and you take advantage of it. +She'd cut her father's throat! Good God! you've given our fortune to +that ne'er-do-well,--that dandy with morocco boots! By the shears of my +father! I can't disinherit you, but I curse you,--you and your cousin +and your children! Nothing good will come of it! Do you hear? If it was +to Charles--but, no; it's impossible. What! has that wretched fellow +robbed me?--" + +He looked at his daughter, who continued cold and silent. + +"She won't stir; she won't flinch! She's more Grandet than I'm Grandet! +Ha! you have not given your gold for nothing? Come, speak the truth!" + +Eugenie looked at her father with a sarcastic expression that stung him. + +"Eugenie, you are here, in my house,--in your father's house. If you +wish to stay here, you must submit yourself to me. The priests tell you +to obey me." Eugenie bowed her head. "You affront me in all I hold most +dear. I will not see you again until you submit. Go to your chamber. You +will stay there till I give you permission to leave it. Nanon will bring +you bread and water. You hear me--go!" + +Eugenie burst into tears and fled up to her mother. Grandet, after +marching two or three times round the garden in the snow without heeding +the cold, suddenly suspected that his daughter had gone to her mother; +only too happy to find her disobedient to his orders, he climbed the +stairs with the agility of a cat and appeared in Madame Grandet's room +just as she was stroking Eugenie's hair, while the girl's face was +hidden in her motherly bosom. + +"Be comforted, my poor child," she was saying; "your father will get +over it." + +"She has no father!" said the old man. "Can it be you and I, Madame +Grandet, who have given birth to such a disobedient child? A fine +education,--religious, too! Well! why are you not in your chamber? Come, +to prison, to prison, mademoiselle!" + +"Would you deprive me of my daughter, monsieur?" said Madame Grandet, +turning towards him a face that was now red with fever. + +"If you want to keep her, carry her off! Clear out--out of my house, +both of you! Thunder! where is the gold? what's become of the gold?" + +Eugenie rose, looked proudly at her father, and withdrew to her room. +Grandet turned the key of the door. + +"Nanon," he cried, "put out the fire in the hall." + +Then he sat down in an armchair beside his wife's fire and said to +her,-- + +"Undoubtedly she has given the gold to that miserable seducer, Charles, +who only wanted our money." + +"I knew nothing about it," she answered, turning to the other side of +the bed, that she might escape the savage glances of her husband. "I +suffer so much from your violence that I shall never leave this room, if +I trust my own presentiments, till I am carried out of it in my coffin. +You ought to have spared me this suffering, monsieur,--you, to whom I +have caused no pain; that is, I think so. Your daughter loves you. +I believe her to be as innocent as the babe unborn. Do not make her +wretched. Revoke your sentence. The cold is very severe; you may give +her some serious illness." + +"I will not see her, neither will I speak to her. She shall stay in +her room, on bread and water, until she submits to her father. What the +devil! shouldn't a father know where the gold in his house has gone to? +She owned the only rupees in France, perhaps, and the Dutch ducats and +the _genovines_--" + +"Monsieur, Eugenie is our only child; and even if she had thrown them +into the water--" + +"Into the water!" cried her husband; "into the water! You are crazy, +Madame Grandet! What I have said is said; you know that well enough. If +you want peace in this household, make your daughter confess, pump it +out of her. Women understand how to do that better than we do. Whatever +she has done, I sha'n't eat her. Is she afraid of me? Even if she has +plastered Charles with gold from head to foot, he is on the high seas, +and nobody can get at him, hein!" + +"But, monsieur--" Excited by the nervous crisis through which she had +passed, and by the fate of her daughter, which brought forth all her +tenderness and all her powers of mind, Madame Grandet suddenly observed +a frightful movement of her husband's wen, and, in the very act of +replying, she changed her speech without changing the tones of her +voice,--"But, monsieur, I have not more influence over her than you +have. She has said nothing to me; she takes after you." + +"Tut, tut! Your tongue is hung in the middle this morning. Ta, ta, ta, +ta! You are setting me at defiance, I do believe. I daresay you are in +league with her." + +He looked fixedly at his wife. + +"Monsieur Grandet, if you wish to kill me, you have only to go on like +this. I tell you, monsieur,--and if it were to cost me my life, I would +say it,--you do wrong by your daughter; she is more in the right than +you are. That money belonged to her; she is incapable of making any but +a good use of it, and God alone has the right to know our good deeds. +Monsieur, I implore you, take Eugenie back into favor; forgive her. +If you will do this you will lessen the injury your anger has done me; +perhaps you will save my life. My daughter! oh, monsieur, give me back +my daughter!" + +"I shall decamp," he said; "the house is not habitable. A mother and +daughter talking and arguing like that! Broooouh! Pouah! A fine New +Year's present you've made me, Eugenie," he called out. "Yes, yes, cry +away! What you've done will bring you remorse, do you hear? What's the +good of taking the sacrament six times every three months, if you give +away your father's gold secretly to an idle fellow who'll eat your heart +out when you've nothing else to give him? You'll find out some day what +your Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and supercilious airs. He +has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to carry off a young girl's +treasure without the consent of her parents." + +When the street-door was shut, Eugenie came out of her room and went to +her mother. + +"What courage you have had for your daughter's sake!" she said. + +"Ah! my child, see where forbidden things may lead us. You forced me to +tell a lie." + +"I will ask God to punish only me." + +"Is it true," cried Nanon, rushing in alarmed, "that mademoiselle is to +be kept on bread and water for the rest of her life?" + +"What does that signify, Nanon?" said Eugenie tranquilly. + +"Goodness! do you suppose I'll eat _frippe_ when the daughter of the +house is eating dry bread? No, no!" + +"Don't say a word about all this, Nanon," said Eugenie. + +"I'll be as mute as a fish; but you'll see!" + + * * * * * + +Grandet dined alone for the first time in twenty-four years. + +"So you're a widower, monsieur," said Nanon; "it must be disagreeable to +be a widower with two women in the house." + +"I did not speak to you. Hold your jaw, or I'll turn you off! What is +that I hear boiling in your saucepan on the stove?" + +"It is grease I'm trying out." + +"There will be some company to-night. Light the fire." + +The Cruchots, Madame des Grassins, and her son arrived at the usual +hour of eight, and were surprised to see neither Madame Grandet nor her +daughter. + +"My wife is not very well, and Eugenie is with her," said the old +wine-grower, whose face betrayed no emotion. + +At the end of an hour spent in idle conversation, Madame des Grassins, +who had gone up to see Madame Grandet, came down, and every one +inquired,-- + +"How is Madame Grandet?" + +"Not at all well," she answered; "her condition seems to me really +alarming. At her age you ought to take every precaution, Papa Grandet." + +"We'll see about it," said the old man in an absent way. + +They all wished him good-night. When the Cruchots got into the street +Madame des Grassins said to them,-- + +"There is something going on at the Grandets. The mother is very ill +without her knowing it. The girl's eyes are red, as if she had been +crying all day. Can they be trying to marry her against her will?" + + * * * * * + +When Grandet had gone to bed Nanon came softly to Eugenie's room in her +stockinged feet and showed her a pate baked in a saucepan. + +"See, mademoiselle," said the good soul, "Cornoiller gave me a hare. You +eat so little that this pate will last you full a week; in such frosty +weather it won't spoil. You sha'n't live on dry bread, I'm determined; +it isn't wholesome." + +"Poor Nanon!" said Eugenie, pressing her hand. + +"I've made it downright good and dainty, and _he_ never found it out. I +bought the lard and the spices out of my six francs: I'm the mistress of +my own money"; and she disappeared rapidly, fancying she heard Grandet. + + + + +XI + +For several months the old wine-grower came constantly to his wife's +room at all hours of the day, without ever uttering his daughter's name, +or seeing her, or making the smallest allusion to her. Madame Grandet +did not leave her chamber, and daily grew worse. Nothing softened the +old man; he remained unmoved, harsh, and cold as a granite rock. He +continued to go and come about his business as usual; but ceased to +stutter, talked less, and was more obdurate in business transactions +than ever before. Often he made mistakes in adding up his figures. + +"Something is going on at the Grandets," said the Grassinists and the +Cruchotines. + +"What has happened in the Grandet family?" became a fixed question which +everybody asked everybody else at the little evening-parties of Saumur. +Eugenie went to Mass escorted by Nanon. If Madame des Grassins said a +few words to her on coming out of church, she answered in an evasive +manner, without satisfying any curiosity. However, at the end of two +months, it became impossible to hide, either from the three Cruchots +or from Madame des Grassins, the fact that Eugenie was in confinement. +There came a moment when all pretexts failed to explain her perpetual +absence. Then, though it was impossible to discover by whom the secret +had been betrayed, all the town became aware that ever since New Year's +day Mademoiselle Grandet had been kept in her room without fire, on +bread and water, by her father's orders, and that Nanon cooked little +dainties and took them to her secretly at night. It was even known that +the young woman was not able to see or take care of her mother, except +at certain times when her father was out of the house. + +Grandet's conduct was severely condemned. The whole town outlawed him, +so to speak; they remembered his treachery, his hard-heartedness, +and they excommunicated him. When he passed along the streets, people +pointed him out and muttered at him. When his daughter came down the +winding street, accompanied by Nanon, on her way to Mass or Vespers, the +inhabitants ran to the windows and examined with intense curiosity the +bearing of the rich heiress and her countenance, which bore the +impress of angelic gentleness and melancholy. Her imprisonment and the +condemnation of her father were as nothing to her. Had she not a map of +the world, the little bench, the garden, the angle of the wall? Did she +not taste upon her lips the honey that love's kisses left there? She +was ignorant for a time that the town talked about her, just as Grandet +himself was ignorant of it. Pious and pure in heart before God, her +conscience and her love helped her to suffer patiently the wrath and +vengeance of her father. + +One deep grief silenced all others. Her mother, that gentle, tender +creature, made beautiful by the light which shone from the inner to the +outer as she approached the tomb,--her mother was perishing from day to +day. Eugenie often reproached herself as the innocent cause of the slow, +cruel malady that was wasting her away. This remorse, though her mother +soothed it, bound her still closer to her love. Every morning, as soon +as her father left the house, she went to the bedside of her mother, +and there Nanon brought her breakfast. The poor girl, sad, and suffering +through the sufferings of her mother, would turn her face to the old +servant with a mute gesture, weeping, and yet not daring to speak of her +cousin. It was Madame Grandet who first found courage to say,-- + +"Where is _he_? Why does _he_ not write?" + +"Let us think about him, mother, but not speak of him. You are ill--you, +before all." + +"All" meant "him." + +"My child," said Madame Grandet, "I do not wish to live. God protects me +and enables me to look with joy to the end of my misery." + +Every utterance of this woman was unfalteringly pious and Christian. +Sometimes, during the first months of the year, when her husband came +to breakfast with her and tramped up and down the room, she would say +to him a few religious words, always spoken with angelic sweetness, yet +with the firmness of a woman to whom approaching death lends a courage +she had lacked in life. + +"Monsieur, I thank you for the interest you take in my health," she +would answer when he made some commonplace inquiry; "but if you really +desire to render my last moments less bitter and to ease my grief, take +back your daughter: be a Christian, a husband, and a father." + +When he heard these words, Grandet would sit down by the bed with the +air of a man who sees the rain coming and quietly gets under the shelter +of a gateway till it is over. When these touching, tender, and religious +supplications had all been made, he would say,-- + +"You are rather pale to-day, my poor wife." + +Absolute forgetfulness of his daughter seemed graven on his stony brow, +on his closed lips. He was unmoved by the tears which flowed down the +white cheeks of his unhappy wife as she listened to his meaningless +answers. + +"May God pardon you," she said, "even as I pardon you! You will some day +stand in need of mercy." + +Since Madame Grandet's illness he had not dared to make use of his +terrible "Ta, ta, ta, ta!" Yet, for all that, his despotic nature was +not disarmed by this angel of gentleness, whose ugliness day by day +decreased, driven out by the ineffable expression of moral qualities +which shone upon her face. She was all soul. The spirit of prayer seemed +to purify her and refine those homely features and make them luminous. +Who has not seen the phenomenon of a like transfiguration on sacred +faces where the habits of the soul have triumphed over the plainest +features, giving them that spiritual illumination whose light comes from +the purity and nobility of the inward thought? The spectacle of this +transformation wrought by the struggle which consumed the last shreds of +the human life of this woman, did somewhat affect the old cooper, +though feebly, for his nature was of iron; if his language ceased to +be contemptuous, an imperturbable silence, which saved his dignity as +master of the household, took its place and ruled his conduct. + +When the faithful Nanon appeared in the market, many quips and quirks +and complaints about the master whistled in her ears; but however loudly +public opinion condemned Monsieur Grandet, the old servant defended him, +for the honor of the family. + +"Well!" she would say to his detractors, "don't we all get hard as +we grow old? Why shouldn't he get horny too? Stop telling lies. +Mademoiselle lives like a queen. She's alone, that's true; but she likes +it. Besides, my masters have good reasons." + +At last, towards the end of spring, Madame Grandet, worn out by grief +even more than by illness, having failed, in spite of her prayers, to +reconcile the father and daughter, confided her secret troubles to the +Cruchots. + +"Keep a girl of twenty-three on bread and water!" cried Monsieur de +Bonfons; "without any reason, too! Why, that constitutes wrongful +cruelty; she can contest, as much in as upon--" + +"Come, nephew, spare us your legal jargon," said the notary. "Set your +mind at ease, madame; I will put a stop to such treatment to-morrow." + +Eugenie, hearing herself mentioned, came out of her room. + +"Gentlemen," she said, coming forward with a proud step, "I beg you not +to interfere in this matter. My father is master in his own house. As +long as I live under his roof I am bound to obey him. His conduct is +not subject to the approbation or the disapprobation of the world; he +is accountable to God only. I appeal to your friendship to keep total +silence in this affair. To blame my father is to attack our family +honor. I am much obliged to you for the interest you have shown in +me; you will do me an additional service if you will put a stop to +the offensive rumors which are current in the town, of which I am +accidentally informed." + +"She is right," said Madame Grandet. + +"Mademoiselle, the best way to stop such rumors is to procure your +liberty," answered the old notary respectfully, struck with the beauty +which seclusion, melancholy, and love had stamped upon her face. + +"Well, my daughter, let Monsieur Cruchot manage the matter if he is so +sure of success. He understands your father, and how to manage him. If +you wish to see me happy for my few remaining days, you must, at any +cost, be reconciled to your father." + +On the morrow Grandet, in pursuance of a custom he had begun since +Eugenie's imprisonment, took a certain number of turns up and down the +little garden; he had chosen the hour when Eugenie brushed and arranged +her hair. When the old man reached the walnut-tree he hid behind its +trunk and remained for a few moments watching his daughter's movements, +hesitating, perhaps, between the course to which the obstinacy of his +character impelled him and his natural desire to embrace his child. +Sometimes he sat down on the rotten old bench where Charles and Eugenie +had vowed eternal love; and then she, too, looked at her father secretly +in the mirror before which she stood. If he rose and continued his walk, +she sat down obligingly at the window and looked at the angle of the +wall where the pale flowers hung, where the Venus-hair grew from the +crevices with the bindweed and the sedum,--a white or yellow stone-crop +very abundant in the vineyards of Saumur and at Tours. Maitre Cruchot +came early, and found the old wine-grower sitting in the fine June +weather on the little bench, his back against the division wall of the +garden, engaged in watching his daughter. + +"What may you want, Maitre Cruchot?" he said, perceiving the notary. + +"I came to speak to you on business." + +"Ah! ah! have you brought some gold in exchange for my silver?" + +"No, no, I have not come about money; it is about your daughter Eugenie. +All the town is talking of her and you." + +"What does the town meddle for? A man's house is his castle." + +"Very true; and a man may kill himself if he likes, or, what is worse, +he may fling his money into the gutter." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Why, your wife is very ill, my friend. You ought to consult Monsieur +Bergerin; she is likely to die. If she does die without receiving proper +care, you will not be very easy in mind, I take it." + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta! you know a deal about my wife! These doctors, if they +once get their foot in your house, will come five and six times a day." + +"Of course you will do as you think best. We are old friends; there is +no one in all Saumur who takes more interest than I in what concerns +you. Therefore, I was bound to tell you this. However, happen what may, +you have the right to do as you please; you can choose your own course. +Besides, that is not what brings me here. There is another thing which +may have serious results for you. After all, you can't wish to kill +your wife; her life is too important to you. Think of your situation in +connection with your daughter if Madame Grandet dies. You must render an +account to Eugenie, because you enjoy your wife's estate only during her +lifetime. At her death your daughter can claim a division of property, +and she may force you to sell Froidfond. In short, she is her mother's +heir, and you are not." + +These words fell like a thunderbolt on the old man, who was not as wise +about law as he was about business. He had never thought of a legal +division of the estate. + +"Therefore I advise you to treat her kindly," added Cruchot, in +conclusion. + +"But do you know what she has done, Cruchot?" + +"What?" asked the notary, curious to hear the truth and find out the +cause of the quarrel. + +"She has given away her gold!" + +"Well, wasn't it hers?" said the notary. + +"They all tell me that!" exclaimed the old man, letting his arms fall to +his sides with a movement that was truly tragic. + +"Are you going--for a mere nothing,"--resumed Cruchot, "to put obstacles +in the way of the concessions which you will be obliged to ask from your +daughter as soon as her mother dies?" + +"Do you call six thousand francs a mere nothing?" + +"Hey! my old friend, do you know what the inventory of your wife's +property will cost, if Eugenie demands the division?" + +"How much?" + +"Two, three, four thousand francs, perhaps! The property would have to +be put up at auction and sold, to get at its actual value. Instead of +that, if you are on good terms with--" + +"By the shears of my father!" cried Grandet, turning pale as he suddenly +sat down, "we will see about it, Cruchot." + +After a moment's silence, full of anguish perhaps, the old man looked at +the notary and said,-- + +"Life is very hard! It has many griefs! Cruchot," he continued solemnly, +"you would not deceive me? Swear to me upon your honor that all you've +told me is legally true. Show me the law; I must see the law!" + +"My poor friend," said the notary, "don't I know my own business?" + +"Then it is true! I am robbed, betrayed, killed, destroyed by my own +daughter!" + +"It is true that your daughter is her mother's heir." + +"Why do we have children? Ah! my wife, I love her! Luckily she's sound +and healthy; she's a Bertelliere." + +"She has not a month to live." + +Grandet struck his forehead, went a few steps, came back, cast a +dreadful look on Cruchot, and said,-- + +"What can be done?" + +"Eugenie can relinquish her claim to her mother's property. Should she +do this you would not disinherit her, I presume?--but if you want to +come to such a settlement, you must not treat her harshly. What I am +telling you, old man, is against my own interests. What do I live by, +if it isn't liquidations, inventories, conveyances, divisions of +property?--" + +"We'll see, we'll see! Don't let's talk any more about it, Cruchot; it +wrings my vitals. Have you received any gold?" + +"No; but I have a few old louis, a dozen or so, which you may have. +My good friend, make it up with Eugenie. Don't you know all Saumur is +pelting you with stones?" + +"The scoundrels!" + +"Come, the Funds are at ninety-nine. Do be satisfied for once in your +life." + +"At ninety-nine! Are they, Cruchot?" + +"Yes." + +"Hey, hey! Ninety-nine!" repeated the old man, accompanying the notary +to the street-door. Then, too agitated by what he had just heard to stay +in the house, he went up to his wife's room and said,-- + +"Come, mother, you may have your daughter to spend the day with you. +I'm going to Froidfond. Enjoy yourselves, both of you. This is our +wedding-day, wife. See! here are sixty francs for your altar at the +Fete-Dieu; you've wanted one for a long time. Come, cheer up, enjoy +yourself, and get well! Hurrah for happiness!" + +He threw ten silver pieces of six francs each upon the bed, and took his +wife's head between his hands and kissed her forehead. + +"My good wife, you are getting well, are not you?" + +"How can you think of receiving the God of mercy in your house when you +refuse to forgive your daughter?" she said with emotion. + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" said Grandet in a coaxing voice. "We'll see about +that." + +"Merciful heaven! Eugenie," cried the mother, flushing with joy, "come +and kiss your father; he forgives you!" + +But the old man had disappeared. He was going as fast as his legs could +carry him towards his vineyards, trying to get his confused ideas into +order. Grandet had entered his seventy-sixth year. During the last two +years his avarice had increased upon him, as all the persistent passions +of men increase at a certain age. As if to illustrate an observation +which applies equally to misers, ambitious men, and others whose lives +are controlled by any dominant idea, his affections had fastened upon +one special symbol of his passion. The sight of gold, the possession +of gold, had become a monomania. His despotic spirit had grown in +proportion to his avarice, and to part with the control of the smallest +fraction of his property at the death of his wife seemed to him a thing +"against nature." To declare his fortune to his daughter, to give an +inventory of his property, landed and personal, for the purposes of +division-- + +"Why," he cried aloud in the midst of a field where he was pretending to +examine a vine, "it would be cutting my throat!" + +He came at last to a decision, and returned to Saumur in time for +dinner, resolved to unbend to Eugenie, and pet and coax her, that he +might die regally, holding the reins of his millions in his own hands so +long as the breath was in his body. At the moment when the old man, who +chanced to have his pass-key in his pocket, opened the door and climbed +with a stealthy step up the stairway to go into his wife's room, Eugenie +had brought the beautiful dressing-case from the oak cabinet and placed +it on her mother's bed. Mother and daughter, in Grandet's absence, +allowed themselves the pleasure of looking for a likeness to Charles in +the portrait of his mother. + +"It is exactly his forehead and his mouth," Eugenie was saying as the +old man opened the door. At the look which her husband cast upon the +gold, Madame Grandet cried out,-- + +"O God, have pity upon us!" + +The old man sprang upon the box as a famished tiger might spring upon a +sleeping child. + +"What's this?" he said, snatching the treasure and carrying it to the +window. "Gold, good gold!" he cried. "All gold,--it weighs two pounds! +Ha, ha! Charles gave you that for your money, did he? Hein! Why didn't +you tell me so? It was a good bargain, little one! Yes, you are my +daughter, I see that--" Eugenie trembled in every limb. "This came from +Charles, of course, didn't it?" continued the old man. + +"Yes, father; it is not mine. It is a sacred trust." + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta! He took your fortune, and now you can get it back." + +"Father!" + +Grandet took his knife to pry out some of the gold; to do this, he +placed the dressing-case on a chair. Eugenie sprang forward to recover +it; but her father, who had his eye on her and on the treasure too, +pushed her back so violently with a thrust of his arm that she fell upon +her mother's bed. + +"Monsieur, monsieur!" cried the mother, lifting herself up. + +Grandet had opened his knife, and was about to apply it to the gold. + +"Father!" cried Eugenie, falling on her knees and dragging herself close +to him with clasped hands, "father, in the name of all the saints and +the Virgin! in the name of Christ who died upon the cross! in the name +of your eternal salvation, father! for my life's sake, father!--do not +touch that! It is neither yours nor mine. It is a trust placed in my +hands by an unhappy relation: I must give it back to him uninjured!" + +"If it is a trust, why were you looking at it? To look at it is as bad +as touching it." + +"Father, don't destroy it, or you will disgrace me! Father, do you +hear?" + +"Oh, have pity!" said the mother. + +"Father!" cried Eugenie in so startling a voice that Nanon ran upstairs +terrified. Eugenie sprang upon a knife that was close at hand. + +"Well, what now?" said Grandet coldly, with a callous smile. + +"Oh, you are killing me!" said the mother. + +"Father, if your knife so much as cuts a fragment of that gold, I will +stab myself with this one! You have already driven my mother to her +death; you will now kill your child! Do as you choose! Wound for wound!" + +Grandet held his knife over the dressing-case and hesitated as he looked +at his daughter. + +"Are you capable of doing it, Eugenie?" he said. + +"Yes, yes!" said the mother. + +"She'll do it if she says so!" cried Nanon. "Be reasonable, monsieur, +for once in your life." + +The old man looked at the gold and then at his daughter alternately for +an instant. Madame Grandet fainted. + +"There! don't you see, monsieur, that madame is dying?" cried Nanon. + +"Come, come, my daughter, we won't quarrel for a box! Here, take it!" +he cried hastily, flinging the case upon the bed. "Nanon, go and fetch +Monsieur Bergerin! Come, mother," said he, kissing his wife's hand, +"it's all over! There! we've made up--haven't we, little one? No more +dry bread; you shall have all you want--Ah, she opens her eyes! Well, +mother, little mother, come! See, I'm kissing Eugenie! She loves her +cousin, and she may marry him if she wants to; she may keep his case. +But don't die, mother; live a long time yet, my poor wife! Come, try +to move! Listen! you shall have the finest altar that ever was made in +Saumur." + +"Oh, how can you treat your wife and daughter so!" said Madame Grandet +in a feeble voice. + +"I won't do so again, never again," cried her husband; "you shall see, +my poor wife!" He went to his inner room and returned with a handful +of louis, which he scattered on the bed. "Here, Eugenie! see, wife! all +these are for you," he said, fingering the coins. "Come, be happy, +wife! feel better, get well; you sha'n't want for anything, nor Eugenie +either. Here's a hundred _louis d'or_ for her. You won't give these +away, will you, Eugenie, hein?" + +Madame Grandet and her daughter looked at each other in astonishment. + +"Take back your money, father; we ask for nothing but your affection." + +"Well, well, that's right!" he said, pocketing the coins; "let's be good +friends! We will all go down to dinner to-day, and we'll play loto every +evening for two sous. You shall both be happy. Hey, wife?" + +"Alas! I wish I could, if it would give you pleasure," said the dying +woman; "but I cannot rise from my bed." + +"Poor mother," said Grandet, "you don't know how I love you! and you +too, my daughter!" He took her in his arms and kissed her. "Oh, how +good it is to kiss a daughter when we have been angry with her! There, +mother, don't you see it's all over now? Go and put that away, Eugenie," +he added, pointing to the case. "Go, don't be afraid! I shall never +speak of it again, never!" + +Monsieur Bergerin, the celebrated doctor of Saumur, presently arrived. +After an examination, he told Grandet positively that his wife was very +ill; but that perfect peace of mind, a generous diet, and great care +might prolong her life until the autumn. + +"Will all that cost much?" said the old man. "Will she need medicines?" + +"Not much medicine, but a great deal of care," answered the doctor, who +could scarcely restrain a smile. + +"Now, Monsieur Bergerin," said Grandet, "you are a man of honor, are +not you? I trust to you! Come and see my wife how and when you think +necessary. Save my good wife! I love her,--don't you see?--though I +never talk about it; I keep things to myself. I'm full of trouble. +Troubles began when my brother died; I have to spend enormous sums on +his affairs in Paris. Why, I'm paying through my nose; there's no end +to it. Adieu, monsieur! If you can save my wife, save her. I'll spare no +expense, not even if it costs me a hundred or two hundred francs." + +In spite of Grandet's fervent wishes for the health of his wife, whose +death threatened more than death to him; in spite of the consideration +he now showed on all occasions for the least wish of his astonished wife +and daughter; in spite of the tender care which Eugenie lavished upon +her mother,--Madame Grandet rapidly approached her end. Every day she +grew weaker and wasted visibly, as women of her age when attacked +by serious illness are wont to do. She was fragile as the foliage in +autumn; the radiance of heaven shone through her as the sun strikes +athwart the withering leaves and gilds them. It was a death worthy of +her life,--a Christian death; and is not that sublime? In the month +of October, 1822, her virtues, her angelic patience, her love for her +daughter, seemed to find special expression; and then she passed away +without a murmur. Lamb without spot, she went to heaven, regretting +only the sweet companion of her cold and dreary life, for whom her last +glance seemed to prophesy a destiny of sorrows. She shrank from leaving +her ewe-lamb, white as herself, alone in the midst of a selfish world +that sought to strip her of her fleece and grasp her treasures. + +"My child," she said as she expired, "there is no happiness except in +heaven; you will know it some day." + + + + +XII + +On the morrow of this death Eugenie felt a new motive for attachment to +the house in which she was born, where she had suffered so much, where +her mother had just died. She could not see the window and the chair on +its castors without weeping. She thought she had mistaken the heart of +her old father when she found herself the object of his tenderest cares. +He came in the morning and gave her his arm to take her to breakfast; +he looked at her for hours together with an eye that was almost kind; he +brooded over her as though she had been gold. The old man was so unlike +himself, he trembled so often before his daughter, that Nanon and the +Cruchotines, who witnessed his weakness, attributed it to his great age, +and feared that his faculties were giving away. But the day on which +the family put on their mourning, and after dinner, to which meal Maitre +Cruchot (the only person who knew his secret) had been invited, the +conduct of the old miser was explained. + +"My dear child," he said to Eugenie when the table had been cleared and +the doors carefully shut, "you are now your mother's heiress, and we +have a few little matters to settle between us. Isn't that so, Cruchot?" + +"Yes." + +"Is it necessary to talk of them to-day, father?" + +"Yes, yes, little one; I can't bear the uncertainty in which I'm placed. +I think you don't want to give me pain?" + +"Oh! father--" + +"Well, then! let us settle it all to-night." + +"What is it you wish me to do?" + +"My little girl, it is not for me to say. Tell her, Cruchot." + +"Mademoiselle, your father does not wish to divide the property, nor +sell the estate, nor pay enormous taxes on the ready money which he may +possess. Therefore, to avoid all this, he must be released from making +the inventory of his whole fortune, part of which you inherit from your +mother, and which is now undivided between you and your father--" + +"Cruchot, are you quite sure of what you are saying before you tell it +to a mere child?" + +"Let me tell it my own way, Grandet." + +"Yes, yes, my friend. Neither you nor my daughter wish to rob me,--do +you, little one?" + +"But, Monsieur Cruchot, what am I to do?" said Eugenie impatiently. + +"Well," said the notary, "it is necessary to sign this deed, by which +you renounce your rights to your mother's estate and leave your father +the use and disposition, during his lifetime, of all the property +undivided between you, of which he guarantees you the capital." + +"I do not understand a word of what you are saying," returned Eugenie; +"give me the deed, and show me where I am to sign it." + +Pere Grandet looked alternately at the deed and at his daughter, at his +daughter and at the deed, undergoing as he did so such violent emotion +that he wiped the sweat from his brow. + +"My little girl," he said, "if, instead of signing this deed, which will +cost a great deal to record, you would simply agree to renounce your +rights as heir to your poor dear, deceased mother's property, and would +trust to me for the future, I should like it better. In that case I will +pay you monthly the good round sum of a hundred francs. See, now, you +could pay for as many masses as you want for anybody--Hein! a hundred +francs a month--in _livres_?" + +"I will do all you wish, father." + +"Mademoiselle," said the notary, "it is my duty to point out to you that +you are despoiling yourself without guarantee--" + +"Good heavens! what is all that to me?" + +"Hold your tongue, Cruchot! It's settled, all settled," cried Grandet, +taking his daughter's hand and striking it with his own. "Eugenie, you +won't go back on your word?--you are an honest girl, hein?" + +"Oh! father!--" + +He kissed her effusively, and pressed her in his arms till he almost +choked her. + +"Go, my good child, you restore your father's life; but you only return +to him that which he gave you: we are quits. This is how business should +be done. Life is a business. I bless you! you are a virtuous girl, +and you love your father. Do just what you like in future. To-morrow, +Cruchot," he added, looking at the horrified notary, "you will see about +preparing the deed of relinquishment, and then enter it on the records +of the court." + +The next morning Eugenie signed the papers by which she herself +completed her spoliation. At the end of the first year, however, in +spite of his bargain, the old man had not given his daughter one sou +of the hundred francs he had so solemnly pledged to her. When Eugenie +pleasantly reminded him of this, he could not help coloring, and went +hastily to his secret hiding-place, from whence he brought down about a +third of the jewels he had taken from his nephew, and gave them to her. + +"There, little one," he said in a sarcastic tone, "do you want those for +your twelve hundred francs?" + +"Oh! father, truly? will you really give them to me?" + +"I'll give you as many more next year," he said, throwing them into her +apron. "So before long you'll get all his gewgaws," he added, rubbing +his hands, delighted to be able to speculate on his daughter's feelings. + +Nevertheless, the old man, though still robust, felt the importance +of initiating his daughter into the secrets of his thrift and its +management. For two consecutive years he made her order the household +meals in his presence and receive the rents, and he taught her slowly +and successively the names and remunerative capacity of his vineyards +and his farms. About the third year he had so thoroughly accustomed her +to his avaricious methods that they had turned into the settled habits +of her own life, and he was able to leave the household keys in her +charge without anxiety, and to install her as mistress of the house. + + * * * * * + +Five years passed away without a single event to relieve the monotonous +existence of Eugenie and her father. The same actions were performed +daily with the automatic regularity of clockwork. The deep sadness of +Mademoiselle Grandet was known to every one; but if others surmised the +cause, she herself never uttered a word that justified the suspicions +which all Saumur entertained about the state of the rich heiress's +heart. Her only society was made up of the three Cruchots and a few of +their particular friends whom they had, little by little, introduced +into the Grandet household. They had taught her to play whist, and +they came every night for their game. During the year 1827 her father, +feeling the weight of his infirmities, was obliged to initiate her still +further into the secrets of his landed property, and told her that in +case of difficulty she was to have recourse to Maitre Cruchot, whose +integrity was well known to him. + +Towards the end of this year the old man, then eighty-two, was seized by +paralysis, which made rapid progress. Dr. Bergerin gave him up. Eugenie, +feeling that she was about to be left alone in the world, came, as it +were, nearer to her father, and clasped more tightly this last living +link of affection. To her mind, as in that of all loving women, love was +the whole of life. Charles was not there, and she devoted all her care +and attention to the old father, whose faculties had begun to weaken, +though his avarice remained instinctively acute. The death of this man +offered no contrast to his life. In the morning he made them roll him +to a spot between the chimney of his chamber and the door of the secret +room, which was filled, no doubt, with gold. He asked for an explanation +of every noise he heard, even the slightest; to the great astonishment +of the notary, he even heard the watch-dog yawning in the court-yard. He +woke up from his apparent stupor at the day and hour when the rents +were due, or when accounts had to be settled with his vine-dressers, and +receipts given. At such times he worked his chair forward on its castors +until he faced the door of the inner room. He made his daughter open it, +and watched while she placed the bags of money one upon another in his +secret receptacles and relocked the door. Then she returned silently to +her seat, after giving him the key, which he replaced in his waistcoat +pocket and fingered from time to time. His old friend the notary, +feeling sure that the rich heiress would inevitably marry his nephew +the president, if Charles Grandet did not return, redoubled all his +attentions; he came every day to take Grandet's orders, went on his +errands to Froidfond, to the farms and the fields and the vineyards, +sold the vintages, and turned everything into gold and silver, which +found their way in sacks to the secret hiding-place. + +At length the last struggle came, in which the strong frame of the +old man slowly yielded to destruction. He was determined to sit at +the chimney-corner facing the door of the secret room. He drew off and +rolled up all the coverings which were laid over him, saying to Nanon, +"Put them away, lock them up, for fear they should be stolen." + +So long as he could open his eyes, in which his whole being had now +taken refuge, he turned them to the door behind which lay his treasures, +saying to his daughter, "Are they there? are they there?" in a tone of +voice which revealed a sort of panic fear. + +"Yes, my father," she would answer. + +"Take care of the gold--put gold before me." + +Eugenie would then spread coins on a table before him, and he would sit +for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like a child who, at +the moment it first begins to see, gazes in stupid contemplation at the +same object, and like the child, a distressful smile would flicker upon +his face. + +"It warms me!" he would sometimes say, as an expression of beatitude +stole across his features. + +When the cure of the parish came to administer the last sacraments, the +old man's eyes, sightless, apparently, for some hours, kindled at the +sight of the cross, the candlesticks, and the holy-water vessel of +silver; he gazed at them fixedly, and his wen moved for the last time. +When the priest put the crucifix of silver-gilt to his lips, that he +might kiss the Christ, he made a frightful gesture, as if to seize it; +and that last effort cost him his life. He called Eugenie, whom he +did not see, though she was kneeling beside him bathing with tears his +stiffening hand, which was already cold. + +"My father, bless me!" she entreated. + +"Take care of it all. You will render me an account yonder!" he said, +proving by these last words that Christianity must always be the +religion of misers. + + * * * * * + +Eugenie Grandet was now alone in the world in that gray house, with none +but Nanon to whom she could turn with the certainty of being heard and +understood,--Nanon the sole being who loved her for herself and with +whom she could speak of her sorrows. La Grande Nanon was a providence +for Eugenie. She was not a servant, but a humble friend. After her +father's death Eugenie learned from Maitre Cruchot that she possessed +an income of three hundred thousand francs from landed and personal +property in the arrondissement of Saumur; also six millions invested at +three per cent in the Funds (bought at sixty, and now worth seventy-six +francs); also two millions in gold coin, and a hundred thousand francs +in silver crown-pieces, besides all the interest which was still to be +collected. The sum total of her property reached seventeen millions. + +"Where is my cousin?" was her one thought. + +The day on which Maitre Cruchot handed in to his client a clear and +exact schedule of the whole inheritance, Eugenie remained alone with +Nanon, sitting beside the fireplace in the vacant hall, where all was +now a memory, from the chair on castors which her mother had sat in, to +the glass from which her cousin drank. + +"Nanon, we are alone--" + +"Yes, mademoiselle; and if I knew where he was, the darling, I'd go on +foot to find him." + +"The ocean is between us," she said. + +While the poor heiress wept in company of an old servant, in that cold +dark house, which was to her the universe, the whole province rang, from +Nantes to Orleans, with the seventeen millions of Mademoiselle Grandet. +Among her first acts she had settled an annuity of twelve hundred francs +on Nanon, who, already possessed of six hundred more, became a rich and +enviable match. In less than a month that good soul passed from single +to wedded life under the protection of Antoine Cornoiller, who +was appointed keeper of all Mademoiselle Grandet's estates. Madame +Cornoiller possessed one striking advantage over her contemporaries. +Although she was fifty-nine years of age, she did not look more than +forty. Her strong features had resisted the ravages of time. Thanks to +the healthy customs of her semi-conventual life, she laughed at old age +from the vantage-ground of a rosy skin and an iron constitution. Perhaps +she never looked as well in her life as she did on her marriage-day. She +had all the benefits of her ugliness, and was big and fat and strong, +with a look of happiness on her indestructible features which made a +good many people envy Cornoiller. + +"Fast colors!" said the draper. + +"Quite likely to have children," said the salt merchant. "She's pickled +in brine, saving your presence." + +"She is rich, and that fellow Cornoiller has done a good thing for +himself," said a third man. + +When she came forth from the old house on her way to the parish church, +Nanon, who was loved by all the neighborhood, received many compliments +as she walked down the tortuous street. Eugenie had given her three +dozen silver forks and spoons as a wedding present. Cornoiller, amazed +at such magnificence, spoke of his mistress with tears in his eyes; +he would willingly have been hacked in pieces in her behalf. Madame +Cornoiller, appointed housekeeper to Mademoiselle Grandet, got as much +happiness out of her new position as she did from the possession of +a husband. She took charge of the weekly accounts; she locked up the +provisions and gave them out daily, after the manner of her defunct +master; she ruled over two servants,--a cook, and a maid whose business +it was to mend the house-linen and make mademoiselle's dresses. +Cornoiller combined the functions of keeper and bailiff. It is +unnecessary to say that the women-servants selected by Nanon were +"perfect treasures." Mademoiselle Grandet thus had four servants, whose +devotion was unbounded. The farmers perceived no change after Monsieur +Grandet's death; the usages and customs he had sternly established were +scrupulously carried out by Monsieur and Madame Cornoiller. + +At thirty years of age Eugenie knew none of the joys of life. Her +pale, sad childhood had glided on beside a mother whose heart, always +misunderstood and wounded, had known only suffering. Leaving this life +joyfully, the mother pitied the daughter because she still must live; +and she left in her child's soul some fugitive remorse and many lasting +regrets. Eugenie's first and only love was a wellspring of sadness +within her. Meeting her lover for a few brief days, she had given him +her heart between two kisses furtively exchanged; then he had left her, +and a whole world lay between them. This love, cursed by her father, had +cost the life of her mother and brought her only sorrow, mingled with a +few frail hopes. Thus her upward spring towards happiness had wasted her +strength and given her nothing in exchange for it. In the life of +the soul, as in the physical life, there is an inspiration and a +respiration; the soul needs to absorb the sentiments of another soul and +assimilate them, that it may render them back enriched. Were it not for +this glorious human phenomenon, there would be no life for the heart; +air would be wanting; it would suffer, and then perish. Eugenie had +begun to suffer. For her, wealth was neither a power nor a consolation; +she could not live except through love, through religion, through faith +in the future. Love explained to her the mysteries of eternity. Her +heart and the Gospel taught her to know two worlds; she bathed, night +and day, in the depths of two infinite thoughts, which for her may have +had but one meaning. She drew back within herself, loving, and believing +herself beloved. For seven years her passion had invaded everything. Her +treasuries were not the millions whose revenues were rolling up; they +were Charles's dressing-case, the portraits hanging above her bed, the +jewels recovered from her father and proudly spread upon a bed of wool +in a drawer of the oaken cabinet, the thimble of her aunt, used for a +while by her mother, which she wore religiously as she worked at a piece +of embroidery,--a Penelope's web, begun for the sole purpose of putting +upon her finger that gold so rich in memories. + +It seemed unlikely that Mademoiselle Grandet would marry during the +period of her mourning. Her genuine piety was well known. Consequently +the Cruchots, whose policy was sagely guided by the old abbe, contented +themselves for the time being with surrounding the great heiress and +paying her the most affectionate attentions. Every evening the hall was +filled with a party of devoted Cruchotines, who sang the praises of +its mistress in every key. She had her doctor in ordinary, her grand +almoner, her chamberlain, her first lady of honor, her prime minister; +above all, her chancellor, a chancellor who would fain have said much to +her. If the heiress had wished for a train-bearer, one would instantly +have been found. She was a queen, obsequiously flattered. Flattery never +emanates from noble souls; it is the gift of little minds, who thus +still further belittle themselves to worm their way into the vital being +of the persons around whom they crawl. Flattery means self-interest. So +the people who, night after night, assembled in Mademoiselle Grandet's +house (they called her Mademoiselle de Froidfond) outdid each other in +expressions of admiration. This concert of praise, never before bestowed +upon Eugenie, made her blush under its novelty; but insensibly her ear +became habituated to the sound, and however coarse the compliments might +be, she soon was so accustomed to hear her beauty lauded that if +any new-comer had seemed to think her plain, she would have felt the +reproach far more than she might have done eight years earlier. She +ended at last by loving the incense, which she secretly laid at the feet +of her idol. By degrees she grew accustomed to be treated as a sovereign +and to see her court pressing around her every evening. + +Monsieur de Bonfons was the hero of the little circle, where his wit, +his person, his education, his amiability, were perpetually praised. One +or another would remark that in seven years he had largely increased his +fortune, that Bonfons brought in at least ten thousand francs a year, +and was surrounded, like the other possessions of the Cruchots, by the +vast domains of the heiress. + +"Do you know, mademoiselle," said an habitual visitor, "that the +Cruchots have an income of forty thousand francs among them!" + +"And then, their savings!" exclaimed an elderly female Cruchotine, +Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt. + +"A gentleman from Paris has lately offered Monsieur Cruchot two hundred +thousand francs for his practice," said another. "He will sell it if he +is appointed _juge de paix_." + +"He wants to succeed Monsieur de Bonfons as president of the Civil +courts, and is taking measures," replied Madame d'Orsonval. "Monsieur le +president will certainly be made councillor." + +"Yes, he is a very distinguished man," said another,--"don't you think +so, mademoiselle?" + +Monsieur de Bonfons endeavored to put himself in keeping with the role +he sought to play. In spite of his forty years, in spite of his dusky +and crabbed features, withered like most judicial faces, he dressed +in youthful fashions, toyed with a bamboo cane, never took snuff in +Mademoiselle de Froidfond's house, and came in a white cravat and a +shirt whose pleated frill gave him a family resemblance to the race of +turkeys. He addressed the beautiful heiress familiarly, and spoke of her +as "Our dear Eugenie." In short, except for the number of visitors, the +change from loto to whist, and the disappearance of Monsieur and Madame +Grandet, the scene was about the same as the one with which this history +opened. The pack were still pursuing Eugenie and her millions; but the +hounds, more in number, lay better on the scent, and beset the prey more +unitedly. If Charles could have dropped from the Indian Isles, he would +have found the same people and the same interests. Madame des Grassins, +to whom Eugenie was full of kindness and courtesy, still persisted in +tormenting the Cruchots. Eugenie, as in former days, was the central +figure of the picture; and Charles, as heretofore, would still have +been the sovereign of all. Yet there had been some progress. The flowers +which the president formerly presented to Eugenie on her birthdays and +fete-days had now become a daily institution. Every evening he brought +the rich heiress a huge and magnificent bouquet, which Madame Cornoiller +placed conspicuously in a vase, and secretly threw into a corner of the +court-yard when the visitors had departed. + +Early in the spring, Madame des Grassins attempted to trouble the peace +of the Cruchotines by talking to Eugenie of the Marquis de Froidfond, +whose ancient and ruined family might be restored if the heiress would +give him back his estates through marriage. Madame des Grassins rang +the changes on the peerage and the title of marquise, until, mistaking +Eugenie's disdainful smile for acquiescence, she went about proclaiming +that the marriage with "Monsieur Cruchot" was not nearly as certain as +people thought. + +"Though Monsieur de Froidfond is fifty," she said, "he does not look +older than Monsieur Cruchot. He is a widower, and he has children, +that's true. But then he is a marquis; he will be peer of France; and +in times like these where you will find a better match? I know it for +a fact that Pere Grandet, when he put all his money into Froidfond, +intended to graft himself upon that stock; he often told me so. He was a +deep one, that old man!" + +"Ah! Nanon," said Eugenie, one night as she was going to bed, "how is it +that in seven years he has never once written to me?" + + + + +XIII + +While these events were happening in Saumur, Charles was making his +fortune in the Indies. His commercial outfit had sold well. He began by +realizing a sum of six thousand dollars. Crossing the line had brushed a +good many cobwebs out of his brain; he perceived that the best means of +attaining fortune in tropical regions, as well as in Europe, was to +buy and sell men. He went to the coast of Africa and bought Negroes, +combining his traffic in human flesh with that of other merchandise +equally advantageous to his interests. He carried into this business an +activity which left him not a moment of leisure. He was governed by the +desire of reappearing in Paris with all the prestige of a large fortune, +and by the hope of regaining a position even more brilliant than the one +from which he had fallen. + +By dint of jostling with men, travelling through many lands, and +studying a variety of conflicting customs, his ideas had been modified +and had become sceptical. He ceased to have fixed principles of right +and wrong, for he saw what was called a crime in one country lauded as +a virtue in another. In the perpetual struggle of selfish interests his +heart grew cold, then contracted, and then dried up. The blood of the +Grandets did not fail of its destiny; Charles became hard, and eager +for prey. He sold Chinamen, Negroes, birds' nests, children, artists; he +practised usury on a large scale; the habit of defrauding custom-houses +soon made him less scrupulous about the rights of his fellow men. +He went to the Island of St. Thomas and bought, for a mere song, +merchandise that had been captured by pirates, and took it to ports +where he could sell it at a good price. If the pure and noble face of +Eugenie went with him on his first voyage, like that image of the Virgin +which Spanish mariners fastened to their masts, if he attributed his +first success to the magic influence of the prayers and intercessions +of his gentle love, later on women of other kinds,--blacks, mulattoes, +whites, and Indian dancing-girls,--orgies and adventures in many lands, +completely effaced all recollection of his cousin, of Saumur, of the +house, the bench, the kiss snatched in the dark passage. He remembered +only the little garden shut in with crumbling walls, for it was there he +learned the fate that had overtaken him; but he rejected all connection +with his family. His uncle was an old dog who had filched his jewels; +Eugenie had no place in his heart nor in his thoughts, though she did +have a place in his accounts as a creditor for the sum of six thousand +francs. + +Such conduct and such ideas explain Charles Grandet's silence. In the +Indies, at St. Thomas, on the coast of Africa, at Lisbon, and in the +United States the adventurer had taken the pseudonym of Shepherd, that +he might not compromise his own name. Charles Shepherd could safely +be indefatigable, bold, grasping, and greedy of gain, like a man who +resolves to snatch his fortune _quibus cumque viis_, and makes haste +to have done with villany, that he may spend the rest of his life as an +honest man. + +With such methods, prosperity was rapid and brilliant; and in 1827 +Charles Grandet returned to Bordeaux on the "Marie Caroline," a fine +brig belonging to a royalist house of business. He brought with him +nineteen hundred thousand francs worth of gold-dust, from which he +expected to derive seven or eight per cent more at the Paris mint. +On the brig he met a gentleman-in-ordinary to His Majesty Charles X., +Monsieur d'Aubrion, a worthy old man who had committed the folly of +marrying a woman of fashion with a fortune derived from the West India +Islands. To meet the costs of Madame d'Aubrion's extravagance, he had +gone out to the Indies to sell the property, and was now returning with +his family to France. + +Monsieur and Madame d'Aubrion, of the house of d'Aubrion de Buch, a +family of southern France, whose last _captal_, or chief, died before +1789, were now reduced to an income of about twenty thousand francs, and +they possessed an ugly daughter whom the mother was resolved to marry +without a _dot_,--the family fortune being scarcely sufficient for the +demands of her own life in Paris. This was an enterprise whose success +might have seemed problematical to most men of the world, in spite of +the cleverness with which such men credit a fashionable woman; in +fact, Madame d'Aubrion herself, when she looked at her daughter, almost +despaired of getting rid of her to any one, even to a man craving +connection with nobility. Mademoiselle d'Aubrion was a long, spare, +spindling demoiselle, like her namesake the insect; her mouth was +disdainful; over it hung a nose that was too long, thick at the end, +sallow in its normal condition, but very red after a meal,--a sort of +vegetable phenomenon which is particularly disagreeable when it appears +in the middle of a pale, dull, and uninteresting face. In one sense she +was all that a worldly mother, thirty-eight years of age and still +a beauty with claims to admiration, could have wished. However, to +counterbalance her personal defects, the marquise gave her daughter +a distinguished air, subjected her to hygienic treatment which +provisionally kept her nose at a reasonable flesh-tint, taught her the +art of dressing well, endowed her with charming manners, showed her the +trick of melancholy glances which interest a man and make him believe +that he has found a long-sought angel, taught her the manoeuvre of the +foot,--letting it peep beneath the petticoat, to show its tiny size, +at the moment when the nose became aggressively red; in short, Madame +d'Aubrion had cleverly made the very best of her offspring. By means +of full sleeves, deceptive pads, puffed dresses amply trimmed, +and high-pressure corsets, she had obtained such curious feminine +developments that she ought, for the instruction of mothers, to have +exhibited them in a museum. + +Charles became very intimate with Madame d'Aubrion precisely because she +was desirous of becoming intimate with him. Persons who were on board +the brig declared that the handsome Madame d'Aubrion neglected no means +of capturing so rich a son-in-law. On landing at Bordeaux in June, 1827, +Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle d'Aubrion, and Charles lodged at the same +hotel and started together for Paris. The hotel d'Aubrion was hampered +with mortgages; Charles was destined to free it. The mother told him how +delighted she would be to give up the ground-floor to a son-in-law. Not +sharing Monsieur d'Aubrion's prejudices on the score of nobility, she +promised Charles Grandet to obtain a royal ordinance from Charles +X. which would authorize him, Grandet, to take the name and arms +of d'Aubrion and to succeed, by purchasing the entailed estate for +thirty-six thousand francs a year, to the titles of Captal de Buch and +Marquis d'Aubrion. By thus uniting their fortunes, living on good terms, +and profiting by sinecures, the two families might occupy the hotel +d'Aubrion with an income of over a hundred thousand francs. + +"And when a man has a hundred thousand francs a year, a name, a +family, and a position at court,--for I will get you appointed as +gentleman-of-the-bedchamber,--he can do what he likes," she said to +Charles. "You can then become anything you choose,--master of the +rolls in the council of State, prefect, secretary to an embassy, the +ambassador himself, if you like. Charles X. is fond of d'Aubrion; they +have known each other from childhood." + +Intoxicated with ambition, Charles toyed with the hopes thus cleverly +presented to him in the guise of confidences poured from heart to heart. +Believing his father's affairs to have been settled by his uncle, he +imagined himself suddenly anchored in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,--that +social object of all desire, where, under shelter of Mademoiselle +Mathilde's purple nose, he was to reappear as the Comte d'Aubrion, very +much as the Dreux reappeared in Breze. Dazzled by the prosperity of the +Restoration, which was tottering when he left France, fascinated by the +splendor of aristocratic ideas, his intoxication, which began on the +brig, increased after he reached Paris, and he finally determined to +take the course and reach the high position which the selfish hopes of +his would-be mother-in-law pointed out to him. His cousin counted for +no more than a speck in this brilliant perspective; but he went to see +Annette. True woman of the world, Annette advised her old friend to +make the marriage, and promised him her support in all his ambitious +projects. In her heart she was enchanted to fasten an ugly and +uninteresting girl on Charles, whose life in the West Indies had +rendered him very attractive. His complexion had bronzed, his manners +had grown decided and bold, like those of a man accustomed to make sharp +decisions, to rule, and to succeed. Charles breathed more at his ease in +Paris, conscious that he now had a part to play. + +Des Grassins, hearing of his return, of his approaching marriage and +his large fortune, came to see him, and inquired about the three hundred +thousand francs still required to settle his father's debts. He found +Grandet in conference with a goldsmith, from whom he had ordered jewels +for Mademoiselle d'Aubrion's _corbeille_, and who was then submitting +the designs. Charles had brought back magnificent diamonds, and the +value of their setting, together with the plate and jewelry of the new +establishment, amounted to more than two hundred thousand francs. He +received des Grassins, whom he did not recognize, with the impertinence +of a young man of fashion conscious of having killed four men in as many +duels in the Indies. Monsieur des Grassins had already called several +times. Charles listened to him coldly, and then replied, without fully +understanding what had been said to him,-- + +"My father's affairs are not mine. I am much obliged, monsieur, for the +trouble you have been good enough to take,--by which, however, I really +cannot profit. I have not earned two millions by the sweat of my brow to +fling them at the head of my father's creditors." + +"But suppose that your father's estate were within a few days to be +declared bankrupt?" + +"Monsieur, in a few days I shall be called the Comte d'Aubrion; you will +understand, therefore, that what you threaten is of no consequence to +me. Besides, you know as well as I do that when a man has an income of +a hundred thousand francs his father has _never failed_." So saying, he +politely edged Monsieur des Grassins to the door. + + * * * * * + +At the beginning of August in the same year, Eugenie was sitting on the +little wooden bench where her cousin had sworn to love her eternally, +and where she usually breakfasted if the weather were fine. The poor +girl was happy, for the moment, in the fresh and joyous summer air, +letting her memory recall the great and the little events of her love +and the catastrophes which had followed it. The sun had just reached +the angle of the ruined wall, so full of chinks, which no one, through +a caprice of the mistress, was allowed to touch, though Cornoiller often +remarked to his wife that "it would fall and crush somebody one of these +days." At this moment the postman knocked, and gave a letter to Madame +Cornoiller, who ran into the garden, crying out: + +"Mademoiselle, a letter!" She gave it to her mistress, adding, "Is it +the one you expected?" + +The words rang as loudly in the heart of Eugenie as they echoed in sound +from wall to wall of the court and garden. + +"Paris--from him--he has returned!" + +Eugenie turned pale and held the letter for a moment. She trembled +so violently that she could not break the seal. La Grande Nanon stood +before her, both hands on her hips, her joy puffing as it were like +smoke through the cracks of her brown face. + +"Read it, mademoiselle!" + +"Ah, Nanon, why did he return to Paris? He went from Saumur." + +"Read it, and you'll find out." + +Eugenie opened the letter with trembling fingers. A cheque on the house +of "Madame des Grassins and Coret, of Saumur," fluttered down. Nanon +picked it up. + + My dear Cousin,-- + +"No longer 'Eugenie,'" she thought, and her heart quailed. + + You-- + +"He once said 'thou.'" She folded her arms and dared not read another +word; great tears gathered in her eyes. + +"Is he dead?" asked Nanon. + +"If he were, he could not write," said Eugenie. + +She then read the whole letter, which was as follows: + + My dear Cousin,--You will, I am sure, hear with pleasure of the + success of my enterprise. You brought me luck; I have come back + rich, and I have followed the advice of my uncle, whose death, + together with that of my aunt, I have just learned from Monsieur + des Grassins. The death of parents is in the course of nature, and + we must succeed them. I trust you are by this time consoled. + Nothing can resist time, as I am well aware. Yes, my dear cousin, + the day of illusions is, unfortunately, gone for me. How could it + be otherwise? Travelling through many lands, I have reflected upon + life. I was a child when I went away,--I have come back a man. + To-day, I think of many I did not dream of then. You are free, my + dear cousin, and I am free still. Nothing apparently hinders the + realization of our early hopes; but my nature is too loyal to hide + from you the situation in which I find myself. I have not + forgotten our relations; I have always remembered, throughout my + long wanderings, the little wooden seat-- + +Eugenie rose as if she were sitting on live coals, and went away and sat +down on the stone steps of the court. + + --the little wooden seat where we vowed to love each other + forever, the passage, the gray hall, my attic chamber, and the + night when, by your delicate kindness, you made my future easier + to me. Yes, these recollections sustained my courage; I said in my + heart that you were thinking of me at the hour we had agreed upon. + Have you always looked at the clouds at nine o'clock? Yes, I am + sure of it. I cannot betray so true a friendship,--no, I must not + deceive you. An alliance has been proposed to me which satisfies + all my ideas of matrimony. Love in marriage is a delusion. My + present experience warns me that in marrying we are bound to obey + all social laws and meet the conventional demands of the world. + Now, between you and me there are differences which might affect + your future, my dear cousin, even more than they would mine. I + will not here speak of your customs and inclinations, your + education, nor yet of your habits, none of which are in keeping + with Parisian life, or with the future which I have marked out for + myself. My intention is to keep my household on a stately footing, + to receive much company,--in short, to live in the world; and I + think I remember that you love a quiet and tranquil life. I will + be frank, and make you the judge of my situation; you have the + right to understand it and to judge it. + + I possess at the present moment an income of eighty thousand + francs. This fortune enables me to marry into the family of + Aubrion, whose heiress, a young girl nineteen years of age, brings + me a title, a place of gentleman-of-the-bed-chamber to His + Majesty, and a very brilliant position. I will admit to you, my + dear cousin, that I do not love Mademoiselle d'Aubrion; but in + marrying her I secure to my children a social rank whose + advantages will one day be incalculable: monarchical principles + are daily coming more and more into favor. Thus in course of time + my son, when he becomes Marquis d'Aubrion, having, as he then will + have, an entailed estate with a rental of forty thousand francs a + year, can obtain any position in the State which he may think + proper to select. We owe ourselves to our children. + + You see, my cousin, with what good faith I lay the state of my + heart, my hopes, and my fortune before you. Possibly, after seven + years' separation, you have yourself forgotten our youthful loves; + but I have never forgotten either your kindness or my own words. I + remember all, even words that were lightly uttered,--words by + which a man less conscientious than I, with a heart less youthful + and less upright, would scarcely feel himself bound. In telling + you that the marriage I propose to make is solely one of + convenience, that I still remember our childish love, am I not + putting myself entirely in your hands and making you the mistress + of my fate? am I not telling you that if I must renounce my social + ambitions, I shall willingly content myself with the pure and + simple happiness of which you have shown me so sweet an image? + +"Tan, ta, ta--tan, ta, ti," sang Charles Grandet to the air of _Non piu +andrai_, as he signed himself,-- + +Your devoted cousin, Charles. + + +"Thunder! that's doing it handsomely!" he said, as he looked about him +for the cheque; having found it, he added the words:-- + + P.S.--I enclose a cheque on the des Grassins bank for eight + thousand francs to your order, payable in gold, which includes the + capital and interest of the sum you were kind enough to lend me. I + am expecting a case from Bordeaux which contains a few things + which you must allow me to offer you as a mark of my unceasing + gratitude. You can send my dressing-case by the diligence to the + hotel d'Aubrion, rue Hillerin-Bertin. + +"By the diligence!" said Eugenie. "A thing for which I would have laid +down my life!" + +Terrible and utter disaster! The ship went down, leaving not a spar, not +a plank, on a vast ocean of hope! Some women when they see themselves +abandoned will try to tear their lover from the arms of a rival, they +will kill her, and rush to the ends of the earth,--to the scaffold, to +their tomb. That, no doubt, is fine; the motive of the crime is a great +passion, which awes even human justice. Other women bow their heads +and suffer in silence; they go their way dying, resigned, weeping, +forgiving, praying, and recollecting, till they draw their last breath. +This is love,--true love, the love of angels, the proud love which lives +upon its anguish and dies of it. Such was Eugenie's love after she had +read that dreadful letter. She raised her eyes to heaven, thinking of +the last words uttered by her dying mother, who, with the prescience +of death, had looked into the future with clear and penetrating eyes: +Eugenie, remembering that prophetic death, that prophetic life, measured +with one glance her own destiny. Nothing was left for her; she could +only unfold her wings, stretch upward to the skies, and live in prayer +until the day of her deliverance. + +"My mother was right," she said, weeping. "Suffer--and die!" + + + + +XIV + +Eugenie came slowly back from the garden to the house, and avoided +passing, as was her custom, through the corridor. But the memory of her +cousin was in the gray old hall and on the chimney-piece, where stood +a certain saucer and the old Sevres sugar-bowl which she used every +morning at her breakfast. + +This day was destined to be solemn throughout and full of events. Nanon +announced the cure of the parish church. He was related to the Cruchots, +and therefore in the interests of Monsieur de Bonfons. For some time +past the old abbe had urged him to speak to Mademoiselle Grandet, from +a purely religious point of view, about the duty of marriage for a woman +in her position. When she saw her pastor, Eugenie supposed he had come +for the thousand francs which she gave monthly to the poor, and she told +Nanon to go and fetch them; but the cure only smiled. + +"To-day, mademoiselle," he said, "I have come to speak to you about +a poor girl in whom the whole town of Saumur takes an interest, who, +through lack of charity to herself, neglects her Christian duties." + +"Monsieur le cure, you have come to me at a moment when I cannot think +of my neighbor, I am filled with thoughts of myself. I am very unhappy; +my only refuge is in the Church; her bosom is large enough to hold all +human woe, her love so full that we may draw from its depths and never +drain it dry." + +"Mademoiselle, in speaking of this young girl we shall speak of you. +Listen! If you wish to insure your salvation you have only two paths to +take,--either leave the world or obey its laws. Obey either your earthly +destiny or your heavenly destiny." + +"Ah! your voice speaks to me when I need to hear a voice. Yes, God has +sent you to me; I will bid farewell to the world and live for God alone, +in silence and seclusion." + +"My daughter, you must think long before you take so violent a step. +Marriage is life, the veil is death." + +"Yes, death,--a quick death!" she said, with dreadful eagerness. + +"Death? but you have great obligations to fulfil to society, +mademoiselle. Are you not the mother of the poor, to whom you give +clothes and wood in winter and work in summer? Your great fortune is a +loan which you must return, and you have sacredly accepted it as such. +To bury yourself in a convent would be selfishness; to remain an old +maid is to fail in duty. In the first place, can you manage your vast +property alone? May you not lose it? You will have law-suits, you will +find yourself surrounded by inextricable difficulties. Believe your +pastor: a husband is useful; you are bound to preserve what God has +bestowed upon you. I speak to you as a precious lamb of my flock. You +love God too truly not to find your salvation in the midst of his world, +of which you are noble ornament and to which you owe your example." + +At this moment Madame des Grassins was announced. She came incited by +vengeance and the sense of a great despair. + +"Mademoiselle," she said--"Ah! here is monsieur le cure; I am silent. +I came to speak to you on business; but I see that you are conferring +with--" + +"Madame," said the cure, "I leave the field to you." + +"Oh! monsieur le cure," said Eugenie, "come back later; your support is +very necessary to me just now." + +"Ah, yes, indeed, my poor child!" said Madame des Grassins. + +"What do you mean?" asked Eugenie and the cure together. + +"Don't I know about your cousin's return, and his marriage with +Mademoiselle d'Aubrion? A woman doesn't carry her wits in her pocket." + +Eugenie blushed, and remained silent for a moment. From this day forth +she assumed the impassible countenance for which her father had been so +remarkable. + +"Well, madame," she presently said, ironically, "no doubt I carry my +wits in my pocket, for I do not understand you. Speak, say what you +mean, before monsieur le cure; you know he is my director." + +"Well, then, mademoiselle, here is what des Grassins writes me. Read +it." + +Eugenie read the following letter:-- + + My dear Wife,--Charles Grandet has returned from the Indies and + has been in Paris about a month-- + +"A month!" thought Eugenie, her hand falling to her side. After a pause +she resumed the letter,-- + + I had to dance attendance before I was allowed to see the future + Vicomte d'Aubrion. Though all Paris is talking of his marriage and + the banns are published-- + +"He wrote to me after that!" thought Eugenie. She did not conclude the +thought; she did not cry out, as a Parisian woman would have done, "The +villain!" but though she said it not, contempt was none the less present +in her mind. + + The marriage, however, will not come off. The Marquis d'Aubrion + will never give his daughter to the son of a bankrupt. I went to + tell Grandet of the steps his uncle and I took in his father's + business, and the clever manoeuvres by which we had managed to + keep the creditor's quiet until the present time. The insolent + fellow had the face to say to me--to me, who for five years have + devoted myself night and day to his interests and his honor!--that + _his father's affairs were not his_! A solicitor would have had + the right to demand fees amounting to thirty or forty thousand + francs, one per cent on the total of the debts. But patience! + there are twelve hundred thousand francs legitimately owing to the + creditors, and I shall at once declare his father a bankrupt. + + I went into this business on the word of that old crocodile + Grandet, and I have made promises in the name of his family. If + Monsieur de vicomte d'Aubrion does not care for his honor, I care + for mine. I shall explain my position to the creditors. Still, I + have too much respect for Mademoiselle Eugenie (to whom under + happier circumstances we once hoped to be allied) to act in this + matter before you have spoken to her about it-- + +There Eugenie paused, and coldly returned the letter without finishing +it. + +"I thank you," she said to Madame des Grassins. + +"Ah! you have the voice and manner of your deceased father," Madame des +Grassins replied. + +"Madame, you have eight thousand francs to pay us," said Nanon, +producing Charles's cheque. + +"That's true; have the kindness to come with me now, Madame Cornoiller." + +"Monsieur le cure," said Eugenie with a noble composure, inspired by the +thought she was about to express, "would it be a sin to remain a virgin +after marriage?" + +"That is a case of conscience whose solution is not within my knowledge. +If you wish to know what the celebrated Sanchez says of it in his +treatise 'De Matrimonio,' I shall be able to tell you to-morrow." + +The cure went away; Mademoiselle Grandet went up to her father's secret +room and spent the day there alone, without coming down to dinner, in +spite of Nanon's entreaties. She appeared in the evening at the hour +when the usual company began to arrive. Never was the old hall so +full as on this occasion. The news of Charles's return and his foolish +treachery had spread through the whole town. But however watchful the +curiosity of the visitors might be, it was left unsatisfied. Eugenie, +who expected scrutiny, allowed none of the cruel emotions that wrung her +soul to appear on the calm surface of her face. She was able to show a +smiling front in answer to all who tried to testify their interest by +mournful looks or melancholy speeches. She hid her misery behind a veil +of courtesy. Towards nine o'clock the games ended and the players left +the tables, paying their losses and discussing points of the game as +they joined the rest of the company. At the moment when the whole party +rose to take leave, an unexpected and striking event occurred, which +resounded through the length and breadth of Saumur, from thence through +the arrondissement, and even to the four surrounding prefectures. + +"Stay, monsieur le president," said Eugenie to Monsieur de Bonfons as +she saw him take his cane. + +There was not a person in that numerous assembly who was unmoved by +these words. The president turned pale, and was forced to sit down. + +"The president gets the millions," said Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt. + +"It is plain enough; the president marries Mademoiselle Grandet," cried +Madame d'Orsonval. + +"All the trumps in one hand," said the abbe. + +"A love game," said the notary. + +Each and all said his say, made his pun, and looked at the heiress +mounted on her millions as on a pedestal. The drama begun nine years +before had reached its conclusion. To tell the president, in face of +all Saumur, to "stay," was surely the same thing as proclaiming him her +husband. In provincial towns social conventionalities are so rigidly +enforced than an infraction like this constituted a solemn promise. + +"Monsieur le president," said Eugenie in a voice of some emotion when +they were left alone, "I know what pleases you in me. Swear to leave me +free during my whole life, to claim none of the rights which marriage +will give you over me, and my hand is yours. Oh!" she added, seeing him +about to kneel at her feet, "I have more to say. I must not deceive you. +In my heart I cherish one inextinguishable feeling. Friendship is the +only sentiment which I can give to a husband. I wish neither to affront +him nor to violate the laws of my own heart. But you can possess my hand +and my fortune only at the cost of doing me an inestimable service." + +"I am ready for all things," said the president. + +"Here are fifteen hundred thousand francs," she said, drawing from her +bosom a certificate of a hundred shares in the Bank of France. "Go to +Paris,--not to-morrow, but instantly. Find Monsieur des Grassins, learn +the names of my uncle's creditors, call them together, pay them in full +all that was owing, with interest at five per cent from the day the debt +was incurred to the present time. Be careful to obtain a full and legal +receipt, in proper form, before a notary. You are a magistrate, and I +can trust this matter in your hands. You are a man of honor; I will put +faith in your word, and meet the dangers of life under shelter of your +name. Let us have mutual indulgence. We have known each other so long +that we are almost related; you would not wish to render me unhappy." + +The president fell at the feet of the rich heiress, his heart beating +and wrung with joy. + +"I will be your slave!" he said. + +"When you obtain the receipts, monsieur," she resumed, with a cold +glance, "you will take them with all the other papers to my cousin +Grandet, and you will give him this letter. On your return I will keep +my word." + +The president understood perfectly that he owed the acquiescence of +Mademoiselle Grandet to some bitterness of love, and he made haste to +obey her orders, lest time should effect a reconciliation between the +pair. + +When Monsieur de Bonfons left her, Eugenie fell back in her chair and +burst into tears. All was over. + +The president took the mail-post, and reached Paris the next evening. +The morning after his arrival he went to see des Grassins, and together +they summoned the creditors to meet at the notary's office where the +vouchers had been deposited. Not a single creditor failed to be present. +Creditors though they were, justice must be done to them,--they were all +punctual. Monsieur de Bonfons, in the name of Mademoiselle Grandet, paid +them the amount of their claims with interest. The payment of interest +was a remarkable event in the Parisian commerce of that day. When the +receipts were all legally registered, and des Grassins had received for +his services the sum of fifty thousand francs allowed to him by Eugenie, +the president made his way to the hotel d'Aubrion and found Charles +just entering his own apartment after a serious encounter with his +prospective father-in-law. The old marquis had told him plainly that +he should not marry his daughter until all the creditors of Guillaume +Grandet had been paid in full. + +The president gave Charles the following letter:-- + + My Cousin,--Monsieur le president de Bonfons has undertaken to + place in your hands the aquittance for all claims upon my uncle, + also a receipt by which I acknowledge having received from you the + sum total of those claims. I have heard of a possible failure, and + I think that the son of a bankrupt may not be able to marry + Mademoiselle d'Aubrion. Yes, my cousin, you judged rightly of my + mind and of my manners. I have, it is true, no part in the world; + I understand neither its calculations nor its customs; and I could + not give you the pleasures that you seek in it. Be happy, + according to the social conventions to which you have sacrificed + our love. To make your happiness complete I can only offer you + your father's honor. Adieu! You will always have a faithful friend + in your cousin + +Eugenie. + + +The president smiled at the exclamation which the ambitious young man +could not repress as he received the documents. + +"We shall announce our marriages at the same time," remarked Monsieur de +Bonfons. + +"Ah! you marry Eugenie? Well, I am delighted; she is a good girl. But," +added Charles, struck with a luminous idea, "she must be rich?" + +"She had," said the president, with a mischievous smile, "about nineteen +millions four days ago; but she has only seventeen millions to-day." + +Charles looked at him thunderstruck. + +"Seventeen mil--" + +"Seventeen millions; yes, monsieur. We shall muster, Mademoiselle +Grandet and I, an income of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs when +we marry." + +"My dear cousin," said Charles, recovering a little of his assurance, +"we can push each other's fortunes." + +"Agreed," said the president. "Here is also a little case which I am +charged to give into your own hands," he added, placing on the table the +leather box which contained the dressing-case. + +"Well, my dear friend," said Madame d'Aubrion, entering the room without +noticing the president, "don't pay any attention to what poor Monsieur +d'Aubrion has just said to you; the Duchesse de Chaulieu has turned his +head. I repeat, nothing shall interfere with the marriage--" + +"Very good, madame. The three millions which my father owed were paid +yesterday." + +"In money?" she asked. + +"Yes, in full, capital and interest; and I am about to do honor to his +memory--" + +"What folly!" exclaimed his mother-in-law. "Who is this?" she whispered +in Grandet's ear, perceiving the president. + +"My man of business," he answered in a low voice. + +The marquise bowed superciliously to Monsieur de Bonfons. + +"We are pushing each other's fortunes already," said the president, +taking up his hat. "Good-by, cousin." + +"He is laughing at me, the old cockatoo! I'd like to put six inches of +iron into him!" muttered Charles. + +The president was out of hearing. Three days later Monsieur de Bonfons, +on his return to Saumur, announced his marriage with Eugenie. Six months +after the marriage he was appointed councillor in the Cour royale at +Angers. Before leaving Saumur Madame de Bonfons had the gold of certain +jewels, once so precious to her, melted up, and put, together with the +eight thousand francs paid back by her cousin, into a golden pyx, which +she gave to the parish church where she had so long prayed for _him_. +She now spent her time between Angers and Saumur. Her husband, who had +shown some public spirit on a certain occasion, became a judge in the +superior courts, and finally, after a few years, president of them. He +was anxiously awaiting a general election, in the hope of being returned +to the Chamber of deputies. He hankered after a peerage; and then-- + +"The king will be his cousin, won't he?" said Nanon, la Grande Nanon, +Madame Cornoiller, bourgeoise of Saumur, as she listened to her +mistress, who was recounting the honors to which she was called. + +Nevertheless, Monsieur de Bonfons (he had finally abolished his +patronymic of Cruchot) did not realize any of his ambitious ideas. He +died eight days after his election as deputy of Saumur. God, who sees +all and never strikes amiss, punished him, no doubt, for his sordid +calculations and the legal cleverness with which, _accurante Cruchot_, +he had drawn up his marriage contract, in which husband and wife gave to +each other, "in case they should have no children, their entire property +of every kind, landed or otherwise, without exception or reservation, +dispensing even with the formality of an inventory; provided that said +omission of said inventory shall not injure their heirs and assigns, it +being understood that this deed of gift is, etc., etc." This clause +of the contract will explain the profound respect which monsieur le +president always testified for the wishes, and above all, for the +solitude of Madame de Bonfons. Women cited him as the most considerate +and delicate of men, pitied him, and even went so far as to find fault +with the passion and grief of Eugenie, blaming her, as women know so +well how to blame, with cruel but discreet insinuation. + +"Madame de Bonfons must be very ill to leave her husband entirely alone. +Poor woman! Is she likely to get well? What is it? Something gastric? +A cancer?"--"She has grown perfectly yellow. She ought to consult some +celebrated doctor in Paris."--"How can she be happy without a child? +They say she loves her husband; then why not give him an heir?--in +his position, too!"--"Do you know, it is really dreadful! If it is the +result of mere caprice, it is unpardonable. Poor president!" + +Endowed with the delicate perception which a solitary soul acquires +through constant meditation, through the exquisite clear-sightedness +with which a mind aloof from life fastens on all that falls within +its sphere, Eugenie, taught by suffering and by her later education to +divine thought, knew well that the president desired her death that he +might step into possession of their immense fortune, augmented by the +property of his uncle the notary and his uncle the abbe, whom it had +lately pleased God to call to himself. The poor solitary pitied +the president. Providence avenged her for the calculations and the +indifference of a husband who respected the hopeless passion on which +she spent her life because it was his surest safeguard. To give life to +a child would give death to his hopes,--the hopes of selfishness, the +joys of ambition, which the president cherished as he looked into the +future. + +God thus flung piles of gold upon this prisoner to whom gold was a +matter of indifference, who longed for heaven, who lived, pious and +good, in holy thoughts, succoring the unfortunate in secret, and never +wearying of such deeds. Madame de Bonfons became a widow at thirty-six. +She is still beautiful, but with the beauty of a woman who is nearly +forty years of age. Her face is white and placid and calm; her voice +gentle and self-possessed; her manners are simple. She has the noblest +qualities of sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never soiled her +soul by contact with the world; but she has also the rigid bearing of +an old maid and the petty habits inseparable from the narrow round of +provincial life. In spite of her vast wealth, she lives as the poor +Eugenie Grandet once lived. The fire is never lighted on her hearth +until the day when her father allowed it to be lighted in the hall, and +it is put out in conformity with the rules which governed her youthful +years. She dresses as her mother dressed. The house in Saumur, without +sun, without warmth, always in shadow, melancholy, is an image of her +life. She carefully accumulates her income, and might seem parsimonious +did she not disarm criticism by a noble employment of her wealth. Pious +and charitable institutions, a hospital for old age, Christian schools +for children, a public library richly endowed, bear testimony against +the charge of avarice which some persons lay at her door. The churches +of Saumur owe much of their embellishment to her. Madame de Bonfons +(sometimes ironically spoken of as mademoiselle) inspires for the most +part reverential respect: and yet that noble heart, beating only with +tenderest emotions, has been, from first to last, subjected to the +calculations of human selfishness; money has cast its frigid influence +upon that hallowed life and taught distrust of feelings to a woman who +is all feeling. + +"I have none but you to love me," she says to Nanon. + +The hand of this woman stanches the secret wounds in many families. +She goes on her way to heaven attended by a train of benefactions. The +grandeur of her soul redeems the narrowness of her education and the +petty habits of her early life. + +Such is the history of Eugenie Grandet, who is in the world but not of +it; who, created to be supremely a wife and mother, has neither husband +nor children nor family. Lately there has been some question of her +marrying again. The Saumur people talk of her and of the Marquis de +Froidfond, whose family are beginning to beset the rich widow just as, +in former days, the Cruchots laid siege to the rich heiress. Nanon and +Cornoiller are, it is said, in the interests of the marquis. Nothing +could be more false. Neither la Grande Nanon nor Cornoiller has +sufficient mind to understand the corruptions of the world. + + + + +ADDENDUM + +The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. + + Chaulieu, Eleonore, Duchesse de + Letters of Two Brides + + Grandet, Victor-Ange-Guillaume + The Firm of Nucingen + + Grandet, Charles + The Firm of Nucingen + + Keller, Francois + Domestic Peace + Cesar Birotteau + The Government Clerks + The Member for Arcis + + Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des + The Muse of the Department + A Bachelor's Establishment + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + The Government Clerks + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life + Ursule Mirouet + + Nathan, Madame Raoul + The Muse of the Department + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life + The Government Clerks + A Bachelor's Establishment + Ursule Mirouet + The Imaginary Mistress + A Prince of Bohemia + A Daughter of Eve + The Unconscious Humorists + + Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de + Father Goriot + The Thirteen + Cesar Birotteau + Melmoth Reconciled + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + The Commission in Lunacy + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life + Modeste Mignon + The Firm of Nucingen + Another Study of Woman + A Daughter of Eve + The Member for Arcis + + Roguin + Cesar Birotteau + Eugenie Grandet + A Bachelor's Establishment + The Vendetta + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENIE GRANDET *** + +***** This file should be named 1715.txt or 1715.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/1/1715/ + +Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz +and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com + + + + +EUGENIE GRANDET + +by HONORE DE BALZAC + + + + +Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley + + + + +DEDICATION + + To Maria. + + May your name, that of one whose portrait is the noblest ornament + of this work, lie on its opening pages like a branch of sacred + box, taken from an unknown tree, but sanctified by religion, and + kept ever fresh and green by pious hands to bless the house. + +De Balzac. + + + + +EUGENIE GRANDET + + + +I + +There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires +melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary +moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, +perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the +skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a +stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters +suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half- +monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an +unaccustomed step. + +Such elements of sadness formed the physiognomy, as it were, of a +dwelling-house in Saumur which stands at the end of the steep street +leading to the chateau in the upper part of the town. This street--now +little frequented, hot in summer, cold in winter, dark in certain +sections--is remarkable for the resonance of its little pebbly +pavement, always clean and dry, for the narrowness of its tortuous +road-way, for the peaceful stillness of its houses, which belong to +the Old town and are over-topped by the ramparts. Houses three +centuries old are still solid, though built of wood, and their divers +aspects add to the originality which commends this portion of Saumur +to the attention of artists and antiquaries. + +It is difficult to pass these houses without admiring the enormous +oaken beams, their ends carved into fantastic figures, which crown +with a black bas-relief the lower floor of most of them. In one place +these transverse timbers are covered with slate and mark a bluish line +along the frail wall of a dwelling covered by a roof /en colombage/ +which bends beneath the weight of years, and whose rotting shingles +are twisted by the alternate action of sun and rain. In another place +blackened, worn-out window-sills, with delicate sculptures now +scarcely discernible, seem too weak to bear the brown clay pots from +which springs the heart's-ease or the rose-bush of some poor working- +woman. Farther on are doors studded with enormous nails, where the +genius of our forefathers has traced domestic hieroglyphics, of which +the meaning is now lost forever. Here a Protestant attested his +belief; there a Leaguer cursed Henry IV.; elsewhere some bourgeois has +carved the insignia of his /noblesse de cloches/, symbols of his long- +forgotten magisterial glory. The whole history of France is there. + +Next to a tottering house with roughly plastered walls, where an +artisan enshrines his tools, rises the mansion of a country gentleman, +on the stone arch of which above the door vestiges of armorial +bearings may still be seen, battered by the many revolutions that have +shaken France since 1789. In this hilly street the ground-floors of +the merchants are neither shops nor warehouses; lovers of the Middle +Ages will here find the /ouvrouere/ of our forefathers in all its +naive simplicity. These low rooms, which have no shop-frontage, no +show-windows, in fact no glass at all, are deep and dark and without +interior or exterior decoration. Their doors open in two parts, each +roughly iron-bound; the upper half is fastened back within the room, +the lower half, fitted with a spring-bell, swings continually to and +fro. Air and light reach the damp den within, either through the upper +half of the door, or through an open space between the ceiling and a +low front wall, breast-high, which is closed by solid shutters that +are taken down every morning, put up every evening, and held in place +by heavy iron bars. + +This wall serves as a counter for the merchandise. No delusive display +is there; only samples of the business, whatever it may chance to be, +--such, for instance, as three or four tubs full of codfish and salt, +a few bundles of sail-cloth, cordage, copper wire hanging from the +joists above, iron hoops for casks ranged along the wall, or a few +pieces of cloth upon the shelves. Enter. A neat girl, glowing with +youth, wearing a white kerchief, her arms red and bare, drops her +knitting and calls her father or her mother, one of whom comes forward +and sells you what you want, phlegmatically, civilly, or arrogantly, +according to his or her individual character, whether it be a matter +of two sous' or twenty thousand francs' worth of merchandise. You may +see a cooper, for instance, sitting in his doorway and twirling his +thumbs as he talks with a neighbor. To all appearance he owns nothing +more than a few miserable boat-ribs and two or three bundles of laths; +but below in the port his teeming wood-yard supplies all the cooperage +trade of Anjou. He knows to a plank how many casks are needed if the +vintage is good. A hot season makes him rich, a rainy season ruins +him; in a single morning puncheons worth eleven francs have been known +to drop to six. In this country, as in Touraine, atmospheric +vicissitudes control commercial life. Wine-growers, proprietors, wood- +merchants, coopers, inn-keepers, mariners, all keep watch of the sun. +They tremble when they go to bed lest they should hear in the morning +of a frost in the night; they dread rain, wind, drought, and want +water, heat, and clouds to suit their fancy. A perpetual duel goes on +between the heavens and their terrestrial interests. The barometer +smooths, saddens, or makes merry their countenances, turn and turn +about. From end to end of this street, formerly the Grand'Rue de +Saumur, the words: "Here's golden weather," are passed from door to +door; or each man calls to his neighbor: "It rains louis," knowing +well what a sunbeam or the opportune rainfall is bringing him. + +On Saturdays after midday, in the fine season, not one sou's worth of +merchandise can be bought from these worthy traders. Each has his +vineyard, his enclosure of fields, and all spend two days in the +country. This being foreseen, and purchases, sales, and profits +provided for, the merchants have ten or twelve hours to spend in +parties of pleasure, in making observations, in criticisms, and in +continual spying. A housewife cannot buy a partridge without the +neighbors asking the husband if it were cooked to a turn. A young girl +never puts her head near a window that she is not seen by idling +groups in the street. Consciences are held in the light; and the +houses, dark, silent, impenetrable as they seem, hide no mysteries. +Life is almost wholly in the open air; every household sits at its own +threshold, breakfasts, dines, and quarrels there. No one can pass +along the street without being examined; in fact formerly, when a +stranger entered a provincial town he was bantered and made game of +from door to door. From this came many good stories, and the nickname +/copieux/, which was applied to the inhabitants of Angers, who +excelled in such urban sarcasms. + +The ancient mansions of the old town of Saumur are at the top of this +hilly street, and were formerly occupied by the nobility of the +neighborhood. The melancholy dwelling where the events of the +following history took place is one of these mansions,--venerable +relics of a century in which men and things bore the characteristics +of simplicity which French manners and customs are losing day by day. +Follow the windings of the picturesque thoroughfare, whose +irregularities awaken recollections that plunge the mind mechanically +into reverie, and you will see a somewhat dark recess, in the centre +of which is hidden the door of the house of Monsieur Grandet. It is +impossible to understand the force of this provincial expression--the +house of Monsieur Grandet--without giving the biography of Monsieur +Grandet himself. + +Monsieur Grandet enjoyed a reputation in Saumur whose causes and +effects can never be fully understood by those who have not, at one +time or another, lived in the provinces. In 1789 Monsieur Grandet-- +still called by certain persons le Pere Grandet, though the number of +such old persons has perceptibly diminished--was a master-cooper, able +to read, write, and cipher. At the period when the French Republic +offered for sale the church property in the arrondissement of Saumur, +the cooper, then forty years of age, had just married the daughter of +a rich wood-merchant. Supplied with the ready money of his own fortune +and his wife's /dot/, in all about two thousand louis-d'or, Grandet +went to the newly established "district," where, with the help of two +hundred double louis given by his father-in-law to the surly +republican who presided over the sales of the national domain, he +obtained for a song, legally if not legitimately, one of the finest +vineyards in the arrondissement, an old abbey, and several farms. The +inhabitants of Saumur were so little revolutionary that they thought +Pere Grandet a bold man, a republican, and a patriot with a mind open +to all the new ideas; though in point of fact it was open only to +vineyards. He was appointed a member of the administration of Saumur, +and his pacific influence made itself felt politically and +commercially. Politically, he protected the ci-devant nobles, and +prevented, to the extent of his power, the sale of the lands and +property of the /emigres/; commercially, he furnished the Republican +armies with two or three thousand puncheons of white wine, and took +his pay in splendid fields belonging to a community of women whose +lands had been reserved for the last lot. + +Under the Consulate Grandet became mayor, governed wisely, and +harvested still better pickings. Under the Empire he was called +Monsieur Grandet. Napoleon, however, did not like republicans, and +superseded Monsieur Grandet (who was supposed to have worn the +Phrygian cap) by a man of his own surroundings, a future baron of the +Empire. Monsieur Grandet quitted office without regret. He had +constructed in the interests of the town certain fine roads which led +to his own property; his house and lands, very advantageously +assessed, paid moderate taxes; and since the registration of his +various estates, the vineyards, thanks to his constant care, had +become the "head of the country,"--a local term used to denote those +that produced the finest quality of wine. He might have asked for the +cross of the Legion of honor. + +This event occurred in 1806. Monsieur Grandet was then fifty-seven +years of age, his wife thirty-six, and an only daughter, the fruit of +their legitimate love, was ten years old. Monsieur Grandet, whom +Providence no doubt desired to compensate for the loss of his +municipal honors, inherited three fortunes in the course of this year, +--that of Madame de la Gaudiniere, born de la Bertelliere, the mother +of Madame Grandet; that of old Monsieur de la Bertelliere, her +grandfather; and, lastly, that of Madame Gentillet, her grandmother on +the mother's side: three inheritances, whose amount was not known to +any one. The avarice of the deceased persons was so keen that for a +long time they had hoarded their money for the pleasure of secretly +looking at it. Old Monsieur de la Bertelliere called an investment an +extravagance, and thought he got better interest from the sight of his +gold than from the profits of usury. The inhabitants of Saumur +consequently estimated his savings according to "the revenues of the +sun's wealth," as they said. + +Monsieur Grandet thus obtained that modern title of nobility which our +mania for equality can never rub out. He became the most imposing +personage in the arrondissement. He worked a hundred acres of +vineyard, which in fruitful years yielded seven or eight hundred +hogsheads of wine. He owned thirteen farms, an old abbey, whose +windows and arches he had walled up for the sake of economy,--a +measure which preserved them,--also a hundred and twenty-seven acres +of meadow-land, where three thousand poplars, planted in 1793, grew +and flourished; and finally, the house in which he lived. Such was his +visible estate; as to his other property, only two persons could give +even a vague guess at its value: one was Monsieur Cruchot, a notary +employed in the usurious investments of Monsieur Grandet; the other +was Monsieur des Grassins, the richest banker in Saumur, in whose +profits Grandet had a certain covenanted and secret share. + +Although old Cruchot and Monsieur des Grassins were both gifted with +the deep discretion which wealth and trust beget in the provinces, +they publicly testified so much respect to Monsieur Grandet that +observers estimated the amount of his property by the obsequious +attention which they bestowed upon him. In all Saumur there was no one +not persuaded that Monsieur Grandet had a private treasure, some +hiding-place full of louis, where he nightly took ineffable delight in +gazing upon great masses of gold. Avaricious people gathered proof of +this when they looked at the eyes of the good man, to which the yellow +metal seemed to have conveyed its tints. The glance of a man +accustomed to draw enormous interest from his capital acquires, like +that of the libertine, the gambler, or the sycophant, certain +indefinable habits,--furtive, eager, mysterious movements, which never +escape the notice of his co-religionists. This secret language is in a +certain way the freemasonry of the passions. Monsieur Grandet inspired +the respectful esteem due to one who owed no man anything, who, +skilful cooper and experienced wine-grower that he was, guessed with +the precision of an astronomer whether he ought to manufacture a +thousand puncheons for his vintage, or only five hundred, who never +failed in any speculation, and always had casks for sale when casks +were worth more than the commodity that filled them, who could store +his whole vintage in his cellars and bide his time to put the +puncheons on the market at two hundred francs, when the little +proprietors had been forced to sell theirs for five louis. His famous +vintage of 1811, judiciously stored and slowly disposed of, brought +him in more than two hundred and forty thousand francs. + +Financially speaking, Monsieur Grandet was something between a tiger +and a boa-constrictor. He could crouch and lie low, watch his prey a +long while, spring upon it, open his jaws, swallow a mass of louis, +and then rest tranquilly like a snake in process of digestion, +impassible, methodical, and cold. No one saw him pass without a +feeling of admiration mingled with respect and fear; had not every man +in Saumur felt the rending of those polished steel claws? For this +one, Maitre Cruchot had procured the money required for the purchase +of a domain, but at eleven per cent. For that one, Monsieur des +Grassins discounted bills of exchange, but at a frightful deduction of +interest. Few days ever passed that Monsieur Grandet's name was not +mentioned either in the markets or in social conversations at the +evening gatherings. To some the fortune of the old wine-grower was an +object of patriotic pride. More than one merchant, more than one +innkeeper, said to strangers with a certain complacency: "Monsieur, we +have two or three millionaire establishments; but as for Monsieur +Grandet, he does not himself know how much he is worth." + +In 1816 the best reckoners in Saumur estimated the landed property of +the worthy man at nearly four millions; but as, on an average, he had +made yearly, from 1793 to 1817, a hundred thousand francs out of that +property, it was fair to presume that he possessed in actual money a +sum nearly equal to the value of his estate. So that when, after a +game of boston or an evening discussion on the matter of vines, the +talk fell upon Monsieur Grandet, knowing people said: "Le Pere +Grandet? le Pere Grandet must have at least five or six millions." + +"You are cleverer than I am; I have never been able to find out the +amount," answered Monsieur Cruchot or Monsieur des Grassins, when +either chanced to overhear the remark. + +If some Parisian mentioned Rothschild or Monsieur Lafitte, the people +of Saumur asked if he were as rich as Monsieur Grandet. When the +Parisian, with a smile, tossed them a disdainful affirmative, they +looked at each other and shook their heads with an incredulous air. So +large a fortune covered with a golden mantle all the actions of this +man. If in early days some peculiarities of his life gave occasion for +laughter or ridicule, laughter and ridicule had long since died away. +His least important actions had the authority of results repeatedly +shown. His speech, his clothing, his gestures, the blinking of his +eyes, were law to the country-side, where every one, after studying +him as a naturalist studies the result of instinct in the lower +animals, had come to understand the deep mute wisdom of his slightest +actions. + +"It will be a hard winter," said one; "Pere Grandet has put on his fur +gloves." + +"Pere Grandet is buying quantities of staves; there will be plenty of +wine this year." + +Monsieur Grandet never bought either bread or meat. His farmers +supplied him weekly with a sufficiency of capons, chickens, eggs, +butter, and his tithe of wheat. He owned a mill; and the tenant was +bound, over and above his rent, to take a certain quantity of grain +and return him the flour and bran. La Grande Nanon, his only servant, +though she was no longer young, baked the bread of the household +herself every Saturday. Monsieur Grandet arranged with kitchen- +gardeners who were his tenants to supply him with vegetables. As to +fruits, he gathered such quantities that he sold the greater part in +the market. His fire-wood was cut from his own hedgerows or taken from +the half-rotten old sheds which he built at the corners of his fields, +and whose planks the farmers carted into town for him, all cut up, and +obligingly stacked in his wood-house, receiving in return his thanks. +His only known expenditures were for the consecrated bread, the +clothing of his wife and daughter, the hire of their chairs in church, +the wages of la Grand Nanon, the tinning of the saucepans, lights, +taxes, repairs on his buildings, and the costs of his various +industries. He had six hundred acres of woodland, lately purchased, +which he induced a neighbor's keeper to watch, under the promise of an +indemnity. After the acquisition of this property he ate game for the +first time. + +Monsieur Grandet's manners were very simple. He spoke little. He +usually expressed his meaning by short sententious phrases uttered in +a soft voice. After the Revolution, the epoch at which he first came +into notice, the good man stuttered in a wearisome way as soon as he +was required to speak at length or to maintain an argument. This +stammering, the incoherence of his language, the flux of words in +which he drowned his thought, his apparent lack of logic, attributed +to defects of education, were in reality assumed, and will be +sufficiently explained by certain events in the following history. +Four sentences, precise as algebraic formulas, sufficed him usually to +grasp and solve all difficulties of life and commerce: "I don't know; +I cannot; I will not; I will see about it." He never said yes, or no, +and never committed himself to writing. If people talked to him he +listened coldly, holding his chin in his right hand and resting his +right elbow in the back of his left hand, forming in his own mind +opinions on all matters, from which he never receded. He reflected +long before making any business agreement. When his opponent, after +careful conversation, avowed the secret of his own purposes, confident +that he had secured his listener's assent, Grandet answered: "I can +decide nothing without consulting my wife." His wife, whom he had +reduced to a state of helpless slavery, was a useful screen to him in +business. He went nowhere among friends; he neither gave nor accepted +dinners; he made no stir or noise, seeming to economize in everything, +even movement. He never disturbed or disarranged the things of other +people, out of respect for the rights of property. Nevertheless, in +spite of his soft voice, in spite of his circumspect bearing, the +language and habits of a coarse nature came to the surface, especially +in his own home, where he controlled himself less than elsewhere. + +Physically, Grandet was a man five feet high, thick-set, square-built, +with calves twelve inches in circumference, knotted knee-joints, and +broad shoulders; his face was round, tanned, and pitted by the small- +pox; his chin was straight, his lips had no curves, his teeth were +white; his eyes had that calm, devouring expression which people +attribute to the basilisk; his forehead, full of transverse wrinkles, +was not without certain significant protuberances; his yellow-grayish +hair was said to be silver and gold by certain young people who did +not realize the impropriety of making a jest about Monsieur Grandet. +His nose, thick at the end, bore a veined wen, which the common people +said, not without reason, was full of malice. The whole countenance +showed a dangerous cunning, an integrity without warmth, the egotism +of a man long used to concentrate every feeling upon the enjoyments of +avarice and upon the only human being who was anything whatever to +him,--his daughter and sole heiress, Eugenie. Attitude, manners, +bearing, everything about him, in short, testified to that belief in +himself which the habit of succeeding in all enterprises never fails +to give to a man. + +Thus, though his manners were unctuous and soft outwardly, Monsieur +Grandet's nature was of iron. His dress never varied; and those who +saw him to-day saw him such as he had been since 1791. His stout shoes +were tied with leathern thongs; he wore, in all weathers, thick +woollen stockings, short breeches of coarse maroon cloth with silver +buckles, a velvet waistcoat, in alternate stripes of yellow and puce, +buttoned squarely, a large maroon coat with wide flaps, a black +cravat, and a quaker's hat. His gloves, thick as those of a gendarme, +lasted him twenty months; to preserve them, he always laid them +methodically on the brim of his hat in one particular spot. Saumur +knew nothing further about this personage. + +Only six individuals had a right of entrance to Monsieur Grandet's +house. The most important of the first three was a nephew of Monsieur +Cruchot. Since his appointment as president of the Civil courts of +Saumur this young man had added the name of Bonfons to that of +Cruchot. He now signed himself C. de Bonfons. Any litigant so ill- +advised as to call him Monsieur Cruchot would soon be made to feel his +folly in court. The magistrate protected those who called him Monsieur +le president, but he favored with gracious smiles those who addressed +him as Monsieur de Bonfons. Monsieur le president was thirty-three +years old, and possessed the estate of Bonfons (Boni Fontis), worth +seven thousand francs a year; he expected to inherit the property of +his uncle the notary and that of another uncle, the Abbe Cruchot, a +dignitary of the chapter of Saint-Martin de Tours, both of whom were +thought to be very rich. These three Cruchots, backed by a goodly +number of cousins, and allied to twenty families in the town, formed a +party, like the Medici in Florence; like the Medici, the Cruchots had +their Pazzi. + +Madame des Grassins, mother of a son twenty-three years of age, came +assiduously to play cards with Madame Grandet, hoping to marry her +dear Adolphe to Mademoiselle Eugenie. Monsieur des Grassins, the +banker, vigorously promoted the schemes of his wife by means of secret +services constantly rendered to the old miser, and always arrived in +time upon the field of battle. The three des Grassins likewise had +their adherents, their cousins, their faithful allies. On the Cruchot +side the abbe, the Talleyrand of the family, well backed-up by his +brother the notary, sharply contested every inch of ground with his +female adversary, and tried to obtain the rich heiress for his nephew +the president. + +This secret warfare between the Cruchots and des Grassins, the prize +thereof being the hand in marriage of Eugenie Grandet, kept the +various social circles of Saumur in violent agitation. Would +Mademoiselle Grandet marry Monsieur le president or Monsieur Adolphe +des Grassins? To this problem some replied that Monsieur Grandet would +never give his daughter to the one or to the other. The old cooper, +eaten up with ambition, was looking, they said, for a peer of France, +to whom an income of three hundred thousand francs would make all the +past, present, and future casks of the Grandets acceptable. Others +replied that Monsieur and Madame des Grassins were nobles, and +exceedingly rich; that Adolphe was a personable young fellow; and that +unless the old man had a nephew of the pope at his beck and call, such +a suitable alliance ought to satisfy a man who came from nothing,--a +man whom Saumur remembered with an adze in his hand, and who had, +moreover, worn the /bonnet rouge/. Certain wise heads called attention +to the fact that Monsieur Cruchot de Bonfons had the right of entry to +the house at all times, whereas his rival was received only on +Sundays. Others, however, maintained that Madame des Grassins was more +intimate with the women of the house of Grandet than the Cruchots +were, and could put into their minds certain ideas which would lead, +sooner or later, to success. To this the former retorted that the Abbe +Cruchot was the most insinuating man in the world: pit a woman against +a monk, and the struggle was even. "It is diamond cut diamond," said a +Saumur wit. + +The oldest inhabitants, wiser than their fellows, declared that the +Grandets knew better than to let the property go out of the family, +and that Mademoiselle Eugenie Grandet of Saumur would be married to +the son of Monsieur Grandet of Paris, a wealthy wholesale wine- +merchant. To this the Cruchotines and the Grassinists replied: "In the +first place, the two brothers have seen each other only twice in +thirty years; and next, Monsieur Grandet of Paris has ambitious +designs for his son. He is mayor of an arrondissement, a deputy, +colonel of the National Guard, judge in the commercial courts; he +disowns the Grandets of Saumur, and means to ally himself with some +ducal family,--ducal under favor of Napoleon." In short, was there +anything not said of an heiress who was talked of through a +circumference of fifty miles, and even in the public conveyances from +Angers to Blois, inclusively! + +At the beginning of 1811, the Cruchotines won a signal advantage over +the Grassinists. The estate of Froidfond, remarkable for its park, its +mansion, its farms, streams, ponds, forests, and worth about three +millions, was put up for sale by the young Marquis de Froidfond, who +was obliged to liquidate his possessions. Maitre Cruchot, the +president, and the abbe, aided by their adherents, were able to +prevent the sale of the estate in little lots. The notary concluded a +bargain with the young man for the whole property, payable in gold, +persuading him that suits without number would have to be brought +against the purchasers of small lots before he could get the money for +them; it was better, therefore, to sell the whole to Monsieur Grandet, +who was solvent and able to pay for the estate in ready money. The +fine marquisate of Froidfond was accordingly conveyed down the gullet +of Monsieur Grandet, who, to the great astonishment of Saumur, paid +for it, under proper discount, with the usual formalities. + +This affair echoed from Nantes to Orleans. Monsieur Grandet took +advantage of a cart returning by way of Froidfond to go and see his +chateau. Having cast a master's eye over the whole property, he +returned to Saumur, satisfied that he had invested his money at five +per cent, and seized by the stupendous thought of extending and +increasing the marquisate of Froidfond by concentrating all his +property there. Then, to fill up his coffers, now nearly empty, he +resolved to thin out his woods and his forests, and to sell off the +poplars in the meadows. + + + +II + +It is now easy to understand the full meaning of the term, "the house +of Monsieur Grandet,"--that cold, silent, pallid dwelling, standing +above the town and sheltered by the ruins of the ramparts. The two +pillars and the arch, which made the porte-cochere on which the door +opened, were built, like the house itself, of tufa,--a white stone +peculiar to the shores of the Loire, and so soft that it lasts hardly +more than two centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously +bored or eaten out by the inclemency of the weather, gave an +appearance of the vermiculated stonework of French architecture to the +arch and the side walls of this entrance, which bore some resemblance +to the gateway of a jail. Above the arch was a long bas-relief, in +hard stone, representing the four seasons, the faces already crumbling +away and blackened. This bas-relief was surmounted by a projecting +plinth, upon which a variety of chance growths had sprung up,--yellow +pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, plantain, and even a little +cherry-tree, already grown to some height. + +The door of the archway was made of solid oak, brown, shrunken, and +split in many places; though frail in appearance, it was firmly held +in place by a system of iron bolts arranged in symmetrical patterns. A +small square grating, with close bars red with rust, filled up the +middle panel and made, as it were, a motive for the knocker, fastened +to it by a ring, which struck upon the grinning head of a huge nail. +This knocker, of the oblong shape and kind which our ancestors called +/jaquemart/, looked like a huge note of exclamation; an antiquary who +examined it attentively might have found indications of the figure, +essentially burlesque, which it once represented, and which long usage +had now effaced. Through this little grating--intended in olden times +for the recognition of friends in times of civil war--inquisitive +persons could perceive, at the farther end of the dark and slimy +vault, a few broken steps which led to a garden, picturesquely shut in +by walls that were thick and damp, and through which oozed a moisture +that nourished tufts of sickly herbage. These walls were the ruins of +the ramparts, under which ranged the gardens of several neighboring +houses. + +The most important room on the ground-floor of the house was a large +hall, entered directly from beneath the vault of the porte-cochere. +Few people know the importance of a hall in the little towns of Anjou, +Touraine, and Berry. The hall is at one and the same time antechamber, +salon, office, boudoir, and dining-room; it is the theatre of domestic +life, the common living-room. There the barber of the neighborhood +came, twice a year, to cut Monsieur Grandet's hair; there the farmers, +the cure, the under-prefect, and the miller's boy came on business. +This room, with two windows looking on the street, was entirely of +wood. Gray panels with ancient mouldings covered the walls from top to +bottom; the ceiling showed all its beams, which were likewise painted +gray, while the space between them had been washed over in white, now +yellow with age. An old brass clock, inlaid with arabesques, adorned +the mantel of the ill-cut white stone chimney-piece, above which was a +greenish mirror, whose edges, bevelled to show the thickness of the +glass, reflected a thread of light the whole length of a gothic frame +in damascened steel-work. The two copper-gilt candelabra which +decorated the corners of the chimney-piece served a double purpose: by +taking off the side-branches, each of which held a socket, the main +stem--which was fastened to a pedestal of bluish marble tipped with +copper--made a candlestick for one candle, which was sufficient for +ordinary occasions. The chairs, antique in shape, were covered with +tapestry representing the fables of La Fontaine; it was necessary, +however, to know that writer well to guess at the subjects, for the +faded colors and the figures, blurred by much darning, were difficult +to distinguish. + +At the four corners of the hall were closets, or rather buffets, +surmounted by dirty shelves. An old card-table in marquetry, of which +the upper part was a chess-board, stood in the space between the two +windows. Above this table was an oval barometer with a black border +enlivened with gilt bands, on which the flies had so licentiously +disported themselves that the gilding had become problematical. On the +panel opposite to the chimney-piece were two portraits in pastel, +supposed to represent the grandfather of Madame Grandet, old Monsieur +de la Bertelliere, as a lieutenant in the French guard, and the +deceased Madame Gentillet in the guise of a shepherdess. The windows +were draped with curtains of red /gros de Tours/ held back by silken +cords with ecclesiastical tassels. This luxurious decoration, little +in keeping with the habits of Monsieur Grandet, had been, together +with the steel pier-glass, the tapestries, and the buffets, which were +of rose-wood, included in the purchase of the house. + +By the window nearest to the door stood a straw chair, whose legs were +raised on castors to lift its occupant, Madame Grandet, to a height +from which she could see the passers-by. A work-table of stained +cherry-wood filled up the embrasure, and the little armchair of +Eugenie Grandet stood beside it. In this spot the lives had flowed +peacefully onward for fifteen years, in a round of constant work from +the month of April to the month of November. On the first day of the +latter month they took their winter station by the chimney. Not until +that day did Grandet permit a fire to be lighted; and on the thirty- +first of March it was extinguished, without regard either to the +chills of the early spring or to those of a wintry autumn. A foot- +warmer, filled with embers from the kitchen fire, which la Grande +Nanon contrived to save for them, enabled Madame and Mademoiselle +Grandet to bear the chilly mornings and evenings of April and October. +Mother and daughter took charge of the family linen, and spent their +days so conscientiously upon a labor properly that of working-women, +that if Eugenie wished to embroider a collar for her mother she was +forced to take the time from sleep, and deceive her father to obtain +the necessary light. For a long time the miser had given out the +tallow candle to his daughter and la Grande Nanon just as he gave out +every morning the bread and other necessaries for the daily +consumption. + +La Grande Nanon was perhaps the only human being capable of accepting +willingly the despotism of her master. The whole town envied Monsieur +and Madame Grandet the possession of her. La Grande Nanon, so called +on account of her height, which was five feet eight inches, had lived +with Monsieur Grandet for thirty-five years. Though she received only +sixty francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the +richest serving-women in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating +through thirty-five years, had recently enabled her to invest four +thousand francs in an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her +long and persistent economy seemed gigantic. Every servant in the +town, seeing that the poor sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old +age, was jealous of her, and never thought of the hard slavery through +which it had been won. + +At twenty-two years of age the poor girl had been unable to find a +situation, so repulsive was her face to almost every one. Yet the +feeling was certainly unjust: the face would have been much admired on +the shoulders of a grenadier of the guard; but all things, so they +say, should be in keeping. Forced to leave a farm where she kept the +cows, because the dwelling-house was burned down, she came to Saumur +to find a place, full of the robust courage that shrinks from no +labor. Le Pere Grandet was at that time thinking of marriage and about +to set up his household. He espied the girl, rejected as she was from +door to door. A good judge of corporeal strength in his trade as a +cooper, he guessed the work that might be got out of a female creature +shaped like a Hercules, as firm on her feet as an oak sixty years old +on its roots, strong in the hips, square in the back, with the hands +of a cartman and an honesty as sound as her unblemished virtue. +Neither the warts which adorned her martial visage, nor the red-brick +tints of her skin, nor the sinewy arms, nor the ragged garments of la +Grande Nanon, dismayed the cooper, who was at that time still of an +age when the heart shudders. He fed, shod, and clothed the poor girl, +gave her wages, and put her to work without treating her too roughly. +Seeing herself thus welcomed, la Grande Nanon wept secretly tears of +joy, and attached herself in all sincerity to her master, who from +that day ruled her and worked her with feudal authority. Nanon did +everything. She cooked, she made the lye, she washed the linen in the +Loire and brought it home on her shoulders; she got up early, she went +to bed late; she prepared the food of the vine-dressers during the +harvest, kept watch upon the market-people, protected the property of +her master like a faithful dog, and even, full of blind confidence, +obeyed without a murmur his most absurd exactions. + +In the famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with +unheard-of difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old watch,-- +the first present he had made her during twenty years of service. +Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), it is +impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the shoes +were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so +niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and +Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose +spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too +much parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic +benefits derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no +one was ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed +when Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and +toiled as he did. What pleasant compensations there were in such +equality! Never did the master have occasion to find fault with the +servant for pilfering the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines +eaten under the trees. "Come, fall-to, Nanon!" he would say in years +when the branches bent under the fruit and the farmers were obliged to +give it to the pigs. + +To the poor peasant who in her youth had earned nothing but harsh +treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, Grandet's +ambiguous laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon's simple heart and +narrow head could hold only one feeling and one idea. For thirty-five +years she had never ceased to see herself standing before the wood- +yard of Monsieur Grandet, ragged and barefooted, and to hear him say: +"What do you want, young one?" Her gratitude was ever new. Sometimes +Grandet, reflecting that the poor creature had never heard a +flattering word, that she was ignorant of all the tender sentiments +inspired by women, that she might some day appear before the throne of +God even more chaste than the Virgin Mary herself,--Grandet, struck +with pity, would say as he looked at her, "Poor Nanon!" The +exclamation was always followed by an undefinable look cast upon him +in return by the old servant. The words, uttered from time to time, +formed a chain of friendship that nothing ever parted, and to which +each exclamation added a link. Such compassion arising in the heart of +the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old spinster, had something +inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel pity, recalling, as it +did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old cooper, was for +Nanon the sum total of happiness. Who does not likewise say, "Poor +Nanon!" God will recognize his angels by the inflexions of their +voices and by their secret sighs. + +There were very many households in Saumur where the servants were +better treated, but where the masters received far less satisfaction +in return. Thus it was often said: "What have the Grandets ever done +to make their Grande Nanon so attached to them? She would go through +fire and water for their sake!" Her kitchen, whose barred windows +looked into the court, was always clean, neat, cold,--a true miser's +kitchen, where nothing went to waste. When Nanon had washed her +dishes, locked up the remains of the dinner, and put out her fire, she +left the kitchen, which was separated by a passage from the living- +room, and went to spin hemp beside her masters. One tallow candle +sufficed the family for the evening. The servant slept at the end of +the passage in a species of closet lighted only by a fan-light. Her +robust health enabled her to live in this hole with impunity; there +she could hear the slightest noise through the deep silence which +reigned night and day in that dreary house. Like a watch-dog, she +slept with one ear open, and took her rest with a mind alert. + +A description of the other parts of the dwelling will be found +connected with the events of this history, though the foregoing sketch +of the hall, where the whole luxury of the household appears, may +enable the reader to surmise the nakedness of the upper floors. + +In 1819, at the beginning of an evening in the middle of November, la +Grande Nanon lighted the fire for the first time. The autumn had been +very fine. This particular day was a fete-day well known to the +Cruchotines and the Grassinists. The six antagonists, armed at all +points, were making ready to meet at the Grandets and surpass each +other in testimonials of friendship. That morning all Saumur had seen +Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet, accompanied by Nanon, on their way to +hear Mass at the parish church, and every one remembered that the day +was the anniversary of Mademoiselle Eugenie's birth. Calculating the +hour at which the family dinner would be over, Maitre Cruchot, the +Abbe Cruchot, and Monsieur C. de Bonfons hastened to arrive before the +des Grassins, and be the first to pay their compliments to +Mademoiselle Eugenie. All three brought enormous bouquets, gathered in +their little green-houses. The stalks of the flowers which the +president intended to present were ingeniously wound round with a +white satin ribbon adorned with gold fringe. In the morning Monsieur +Grandet, following his usual custom on the days that commemorated the +birth and the fete of Eugenie, went to her bedside and solemnly +presented her with his paternal gift,--which for the last thirteen +years had consisted regularly of a curious gold-piece. Madame Grandet +gave her daughter a winter dress or a summer dress, as the case might +be. These two dresses and the gold-pieces, of which she received two +others on New Year's day and on her father's fete-day, gave Eugenie a +little revenue of a hundred crowns or thereabouts, which Grandet loved +to see her amass. Was it not putting his money from one strong-box to +another, and, as it were, training the parsimony of his heiress? from +whom he sometimes demanded an account of her treasure (formerly +increased by the gifts of the Bertellieres), saying: "It is to be your +marriage dozen." + +The "marriage dozen" is an old custom sacredly preserved and still in +force in many parts of central France. In Berry and in Anjou, when a +young girl marries, her family, or that of the husband, must give her +a purse, in which they place, according to their means, twelve pieces, +or twelve dozen pieces, or twelve hundred pieces of gold. The poorest +shepherd-girl never marries without her dozen, be it only a dozen +coppers. They still tell in Issoudun of a certain "dozen" presented to +a rich heiress, which contained a hundred and forty-four /portugaises +d'or/. Pope Clement VII., uncle of Catherine de' Medici, gave her when +he married her to Henri II. a dozen antique gold medals of priceless +value. + +During dinner the father, delighted to see his Eugenie looking well in +a new gown, exclaimed: "As it is Eugenie's birthday let us have a +fire; it will be a good omen." + +"Mademoiselle will be married this year, that's certain," said la +Grande Nanon, carrying away the remains of the goose,--the pheasant of +tradesmen. + +"I don't see any one suitable for her in Saumur," said Madame Grandet, +glancing at her husband with a timid look which, considering her +years, revealed the conjugal slavery under which the poor woman +languished. + +Grandet looked at his daughter and exclaimed gaily,-- + +"She is twenty-three years old to-day, the child; we must soon begin +to think of it." + +Eugenie and her mother silently exchanged a glance of intelligence. + +Madame Grandet was a dry, thin woman, as yellow as a quince, awkward, +slow, one of those women who are born to be down-trodden. She had big +bones, a big nose, a big forehead, big eyes, and presented at first +sight a vague resemblance to those mealy fruits that have neither +savor nor succulence. Her teeth were black and few in number, her +mouth was wrinkled, her chin long and pointed. She was an excellent +woman, a true la Bertelliere. L'abbe Cruchot found occasional +opportunity to tell her that she had not done ill; and she believed +him. Angelic sweetness, the resignation of an insect tortured by +children, a rare piety, a good heart, an unalterable equanimity of +soul, made her universally pitied and respected. Her husband never +gave her more than six francs at a time for her personal expenses. +Ridiculous as it may seem, this woman, who by her own fortune and her +various inheritances brought Pere Grandet more than three hundred +thousand francs, had always felt so profoundly humiliated by her +dependence and the slavery in which she lived, against which the +gentleness of her spirit prevented her from revolting, that she had +never asked for one penny or made a single remark on the deeds which +Maitre Cruchot brought for her signature. This foolish secret pride, +this nobility of soul perpetually misunderstood and wounded by +Grandet, ruled the whole conduct of the wife. + +Madame Grandet was attired habitually in a gown of greenish levantine +silk, endeavoring to make it last nearly a year; with it she wore a +large kerchief of white cotton cloth, a bonnet made of plaited straws +sewn together, and almost always a black-silk apron. As she seldom +left the house she wore out very few shoes. She never asked anything +for herself. Grandet, seized with occasional remorse when he +remembered how long a time had elapsed since he gave her the last six +francs, always stipulated for the "wife's pin-money" when he sold his +yearly vintage. The four or five louis presented by the Belgian or the +Dutchman who purchased the wine were the chief visible signs of Madame +Grandet's annual revenues. But after she had received the five louis, +her husband would often say to her, as though their purse were held in +common: "Can you lend me a few sous?" and the poor woman, glad to be +able to do something for a man whom her confessor held up to her as +her lord and master, returned him in the course of the winter several +crowns out of the "pin-money." When Grandet drew from his pocket the +five-franc piece which he allowed monthly for the minor expenses,-- +thread, needles, and toilet,--of his daughter, he never failed to say +as he buttoned his breeches' pocket: "And you, mother, do you want +anything?" + +"My friend," Madame Grandet would answer, moved by a sense of maternal +dignity, "we will see about that later." + +Wasted dignity! Grandet thought himself very generous to his wife. +Philosophers who meet the like of Nanon, of Madame Grandet, of +Eugenie, have surely a right to say that irony is at the bottom of the +ways of Providence. + +After the dinner at which for the first time allusion had been made to +Eugenie's marriage, Nanon went to fetch a bottle of black-currant +ratafia from Monsieur Grandet's bed-chamber, and nearly fell as she +came down the stairs. + +"You great stupid!" said her master; "are you going to tumble about +like other people, hey?" + +"Monsieur, it was that step on your staircase which has given way." + +"She is right," said Madame Grandet; "it ought to have been mended +long ago. Yesterday Eugenie nearly twisted her ankle." + +"Here," said Grandet to Nanon, seeing that she looked quite pale, "as +it is Eugenie's birthday, and you came near falling, take a little +glass of ratafia to set you right." + +"Faith! I've earned it," said Nanon; "most people would have broken +the bottle; but I'd sooner have broken my elbow holding it up high." + +"Poor Nanon!" said Grandet, filling a glass. + +"Did you hurt yourself?" asked Eugenie, looking kindly at her. + +"No, I didn't fall; I threw myself back on my haunches." + +"Well! as it is Eugenie's birthday," said Grandet, "I'll have the step +mended. You people don't know how to set your foot in the corner where +the wood is still firm." + +Grandet took the candle, leaving his wife, daughter, and servant +without any other light than that from the hearth, where the flames +were lively, and went into the bakehouse to fetch planks, nails, and +tools. + +"Can I help you?" cried Nanon, hearing him hammer on the stairs. + +"No, no! I'm an old hand at it," answered the former cooper. + +At the moment when Grandet was mending his worm-eaten staircase and +whistling with all his might, in remembrance of the days of his youth, +the three Cruchots knocked at the door. + +"Is it you, Monsieur Cruchot?" asked Nanon, peeping through the little +grating. + +"Yes," answered the president. + +Nanon opened the door, and the light from the hearth, reflected on the +ceiling, enabled the three Cruchots to find their way into the room. + +"Ha! you've come a-greeting," said Nanon, smelling the flowers. + +"Excuse me, messieurs," cried Grandet, recognizing their voices; "I'll +be with you in a moment. I'm not proud; I am patching up a step on my +staircase." + +"Go on, go on, Monsieur Grandet; a man's house is his castle," said +the president sententiously. + +Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet rose. The president, profiting by the +darkness, said to Eugenie: + +"Will you permit me, mademoiselle, to wish you, on this the day of +your birth, a series of happy years and the continuance of the health +which you now enjoy?" + +He offered her a huge bouquet of choice flowers which were rare in +Saumur; then, taking the heiress by the elbows, he kissed her on each +side of her neck with a complacency that made her blush. The +president, who looked like a rusty iron nail, felt that his courtship +was progressing. + +"Don't stand on ceremony," said Grandet, entering. "How well you do +things on fete-days, Monsieur le president!" + +"When it concerns mademoiselle," said the abbe, armed with his own +bouquet, "every day is a fete-day for my nephew." + +The abbe kissed Eugenie's hand. As for Maitre Cruchot, he boldly +kissed her on both cheeks, remarking: "How we sprout up, to be sure! +Every year is twelve months." + +As he replaced the candlestick beside the clock, Grandet, who never +forgot his own jokes, and repeated them to satiety when he thought +them funny, said,-- + +"As this is Eugenie's birthday let us illuminate." + +He carefully took off the branches of the candelabra, put a socket on +each pedestal, took from Nanon a new tallow candle with paper twisted +round the end of it, put it into the hollow, made it firm, lit it, and +then sat down beside his wife, looking alternately at his friends, his +daughter, and the two candles. The Abbe Cruchot, a plump, puffy little +man, with a red wig plastered down and a face like an old female +gambler, said as he stretched out his feet, well shod in stout shoes +with silver buckles: "The des Grassins have not come?" + +"Not yet," said Grandet. + +"But are they coming?" asked the old notary, twisting his face, which +had as many holes as a collander, into a queer grimace. + +"I think so," answered Madame Grandet. + +"Are your vintages all finished?" said Monsieur de Bonfons to Grandet. + +"Yes, all of them," said the old man, rising to walk up and down the +room, his chest swelling with pride as he said the words, "all of +them." Through the door of the passage which led to the kitchen he saw +la Grande Nanon sitting beside her fire with a candle and preparing to +spin there, so as not to intrude among the guests. + +"Nanon," he said, going into the passage, "put out that fire and that +candle, and come and sit with us. Pardieu! the hall is big enough for +all." + +"But monsieur, you are to have the great people." + +"Are not you as good as they? They are descended from Adam, and so are +you." + +Grandet came back to the president and said,-- + +"Have you sold your vintage?" + +"No, not I; I shall keep it. If the wine is good this year, it will be +better two years hence. The proprietors, you know, have made an +agreement to keep up the price; and this year the Belgians won't get +the better of us. Suppose they are sent off empty-handed for once, +faith! they'll come back." + +"Yes, but let us mind what we are about," said Grandet in a tone which +made the president tremble. + +"Is he driving some bargain?" thought Cruchot. + +At this moment the knocker announced the des Grassins family, and +their arrival interrupted a conversation which had begun between +Madame Grandet and the abbe. + +Madame des Grassins was one of those lively, plump little women, with +pink-and-white skins, who, thanks to the claustral calm of the +provinces and the habits of a virtuous life, keep their youth until +they are past forty. She was like the last rose of autumn,--pleasant +to the eye, though the petals have a certain frostiness, and their +perfume is slight. She dressed well, got her fashions from Paris, set +the tone to Saumur, and gave parties. Her husband, formerly a +quartermaster in the Imperial guard, who had been desperately wounded +at Austerlitz, and had since retired, still retained, in spite of his +respect for Grandet, the seeming frankness of an old soldier. + +"Good evening, Grandet," he said, holding out his hand and affecting a +sort of superiority, with which he always crushed the Cruchots. +"Mademoiselle," he added, turning to Eugenie, after bowing to Madame +Grandet, "you are always beautiful and good, and truly I do not know +what to wish you." So saying, he offered her a little box which his +servant had brought and which contained a Cape heather,--a flower +lately imported into Europe and very rare. + +Madame des Grassins kissed Eugenie very affectionately, pressed her +hand, and said: "Adolphe wishes to make you my little offering." + +A tall, blond young man, pale and slight, with tolerable manners and +seemingly rather shy, although he had just spent eight or ten thousand +francs over his allowance in Paris, where he had been sent to study +law, now came forward and kissed Eugenie on both cheeks, offering her +a workbox with utensils in silver-gilt,--mere show-case trumpery, in +spite of the monogram E.G. in gothic letters rather well engraved, +which belonged properly to something in better taste. As she opened +it, Eugenie experienced one of those unexpected and perfect delights +which make a young girl blush and quiver and tremble with pleasure. +She turned her eyes to her father as if to ask permission to accept +it, and Monsieur Grandet replied: "Take it, my daughter," in a tone +which would have made an actor illustrious. + +The three Cruchots felt crushed as they saw the joyous, animated look +cast upon Adolphe des Grassins by the heiress, to whom such riches +were unheard-of. Monsieur des Grassins offered Grandet a pinch of +snuff, took one himself, shook off the grains as they fell on the +ribbon of the Legion of honor which was attached to the button-hole of +his blue surtout; then he looked at the Cruchots with an air that +seemed to say, "Parry that thrust if you can!" Madame des Grassins +cast her eyes on the blue vases which held the Cruchot bouquets, +looking at the enemy's gifts with the pretended interest of a +satirical woman. At this delicate juncture the Abbe Cruchot left the +company seated in a circle round the fire and joined Grandet at the +lower end of the hall. As the two men reached the embrasure of the +farthest window the priest said in the miser's ear: "Those people +throw money out of the windows." + +"What does that matter if it gets into my cellar?" retorted the old +wine-grower. + +"If you want to give gilt scissors to your daughter, you have the +means," said the abbe. + +"I give her something better than scissors," answered Grandet. + +"My nephew is a blockhead," thought the abbe as he looked at the +president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his brown +countenance. "Couldn't he have found some little trifle which cost +money?" + +"We will join you at cards, Madame Grandet," said Madame des Grassins. + +"We might have two tables, as we are all here." + +"As it is Eugenie's birthday you had better play loto all together," +said Pere Grandet: "the two young ones can join"; and the old cooper, +who never played any game, motioned to his daughter and Adolphe. +"Come, Nanon, set the tables." + +"We will help you, Mademoiselle Nanon," said Madame des Grassins +gaily, quite joyous at the joy she had given Eugenie. + +"I have never in my life been so pleased," the heiress said to her; "I +have never seen anything so pretty." + +"Adolphe brought it from Paris, and he chose it," Madame des Grassins +whispered in her ear. + +"Go on! go on! damned intriguing thing!" thought the president. "If +you ever have a suit in court, you or your husband, it shall go hard +with you." + +The notary, sitting in his corner, looked calmly at the abbe, saying +to himself: "The des Grassins may do what they like; my property and +my brother's and that of my nephew amount in all to eleven hundred +thousand francs. The des Grassins, at the most, have not half that; +besides, they have a daughter. They may give what presents they like; +heiress and presents too will be ours one of these days." + +At half-past eight in the evening the two card-tables were set out. +Madame des Grassins succeeded in putting her son beside Eugenie. The +actors in this scene, so full of interest, commonplace as it seems, +were provided with bits of pasteboard striped in many colors and +numbered, and with counters of blue glass, and they appeared to be +listening to the jokes of the notary, who never drew a number without +making a remark, while in fact they were all thinking of Monsieur +Grandet's millions. The old cooper, with inward self-conceit, was +contemplating the pink feathers and the fresh toilet of Madame des +Grassins, the martial head of the banker, the faces of Adolphe, the +president, the abbe, and the notary, saying to himself:-- + +"They are all after my money. Hey! neither the one nor the other shall +have my daughter; but they are useful--useful as harpoons to fish +with." + +This family gaiety in the old gray room dimly lighted by two tallow +candles; this laughter, accompanied by the whirr of Nanon's spinning- +wheel, sincere only upon the lips of Eugenie or her mother; this +triviality mingled with important interests; this young girl, who, +like certain birds made victims of the price put upon them, was now +lured and trapped by proofs of friendship of which she was the dupe,-- +all these things contributed to make the scene a melancholy comedy. Is +it not, moreover, a drama of all times and all places, though here +brought down to its simplest expression? The figure of Grandet, +playing his own game with the false friendship of the two families and +getting enormous profits from it, dominates the scene and throws light +upon it. The modern god,--the only god in whom faith is preserved,-- +money, is here, in all its power, manifested in a single countenance. +The tender sentiments of life hold here but a secondary place; only +the three pure, simple hearts of Nanon, of Eugenie, and of her mother +were inspired by them. And how much of ignorance there was in the +simplicity of these poor women! Eugenie and her mother knew nothing of +Grandet's wealth; they could only estimate the things of life by the +glimmer of their pale ideas, and they neither valued nor despised +money, because they were accustomed to do without it. Their feelings, +bruised, though they did not know it, but ever-living, were the secret +spring of their existence, and made them curious exceptions in the +midst of these other people whose lives were purely material. +Frightful condition of the human race! there is no one of its joys +that does not come from some species of ignorance. + +At the moment when Madame Grandet had won a loto of sixteen sous,--the +largest ever pooled in that house,--and while la Grande Nanon was +laughing with delight as she watched madame pocketing her riches, the +knocker resounded on the house-door with such a noise that the women +all jumped in their chairs. + +"There is no man in Saumur who would knock like that," said the +notary. + +"How can they bang in that way!" exclaimed Nanon; "do they want to +break in the door?" + +"Who the devil is it?" cried Grandet. + + + +III + +Nanon took one of the candles and went to open the door, followed by +her master. + +"Grandet! Grandet!" cried his wife, moved by a sudden impulse of fear, +and running to the door of the room. + +All the players looked at each other. + +"Suppose we all go?" said Monsieur des Grassins; "that knock strikes +me as evil-intentioned." + +Hardly was Monsieur des Grassins allowed to see the figure of a young +man, accompanied by a porter from the coach-office carrying two large +trunks and dragging a carpet-bag after him, than Monsieur Grandet +turned roughly on his wife and said,-- + +"Madame Grandet, go back to your loto; leave me to speak with +monsieur." + +Then he pulled the door quickly to, and the excited players returned +to their seats, but did not continue the game. + +"Is it any one belonging to Saumur, Monsieur des Grassins?" asked his +wife. + +"No, it is a traveller." + +"He must have come from Paris." + +"Just so," said the notary, pulling out his watch, which was two +inches thick and looked like a Dutch man-of-war; "it's nine o'clock; +the diligence of the Grand Bureau is never late." + +"Is the gentleman young?" inquired the Abbe Cruchot. + +"Yes," answered Monsieur des Grassins, "and he has brought luggage +which must weigh nearly three tons." + +"Nanon does not come back," said Eugenie. + +"It must be one of your relations," remarked the president. + +"Let us go on with our game," said Madame Grandet gently. "I know from +Monsieur Grandet's tone of voice that he is annoyed; perhaps he would +not like to find us talking of his affairs." + +"Mademoiselle," said Adolphe to his neighbor, "it is no doubt your +cousin Grandet,--a very good-looking young man; I met him at the ball +of Monsieur de Nucingen." Adolphe did not go on, for his mother trod +on his toes; and then, asking him aloud for two sous to put on her +stake, she whispered: "Will you hold your tongue, you great goose!" + +At this moment Grandet returned, without la Grande Nanon, whose steps, +together with those of the porter, echoed up the staircase; and he was +followed by the traveller who had excited such curiosity and so filled +the lively imaginations of those present that his arrival at this +dwelling, and his sudden fall into the midst of this assembly, can +only be likened to that of a snail into a beehive, or the introduction +of a peacock into some village poultry-yard. + +"Sit down near the fire," said Grandet. + +Before seating himself, the young stranger saluted the assembled +company very gracefully. The men rose to answer by a courteous +inclination, and the women made a ceremonious bow. + +"You are cold, no doubt, monsieur," said Madame Grandet; "you have, +perhaps, travelled from--" + +"Just like all women!" said the old wine-grower, looking up from a +letter he was reading. "Do let monsieur rest himself!" + +"But, father, perhaps monsieur would like to take something," said +Eugenie. + +"He has got a tongue," said the old man sternly. + +The stranger was the only person surprised by this scene; all the +others were well-used to the despotic ways of the master. However, +after the two questions and the two replies had been exchanged, the +newcomer rose, turned his back towards the fire, lifted one foot so as +to warm the sole of its boot, and said to Eugenie,-- + +"Thank you, my cousin, but I dined at Tours. And," he added, looking +at Grandet, "I need nothing; I am not even tired." + +"Monsieur has come from the capital?" asked Madame des Grassins. + +Monsieur Charles,--such was the name of the son of Monsieur Grandet of +Paris,--hearing himself addressed, took a little eye-glass, suspended +by a chain from his neck, applied it to his right eye to examine what +was on the table, and also the persons sitting round it. He ogled +Madame des Grassins with much impertinence, and said to her, after he +had observed all he wished,-- + +"Yes, madame. You are playing at loto, aunt," he added. "Do not let me +interrupt you, I beg; go on with your game: it is too amusing to +leave." + +"I was certain it was the cousin," thought Madame des Grassins, +casting repeated glances at him. + +"Forty-seven!" cried the old abbe. "Mark it down, Madame des Grassins. +Isn't that your number?" + +Monsieur des Grassins put a counter on his wife's card, who sat +watching first the cousin from Paris and then Eugenie, without +thinking of her loto, a prey to mournful presentiments. From time to +time the young the heiress glanced furtively at her cousin, and the +banker's wife easily detected a /crescendo/ of surprise and curiosity +in her mind. + +Monsieur Charles Grandet, a handsome young man of twenty-two, +presented at this moment a singular contrast to the worthy +provincials, who, considerably disgusted by his aristocratic manners, +were all studying him with sarcastic intent. This needs an +explanation. At twenty-two, young people are still so near childhood +that they often conduct themselves childishly. In all probability, out +of every hundred of them fully ninety-nine would have behaved +precisely as Monsieur Charles Grandet was now behaving. + +Some days earlier than this his father had told him to go and spend +several months with his uncle at Saumur. Perhaps Monsieur Grandet was +thinking of Eugenie. Charles, sent for the first time in his life into +the provinces, took a fancy to make his appearance with the +superiority of a man of fashion, to reduce the whole arrondissement to +despair by his luxury, and to make his visit an epoch, importing into +those country regions all the refinements of Parisian life. In short, +to explain it in one word, he mean to pass more time at Saumur in +brushing his nails than he ever thought of doing in Paris, and to +assume the extra nicety and elegance of dress which a young man of +fashion often lays aside for a certain negligence which in itself is +not devoid of grace. Charles therefore brought with him a complete +hunting-costume, the finest gun, the best hunting-knife in the +prettiest sheath to be found in all Paris. He brought his whole +collection of waistcoats. They were of all kinds,--gray, black, white, +scarabaeus-colored: some were shot with gold, some spangled, some +/chined/; some were double-breasted and crossed like a shawl, others +were straight in the collar; some had turned-over collars, some +buttoned up to the top with gilt buttons. He brought every variety of +collar and cravat in fashion at that epoch. He brought two of +Buisson's coats and all his finest linen He brought his pretty gold +toilet-set,--a present from his mother. He brought all his dandy +knick-knacks, not forgetting a ravishing little desk presented to him +by the most amiable of women,--amiable for him, at least,--a fine lady +whom he called Annette and who at this moment was travelling, +matrimonially and wearily, in Scotland, a victim to certain suspicions +which required a passing sacrifice of happiness; in the desk was much +pretty note-paper on which to write to her once a fortnight. + +In short, it was as complete a cargo of Parisian frivolities as it was +possible for him to get together,--a collection of all the implements +of husbandry with which the youth of leisure tills his life, from the +little whip which helps to begin a duel, to the handsomely chased +pistols which end it. His father having told him to travel alone and +modestly, he had taken the coupe of the diligence all to himself, +rather pleased at not having to damage a delightful travelling- +carriage ordered for a journey on which he was to meet his Annette, +the great lady who, etc.,--whom he intended to rejoin at Baden in the +following June. Charles expected to meet scores of people at his +uncle's house, to hunt in his uncle's forests,--to live, in short, the +usual chateau life; he did not know that his uncle was in Saumur, and +had only inquired about him incidentally when asking the way to +Froidfond. Hearing that he was in town, he supposed that he should +find him in a suitable mansion. + +In order that he might make a becoming first appearance before his +uncle either at Saumur or at Froidfond, he had put on his most elegant +travelling attire, simple yet exquisite,--"adorable," to use the word +which in those days summed up the special perfections of a man or a +thing. At Tours a hairdresser had re-curled his beautiful chestnut +locks; there he changed his linen and put on a black satin cravat, +which, combined with a round shirt-collar, framed his fair and smiling +countenance agreeably. A travelling great-coat, only half buttoned up, +nipped in his waist and disclosed a cashmere waistcoat crossed in +front, beneath which was another waistcoat of white material. His +watch, negligently slipped into a pocket, was fastened by a short gold +chain to a buttonhole. His gray trousers, buttoned up at the sides, +were set off at the seams with patterns of black silk embroidery. He +gracefully twirled a cane, whose chased gold knob did not mar the +freshness of his gray gloves. And to complete all, his cap was in +excellent taste. None but a Parisian, and a Parisian of the upper +spheres, could thus array himself without appearing ridiculous; none +other could give the harmony of self-conceit to all these fopperies, +which were carried off, however, with a dashing air,--the air of a +young man who has fine pistols, a sure aim, and Annette. + +Now if you wish to understand the mutual amazement of the provincial +party and the young Parisian; if you would clearly see the brilliance +which the traveller's elegance cast among the gray shadows of the room +and upon the faces of this family group,--endeavor to picture to your +minds the Cruchots. All three took snuff, and had long ceased to +repress the habit of snivelling or to remove the brown blotches which +strewed the frills of their dingy shirts and the yellowing creases of +their crumpled collars. Their flabby cravats were twisted into ropes +as soon as they wound them about their throats. The enormous quantity +of linen which allowed these people to have their clothing washed only +once in six months, and to keep it during that time in the depths of +their closets, also enabled time to lay its grimy and decaying stains +upon it. There was perfect unison of ill-grace and senility about +them; their faces, as faded as their threadbare coats, as creased as +their trousers, were worn-out, shrivelled-up, and puckered. As for the +others, the general negligence of their dress, which was incomplete +and wanting in freshness,--like the toilet of all country places, +where insensibly people cease to dress for others and come to think +seriously of the price of a pair of gloves,--was in keeping with the +negligence of the Cruchots. A horror of fashion was the only point on +which the Grassinists and the Cruchotines agreed. + +When the Parisian took up his eye-glass to examine the strange +accessories of this dwelling,--the joists of the ceiling, the color of +the woodwork, and the specks which the flies had left there in +sufficient number to punctuate the "Moniteur" and the "Encyclopaedia +of Sciences,"--the loto-players lifted their noses and looked at him +with as much curiosity as they might have felt about a giraffe. +Monsieur des Grassins and his son, to whom the appearance of a man of +fashion was not wholly unknown, were nevertheless as much astonished +as their neighbors, whether it was that they fell under the +indefinable influence of the general feeling, or that they really +shared it as with satirical glances they seemed to say to their +compatriots,-- + +"That is what you see in Paris!" + +They were able to examine Charles at their leisure without fearing to +displease the master of the house. Grandet was absorbed in the long +letter which he held in his hand; and to read it he had taken the only +candle upon the card-table, paying no heed to his guests or their +pleasure. Eugenie, to whom such a type of perfection, whether of dress +or of person, was absolutely unknown, thought she beheld in her cousin +a being descended from seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the +fragrance wafted from the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She +would have liked to touch the soft kid of the delicate gloves. She +envied Charles his small hands, his complexion, the freshness and +refinement of his features. In short,--if it is possible to sum up the +effect this elegant being produced upon an ignorant young girl +perpetually employed in darning stockings or in mending her father's +clothes, and whose life flowed on beneath these unclean rafters, +seeing none but occasional passers along the silent street,--this +vision of her cousin roused in her soul an emotion of delicate desire +like that inspired in a young man by the fanciful pictures of women +drawn by Westall for the English "Keepsakes," and that engraved by the +Findens with so clever a tool that we fear, as we breathe upon the +paper, that the celestial apparitions may be wafted away. Charles drew +from his pocket a handkerchief embroidered by the great lady now +travelling in Scotland. As Eugenie saw this pretty piece of work, done +in the vacant hours which were lost to love, she looked at her cousin +to see if it were possible that he meant to make use of it. The +manners of the young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up +his eye-glass, his affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance +at the coffer which had just given so much pleasure to the rich +heiress, and which he evidently regarded as without value, or even as +ridiculous,--all these things, which shocked the Cruchots and the des +Grassins, pleased Eugenie so deeply that before she slept she dreamed +long dreams of her phoenix cousin. + +The loto-numbers were drawn very slowly, and presently the game came +suddenly to an end. La Grand Nanon entered and said aloud: "Madame, I +want the sheets for monsieur's bed." + +Madame Grandet followed her out. Madame des Grassins said in a low +voice: "Let us keep our sous and stop playing." Each took his or her +two sous from the chipped saucer in which they had been put; then the +party moved in a body toward the fire. + +"Have you finished your game?" said Grandet, without looking up from +his letter. + +"Yes, yes!" replied Madame des Grassins, taking a seat near Charles. + +Eugenie, prompted by a thought often born in the heart of a young girl +when sentiment enters it for the first time, left the room to go and +help her mother and Nanon. Had an able confessor then questioned her +she would, no doubt, have avowed to him that she thought neither of +her mother nor of Nanon, but was pricked by a poignant desire to look +after her cousin's room and concern herself with her cousin; to supply +what might be needed, to remedy any forgetfulness, to see that all was +done to make it, as far as possible, suitable and elegant; and, in +fact, she arrived in time to prove to her mother and Nanon that +everything still remained to be done. She put into Nanon's head the +notion of passing a warming-pan between the sheets. She herself +covered the old table with a cloth and requested Nanon to change it +every morning; she convinced her mother that it was necessary to light +a good fire, and persuaded Nanon to bring up a great pile of wood into +the corridor without saying anything to her father. She ran to get, +from one of the corner-shelves of the hall, a tray of old lacquer +which was part of the inheritance of the late Monsieur de la +Bertelliere, catching up at the same time a six-sided crystal goblet, +a little tarnished gilt spoon, an antique flask engraved with cupids, +all of which she put triumphantly on the corner of her cousin's +chimney-piece. More ideas surged through her head in one quarter of an +hour than she had ever had since she came into the world. + +"Mamma," she said, "my cousin will never bear the smell of a tallow +candle; suppose we buy a wax one?" And she darted, swift as a bird, to +get the five-franc piece which she had just received for her monthly +expenses. "Here, Nanon," she cried, "quick!" + +"What will your father say?" This terrible remonstrance was uttered by +Madame Grandet as she beheld her daughter armed with an old Sevres +sugar-basin which Grandet had brought home from the chateau of +Froidfond. "And where will you get the sugar? Are you crazy?" + +"Mamma, Nanon can buy some sugar as well as the candle." + +"But your father?" + +"Surely his nephew ought not to go without a glass of /eau sucree/? +Besides, he will not notice it." + +"Your father sees everything," said Madame Grandet, shaking her head. + +Nanon hesitated; she knew her master. + +"Come, Nanon, go,--because it is my birthday." + +Nanon gave a loud laugh as she heard the first little jest her young +mistress had ever made, and then obeyed her. + +While Eugenie and her mother were trying to embellish the bedroom +assigned by Monsieur Grandet for his nephew, Charles himself was the +object of Madame des Grassins' attentions; to all appearances she was +setting her cap at him. + +"You are very courageous, monsieur," she said to the young dandy, "to +leave the pleasures of the capital at this season and take up your +abode in Saumur. But if we do not frighten you away, you will find +there are some amusements even here." + +She threw him the ogling glance of the provinces, where women put so +much prudence and reserve into their eyes that they impart to them the +prudish concupiscence peculiar to certain ecclesiastics to whom all +pleasure is either a theft or an error. Charles was so completely out +of his element in this abode, and so far from the vast chateau and the +sumptuous life with which his fancy had endowed his uncle, that as he +looked at Madame des Grassins he perceived a dim likeness to Parisian +faces. He gracefully responded to the species of invitation addressed +to him, and began very naturally a conversation, in which Madame des +Grassins gradually lowered her voice so as to bring it into harmony +with the nature of the confidences she was making. With her, as with +Charles, there was the need of conference; so after a few moments +spent in coquettish phrases and a little serious jesting, the clever +provincial said, thinking herself unheard by the others, who were +discussing the sale of wines which at that season filled the heads of +every one in Saumur,-- + +"Monsieur if you will do us the honor to come and see us, you will +give as much pleasure to my husband as to myself. Our salon is the +only one in Saumur where you will find the higher business circles +mingling with the nobility. We belong to both societies, who meet at +our house simply because they find it amusing. My husband--I say it +with pride--is as much valued by the one class as by the other. We +will try to relieve the monotony of your visit here. If you stay all +the time with Monsieur Grandet, good heavens! what will become of you? +Your uncle is a sordid miser who thinks of nothing but his vines; your +aunt is a pious soul who can't put two ideas together; and your cousin +is a little fool, without education, perfectly common, no fortune, who +will spend her life in darning towels." + +"She is really very nice, this woman," thought Charles Grandet as he +duly responded to Madame des Grassins' coquetries. + +"It seems to me, wife, that you are taking possession of monsieur," +said the stout banker, laughing. + +On this remark the notary and the president said a few words that were +more or less significant; but the abbe, looking at them slyly, brought +their thoughts to a focus by taking a pinch of snuff and saying as he +handed round his snuff-box: "Who can do the honors of Saumur for +monsieur so well as madame?" + +"Ah! what do you mean by that, monsieur l'abbe?" demanded Monsieur des +Grassins. + +"I mean it in the best possible sense for you, for madame, for the +town of Saumur, and for monsieur," said the wily old man, turning to +Charles. + +The Abbe Cruchot had guessed the conversation between Charles and +Madame des Grassins without seeming to pay attention to it. + +"Monsieur," said Adolphe to Charles with an air which he tried to make +free and easy, "I don't know whether you remember me, but I had the +honor of dancing as your /vis-a-vis/ at a ball given by the Baron de +Nucingen, and--" + +"Perfectly; I remember perfectly, monsieur," answered Charles, pleased +to find himself the object of general attention. + +"Monsieur is your son?" he said to Madame des Grassins. + +The abbe looked at her maliciously. + +"Yes, monsieur," she answered. + +"Then you were very young when you were in Paris?" said Charles, +addressing Adolphe. + +"You must know, monsieur," said the abbe, "that we send them to +Babylon as soon as they are weaned." + +Madame des Grassins examined the abbe with a glance of extreme +penetration. + +"It is only in the provinces," he continued, "that you will find women +of thirty and more years as fresh as madame, here, with a son about to +take his degree. I almost fancy myself back in the days when the young +men stood on chairs in the ball-room to see you dance, madame," said +the abbe, turning to his female adversary. "To me, your triumphs are +but of yesterday--" + +"The old rogue!" thought Madame Grassins; "can he have guessed my +intentions?" + +"It seems that I shall have a good deal of success in Saumur," thought +Charles as he unbuttoned his great-coat, put a hand into his +waistcoat, and cast a glance into the far distance, to imitate the +attitude which Chantrey has given to Lord Byron. + +The inattention of Pere Grandet, or, to speak more truly, the +preoccupation of mind into which the reading of the letter had plunged +him, did not escape the vigilance of the notary and the president, who +tried to guess the contents of the letter by the almost imperceptible +motions of the miser's face, which was then under the full light of +the candle. He maintained the habitual calm of his features with +evident difficulty; we may, in fact, picture to ourselves the +countenance such a man endeavored to preserve as he read the fatal +letter which here follows:-- + + My Brother,--It is almost twenty-three years since we have seen + each other. My marriage was the occasion of our last interview, + after which we parted, and both of us were happy. Assuredly I + could not then foresee that you would one day be the prop of the + family whose prosperity you then predicted. + + When you hold this letter within your hands I shall be no longer + living. In the position I now hold I cannot survive the disgrace + of bankruptcy. I have waited on the edge of the gulf until the + last moment, hoping to save myself. The end has come, I must sink + into it. The double bankruptcies of my broker and of Roguin, my + notary, have carried off my last resources and left me nothing. I + have the bitterness of owing nearly four millions, with assets not + more than twenty-five per cent in value to pay them. The wines in + my warehouses suffer from the fall in prices caused by the + abundance and quality of your vintage. In three days Paris will + cry out: "Monsieur Grandet was a knave!" and I, an honest man, + shall be lying in my winding-sheet of infamy. I deprive my son of + a good name, which I have stained, and the fortune of his mother, + which I have lost. He knows nothing of all this,--my unfortunate + child whom I idolize! We parted tenderly. He was ignorant, + happily, that the last beatings of my heart were spent in that + farewell. Will he not some day curse me? My brother, my brother! + the curses of our children are horrible; they can appeal against + ours, but theirs are irrevocable. Grandet, you are my elder + brother, you owe me your protection; act for me so that Charles + may cast no bitter words upon my grave! My brother, if I were + writing with my blood, with my tears, no greater anguish could I + put into this letter,--nor as great, for then I should weep, I + should bleed, I should die, I should suffer no more, but now I + suffer and look at death with dry eyes. + + From henceforth you are my son's father; he has no relations, as + you well know, on his mother's side. Why did I not consider social + prejudices? Why did I yield to love? Why did I marry the natural + daughter of a great lord? Charles has no family. Oh, my unhappy + son! my son! Listen, Grandet! I implore nothing for myself,-- + besides, your property may not be large enough to carry a mortgage + of three millions,--but for my son! Brother, my suppliant hands + are clasped as I think of you; behold them! Grandet, I confide my + son to you in dying, and I look at the means of death with less + pain as I think that you will be to him a father. He loved me + well, my Charles; I was good to him, I never thwarted him; he will + not curse me. Ah, you see! he is gentle, he is like his mother, he + will cause you no grief. Poor boy! accustomed to all the + enjoyments of luxury, he knows nothing of the privations to which + you and I were condemned by the poverty of our youth. And I leave + him ruined! alone! Yes, all my friends will avoid him, and it is I + who have brought this humiliation upon him! Would that I had the + force to send him with one thrust into the heavens to his mother's + side! Madness! I come back to my disaster--to his. I send him to + you that you may tell him in some fitting way of my death, of his + future fate. Be a father to him, but a good father. Do not tear + him all at once from his idle life, it would kill him. I beg him + on my knees to renounce all rights that, as his mother's heir, he + may have on my estate. But the prayer is superfluous; he is + honorable, and he will feel that he must not appear among my + creditors. Bring him to see this at the right time; reveal to him + the hard conditions of the life I have made for him: and if he + still has tender thoughts of me, tell him in my name that all is + not lost for him. Yes, work, labor, which saved us both, may give + him back the fortune of which I have deprived him; and if he + listens to his father's voice as it reaches him from the grave, he + will go the Indies. My brother, Charles is an upright and + courageous young man; give him the wherewithal to make his + venture; he will die sooner than not repay you the funds which you + may lend him. Grandet! if you will not do this, you will lay up + for yourself remorse. Ah, should my child find neither tenderness + nor succor in you, I would call down the vengeance of God upon + your cruelty! + + If I had been able to save something from the wreck, I might have + had the right to leave him at least a portion of his mother's + property; but my last monthly payments have absorbed everything. I + did not wish to die uncertain of my child's fate; I hoped to feel + a sacred promise in a clasp of your hand which might have warmed + my heart: but time fails me. While Charles is journeying to you I + shall be preparing my assignment. I shall endeavor to show by the + order and good faith of my accounts that my disaster comes neither + from a faulty life nor from dishonesty. It is for my son's sake + that I strive to do this. + + Farewell, my brother! May the blessing of God be yours for the + generous guardianship I lay upon you, and which, I doubt not, you + will accept. A voice will henceforth and forever pray for you in + that world where we must all go, and where I am now as you read + these lines. + +Victor-Ange-Guillaume Grandet. + + +"So you are talking?" said Pere Grandet as he carefully folded the +letter in its original creases and put it into his waistcoat-pocket. +He looked at his nephew with a humble, timid air, beneath which he hid +his feelings and his calculations. "Have you warmed yourself?" he said +to him. + +"Thoroughly, my dear uncle." + +"Well, where are the women?" said his uncle, already forgetting that +his nephew was to sleep at the house. At this moment Eugenie and +Madame Grandet returned. + +"Is the room all ready?" said Grandet, recovering his composure. + +"Yes, father." + +"Well then, my nephew, if you are tired, Nanon shall show you your +room. It isn't a dandy's room; but you will excuse a poor wine-grower +who never has a penny to spare. Taxes swallow up everything." + +"We do not wish to intrude, Grandet," said the banker; "you may want +to talk to your nephew, and therefore we will bid you good-night." + +At these words the assembly rose, and each made a parting bow in +keeping with his or her own character. The old notary went to the door +to fetch his lantern and came back to light it, offering to accompany +the des Grassins on their way. Madame des Grassins had not foreseen +the incident which brought the evening prematurely to an end, her +servant therefore had not arrived. + +"Will you do me the honor to take my arm, madame?" said the abbe. + +"Thank you, monsieur l'abbe, but I have my son," she answered dryly. + +"Ladies cannot compromise themselves with me," said the abbe. + +"Take Monsieur Cruchot's arm," said her husband. + +The abbe walked off with the pretty lady so quickly that they were +soon some distance in advance of the caravan. + +"That is a good-looking young man, madame," he said, pressing her arm. +"Good-by to the grapes, the vintage is done. It is all over with us. +We may as well say adieu to Mademoiselle Grandet. Eugenie will belong +to the dandy. Unless this cousin is enamoured of some Parisian woman, +your son Adolphe will find another rival in--" + +"Not at all, monsieur l'abbe. This young man cannot fail to see that +Eugenie is a little fool,--a girl without the least freshness. Did you +notice her to-night? She was as yellow as a quince." + +"Perhaps you made the cousin notice it?" + +"I did not take the trouble--" + +"Place yourself always beside Eugenie, madame, and you need never take +the trouble to say anything to the young man against his cousin; he +will make his own comparisons, which--" + +"Well, he has promised to dine with me the day after to-morrow." + +"Ah! if you only /would/, madame--" said the abbe. + +"What is it that you wish me to do, monsieur l'abbe? Do you mean to +offer me bad advice? I have not reached the age of thirty-nine, +without a stain upon my reputation, thank God! to compromise myself +now, even for the empire of the Great Mogul. You and I are of an age +when we both know the meaning of words. For an ecclesiastic, you +certainly have ideas that are very incongruous. Fie! it is worthy of +Faublas!" + +"You have read Faublas?" + +"No, monsieur l'abbe; I meant to say the /Liaisons dangereuses/." + +"Ah! that book is infinitely more moral," said the abbe, laughing. +"But you make me out as wicked as a young man of the present day; I +only meant--" + +"Do you dare to tell me you were not thinking of putting wicked things +into my head? Isn't it perfectly clear? If this young man--who I admit +is very good-looking--were to make love to me, he would not think of +his cousin. In Paris, I know, good mothers do devote themselves in +this way to the happiness and welfare of their children; but we live +in the provinces, monsieur l'abbe." + +"Yes, madame." + +"And," she continued, "I do not want, and Adolphe himself would not +want, a hundred millions brought at such a price." + +"Madame, I said nothing about a hundred millions; that temptation +might be too great for either of us to withstand. Only, I do think +that an honest woman may permit herself, in all honor, certain +harmless little coquetries, which are, in fact, part of her social +duty and which--" + +"Do you think so?" + +"Are we not bound, madame, to make ourselves agreeable to each other? +--Permit me to blow my nose.--I assure you, madame," he resumed, "that +the young gentleman ogled you through his glass in a more flattering +manner than he put on when he looked at me; but I forgive him for +doing homage to beauty in preference to old age--" + +"It is quite apparent," said the president in his loud voice, "that +Monsieur Grandet of Paris has sent his son to Saumur with extremely +matrimonial intentions." + +"But in that case the cousin wouldn't have fallen among us like a +cannon-ball," answered the notary. + +"That doesn't prove anything," said Monsieur des Grassins; "the old +miser is always making mysteries." + +"Des Grassins, my friend, I have invited the young man to dinner. You +must go and ask Monsieur and Madame de Larsonniere and the du Hautoys, +with the beautiful demoiselle du Hautoy, of course. I hope she will be +properly dressed; that jealous mother of hers does make such a fright +of her! Gentlemen, I trust that you will all do us the honor to come," +she added, stopping the procession to address the two Cruchots. + +"Here you are at home, madame," said the notary. + +After bowing to the three des Grassins, the three Cruchots returned +home, applying their provincial genius for analysis to studying, under +all its aspects, the great event of the evening, which undoubtedly +changed the respective positions of Grassinists and Cruchotines. The +admirable common-sense which guided all the actions of these great +machinators made each side feel the necessity of a momentary alliance +against a common enemy. Must they not mutually hinder Eugenie from +loving her cousin, and the cousin from thinking of Eugenie? Could the +Parisian resist the influence of treacherous insinuations, soft-spoken +calumnies, slanders full of faint praise and artless denials, which +should be made to circle incessantly about him and deceive him? + + + +IV + +When the four relations were left alone, Monsieur Grandet said to his +nephew,-- + +"We must go to bed. It is too late to talk about the matters which +have brought you here; to-morrow we will take a suitable moment. We +breakfast at eight o'clock; at midday we eat a little fruit or a bit +of bread, and drink a glass of white wine; and we dine, like the +Parisians, at five o'clock. That's the order of the day. If you like +to go and see the town and the environs you are free to do so. You +will excuse me if my occupations do not permit me to accompany you. +You may perhaps hear people say that I am rich,--Monsieur Grandet +this, Monsieur Grandet that. I let them talk; their gossip does not +hurt my credit. But I have not a penny; I work in my old age like an +apprentice whose worldly goods are a bad plane and two good arms. +Perhaps you'll soon know yourself what a franc costs when you have got +to sweat for it. Nanon, where are the candles?" + +"I trust, my nephew, that you will find all you want," said Madame +Grandet; "but if you should need anything else, you can call Nanon." + +"My dear aunt, I shall need nothing; I have, I believe, brought +everything with me. Permit me to bid you good-night, and my young +cousin also." + +Charles took a lighted wax candle from Nanon's hand,--an Anjou candle, +very yellow in color, and so shopworn that it looked like tallow and +deceived Monsieur Grandet, who, incapable of suspecting its presence +under his roof, did not perceive this magnificence. + +"I will show you the way," he said. + +Instead of leaving the hall by the door which opened under the +archway, Grandet ceremoniously went through the passage which divided +the hall from the kitchen. A swing-door, furnished with a large oval +pane of glass, shut this passage from the staircase, so as to fend off +the cold air which rushed through it. But the north wind whistled none +the less keenly in winter, and, in spite of the sand-bags at the +bottom of the doors of the living-room, the temperature within could +scarcely be kept at a proper height. Nanon went to bolt the outer +door; then she closed the hall and let loose a wolf-dog, whose bark +was so strangled that he seemed to have laryngitis. This animal, noted +for his ferocity, recognized no one but Nanon; the two untutored +children of the fields understood each other. + +When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the +staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall +of his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He +fancied himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned +an inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not +guess the cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an +expression of friendliness, which they answered by a smile that made +him desperate. + +"Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?" he said to +himself. + +When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted in +Etruscan red and without casings,--doors sunk in the dusty walls and +provided with iron bars, which in fact were bolts, each ending with +the pattern of a flame, as did both ends of the long sheath of the +lock. The first door at the top of the staircase, which opened into a +room directly above the kitchen, was evidently walled up. In fact, the +only entrance to that room was through Grandet's bedchamber; the room +itself was his office. The single window which lighted it, on the side +of the court, was protected by a lattice of strong iron bars. No one, +not even Madame Grandet, had permission to enter it. The old man chose +to be alone, like an alchemist in his laboratory. There, no doubt, +some hiding-place had been ingeniously constructed; there the title- +deeds of property were stored; there hung the scales on which to weigh +the louis; there were devised, by night and secretly, the estimates, +the profits, the receipts, so that business men, finding Grandet +prepared at all points, imagined that he got his cue from fairies or +demons; there, no doubt, while Nanon's loud snoring shook the rafters, +while the wolf-dog watched and yawned in the courtyard, while Madame +and Mademoiselle Grandet were quietly sleeping, came the old cooper to +cuddle, to con over, to caress and clutch and clasp his gold. The +walls were thick, the screens sure. He alone had the key of this +laboratory, where--so people declared--he studied the maps on which +his fruit-trees were marked, and calculated his profits to a vine, and +almost to a twig. + +The door of Eugenie's chamber was opposite to the walled-up entrance +to this room. At the other end of the landing were the appartements of +the married pair, which occupied the whole front of the house. Madame +Grandet had a room next to that of Eugenie, which was entered through +a glass door. The master's chamber was separated from that of his wife +by a partition, and from the mysterious strong-room by a thick wall. +Pere Grandet lodged his nephew on the second floor, in the high +mansarde attic which was above his own bedroom, so that he might hear +him if the young man took it into his head to go and come. When +Eugenie and her mother reached the middle of the landing they kissed +each other for good-night; then with a few words of adieu to Charles, +cold upon the lips, but certainly very warm in the heart of the young +girl, they withdrew into their own chambers. + +"Here you are in your room, my nephew," said Pere Grandet as he opened +the door. "If you need to go out, call Nanon; without her, beware! the +dog would eat you up without a word. Sleep well. Good-night. Ha! why, +they have made you a fire!" he cried. + +At this moment Nanon appeared with the warming pan. + +"Here's something more!" said Monsieur Grandet. "Do you take my nephew +for a lying-in woman? Carry off your brazier, Nanon!" + +"But, monsieur, the sheets are damp, and this gentleman is as delicate +as a woman." + +"Well, go on, as you've taken it into your head," said Grandet, +pushing her by the shoulders; "but don't set things on fire." So +saying, the miser went down-stairs, grumbling indistinct sentences. + +Charles stood aghast in the midst of his trunks. After casting his +eyes on the attic-walls covered with that yellow paper sprinkled with +bouquets so well known in dance-houses, on the fireplace of ribbed +stone whose very look was chilling, on the chairs of yellow wood with +varnished cane seats that seemed to have more than the usual four +angles, on the open night-table capacious enough to hold a small +sergeant-at-arms, on the meagre bit of rag-carpet beside the bed, on +the tester whose cloth valance shook as if, devoured by moths, it was +about to fall, he turned gravely to la Grande Nanon and said,-- + +"Look here! my dear woman, just tell me, am I in the house of Monsieur +Grandet, formerly mayor of Saumur, and brother to Monsieur Grandet of +Paris?" + +"Yes, monsieur; and a very good, a very kind, a very perfect +gentleman. Shall I help you to unpack your trunks?" + +"Faith! yes, if you will, my old trooper. Didn't you serve in the +marines of the Imperial Guard?" + +"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed Nanon. "What's that,--the marines of the guard? +Is it salt? Does it go in the water?" + +"Here, get me my dressing-gown out of that valise; there's the key." + +Nanon was wonder-struck by the sight of a dressing-gown made of green +silk, brocaded with gold flowers of an antique design. + +"Are you going to put that on to go to bed with?" she asked. + +"Yes." + +"Holy Virgin! what a beautiful altar-cloth it would make for the +parish church! My dear darling monsieur, give it to the church, and +you'll save your soul; if you don't, you'll lose it. Oh, how nice you +look in it! I must call mademoiselle to see you." + +"Come, Nanon, if Nanon you are, hold your tongue; let me go to bed. +I'll arrange my things to-morrow. If my dressing-gown pleases you so +much, you shall save your soul. I'm too good a Christian not to give +it to you when I go away, and you can do what you like with it." + +Nanon stood rooted to the ground, gazing at Charles and unable to put +faith into his words. + +"Good night, Nanon." + +"What in the world have I come here for?" thought Charles as he went +to sleep. "My father is not a fool; my journey must have some object. +Pshaw! put off serious thought till the morrow, as some Greek idiot +said." + +"Blessed Virgin! how charming he is, my cousin!" Eugenie was saying, +interrupting her prayers, which that night at least were never +finished. + +Madame Grandet had no thoughts at all as she went to bed. She heard +the miser walking up and down his room through the door of +communication which was in the middle of the partition. Like all timid +women, she had studied the character of her lord. Just as the petrel +foresees the storm, she knew by imperceptible signs when an inward +tempest shook her husband; and at such times, to use an expression of +her own, she "feigned dead." + +Grandet gazed at the door lined with sheet-iron which he lately put to +his sanctum, and said to himself,-- + +"What a crazy idea of my brother to bequeath his son to me! A fine +legacy! I have not fifty francs to give him. What are fifty francs to +a dandy who looked at my barometer as if he meant to make firewood of +it!" + +In thinking over the consequences of that legacy of anguish Grandet +was perhaps more agitated than his brother had been at the moment of +writing it. + +"I shall have that golden robe," thought Nanon, who went to sleep +tricked out in her altar-cloth, dreaming for the first time in her +life of flowers, embroidery, and damask, just as Eugenie was dreaming +of love. + +***** + +In the pure and monotonous life of young girls there comes a delicious +hour when the sun sheds its rays into their soul, when the flowers +express their thoughts, when the throbbings of the heart send upward +to the brain their fertilizing warmth and melt all thoughts into a +vague desire,--day of innocent melancholy and of dulcet joys! When +babes begin to see, they smile; when a young girl first perceives the +sentiment of nature, she smiles as she smiled when an infant. If light +is the first love of life, is not love a light to the heart? The +moment to see within the veil of earthly things had come for Eugenie. + +An early riser, like all provincial girls, she was up betimes and said +her prayers, and then began the business of dressing,--a business +which henceforth was to have a meaning. First she brushed and smoothed +her chestnut hair and twisted its heavy masses to the top of her head +with the utmost care, preventing the loose tresses from straying, and +giving to her head a symmetry which heightened the timid candor of her +face; for the simplicity of these accessories accorded well with the +innocent sincerity of its lines. As she washed her hands again and +again in the cold water which hardened and reddened the skin, she +looked at her handsome round arms and asked herself what her cousin +did to make his hands so softly white, his nails so delicately curved. +She put on new stockings and her prettiest shoes. She laced her corset +straight, without skipping a single eyelet. And then, wishing for the +first time in her life to appear to advantage, she felt the joy of +having a new gown, well made, which rendered her attractive. + +As she finished her toilet the clock of the parish church struck the +hour; to her astonishment, it was only seven. The desire of having +plenty of time for dressing carefully had led her to get up too early. +Ignorant of the art of retouching every curl and studying every +effect, Eugenie simply crossed her arms, sat down by the window, and +looked at the court-yard, the narrow garden, and the high terraced +walls that over-topped it: a dismal, hedged-in prospect, yet not +wholly devoid of those mysterious beauties which belong to solitary or +uncultivated nature. Near the kitchen was a well surrounded by a curb, +with a pulley fastened to a bent iron rod clasped by a vine whose +leaves were withered, reddened, and shrivelled by the season. From +thence the tortuous shoots straggled to the wall, clutched it, and ran +the whole length of the house, ending near the wood-pile, where the +logs were ranged with as much precision as the books in a library. The +pavement of the court-yard showed the black stains produced in time by +lichens, herbage, and the absence of all movement or friction. The +thick walls wore a coating of green moss streaked with waving brown +lines, and the eight stone steps at the bottom of the court-yard which +led up to the gate of the garden were disjointed and hidden beneath +tall plants, like the tomb of a knight buried by his widow in the days +of the Crusades. Above a foundation of moss-grown, crumbling stones +was a trellis of rotten wood, half fallen from decay; over them +clambered and intertwined at will a mass of clustering creepers. On +each side of the latticed gate stretched the crooked arms of two +stunted apple-trees. Three parallel walks, gravelled and separated +from each other by square beds, where the earth was held in by box- +borders, made the garden, which terminated, beneath a terrace of the +old walls, in a group of lindens. At the farther end were raspberry- +bushes; at the other, near the house, an immense walnut-tree drooped +its branches almost into the window of the miser's sanctum. + +A clear day and the beautiful autumnal sun common to the banks of the +Loire was beginning to melt the hoar-frost which the night had laid on +these picturesque objects, on the walls, and on the plants which +swathed the court-yard. Eugenie found a novel charm in the aspect of +things lately so insignificant to her. A thousand confused thoughts +came to birth in her mind and grew there, as the sunbeams grew without +along the wall. She felt that impulse of delight, vague, inexplicable, +which wraps the moral being as a cloud wraps the physical body. Her +thoughts were all in keeping with the details of this strange +landscape, and the harmonies of her heart blended with the harmonies +of nature. When the sun reached an angle of the wall where the "Venus- +hair" of southern climes drooped its thick leaves, lit with the +changing colors of a pigeon's breast, celestial rays of hope illumined +the future to her eyes, and thenceforth she loved to gaze upon that +piece of wall, on its pale flowers, its blue harebells, its wilting +herbage, with which she mingled memories as tender as those of +childhood. The noise made by each leaf as it fell from its twig in the +void of that echoing court gave answer to the secret questionings of +the young girl, who could have stayed there the livelong day without +perceiving the flight of time. Then came tumultuous heavings of the +soul. She rose often, went to her glass, and looked at herself, as an +author in good faith looks at his work to criticise it and blame it in +his own mind. + +"I am not beautiful enough for him!" Such was Eugenie's thought,--a +humble thought, fertile in suffering. The poor girl did not do herself +justice; but modesty, or rather fear, is among the first of love's +virtues. Eugenie belonged to the type of children with sturdy +constitutions, such as we see among the lesser bourgeoisie, whose +beauties always seem a little vulgar; and yet, though she resembled +the Venus of Milo, the lines of her figure were ennobled by the softer +Christian sentiment which purifies womanhood and gives it a +distinction unknown to the sculptors of antiquity. She had an enormous +head, with the masculine yet delicate forehead of the Jupiter of +Phidias, and gray eyes, to which her chaste life, penetrating fully +into them, carried a flood of light. The features of her round face, +formerly fresh and rosy, were at one time swollen by the small-pox, +which destroyed the velvet texture of the skin, though it kindly left +no other traces, and her cheek was still so soft and delicate that her +mother's kiss made a momentary red mark upon it. Her nose was somewhat +too thick, but it harmonized well with the vermilion mouth, whose +lips, creased in many lines, were full of love and kindness. The +throat was exquisitely round. The bust, well curved and carefully +covered, attracted the eye and inspired reverie. It lacked, no doubt, +the grace which a fitting dress can bestow; but to a connoisseur the +non-flexibility of her figure had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and +strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; +but she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and +none but artists truly love. A painter seeking here below for a type +of Mary's celestial purity, searching womankind for those proud modest +eyes which Raphael divined, for those virgin lines, often due to +chances of conception, which the modesty of Christian life alone can +bestow or keep unchanged,--such a painter, in love with his ideal, +would have found in the face of Eugenie the innate nobleness that is +ignorant of itself; he would have seen beneath the calmness of that +brow a world of love; he would have felt, in the shape of the eyes, in +the fall of the eyelids, the presence of the nameless something that +we call divine. Her features, the contour of her head, which no +expression of pleasure had ever altered or wearied, were like the +lines of the horizon softly traced in the far distance across the +tranquil lakes. That calm and rosy countenance, margined with light +like a lovely full-blown flower, rested the mind, held the eye, and +imparted the charm of the conscience that was there reflected. Eugenie +was standing on the shore of life where young illusions flower, where +daisies are gathered with delights ere long to be unknown; and thus +she said, looking at her image in the glass, unconscious as yet of +love: "I am too ugly; he will not notice me." + +Then she opened the door of her chamber which led to the staircase, +and stretched out her neck to listen for the household noises. "He is +not up," she thought, hearing Nanon's morning cough as the good soul +went and came, sweeping out the halls, lighting her fire, chaining the +dog, and speaking to the beasts in the stable. Eugenie at once went +down and ran to Nanon, who was milking the cow. + +"Nanon, my good Nanon, make a little cream for my cousin's breakfast." + +"Why, mademoiselle, you should have thought of that yesterday," said +Nanon, bursting into a loud peal of laughter. "I can't make cream. +Your cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have +seen him in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He +wears linen as fine as the surplice of monsieur le cure." + +"Nanon, please make us a /galette/." + +"And who'll give me wood for the oven, and flour and butter for the +cakes?" said Nanon, who in her function of prime-minister to Grandet +assumed at times enormous importance in the eyes of Eugenie and her +mother. "Mustn't rob the master to feast the cousin. You ask him for +butter and flour and wood: he's your father, perhaps he'll give you +some. See! there he is now, coming to give out the provisions." + +Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard the +staircase shaking under her father's step. Already she felt the +effects of that virgin modesty and that special consciousness of +happiness which lead us to fancy, not perhaps without reason, that our +thoughts are graven on our foreheads and are open to the eyes of all. +Perceiving for the first time the cold nakedness of her father's +house, the poor girl felt a sort of rage that she could not put it in +harmony with her cousin's elegance. She felt the need of doing +something for him,--what, she did not know. Ingenuous and truthful, +she followed her angelic nature without mistrusting her impressions or +her feelings. The mere sight of her cousin had wakened within her the +natural yearnings of a woman,--yearnings that were the more likely to +develop ardently because, having reached her twenty-third year, she +was in the plenitude of her intelligence and her desires. For the +first time in her life her heart was full of terror at the sight of +her father; in him she saw the master of the fate, and she fancied +herself guilty of wrong-doing in hiding from his knowledge certain +thoughts. She walked with hasty steps, surprised to breathe a purer +air, to feel the sun's rays quickening her pulses, to absorb from +their heat a moral warmth and a new life. As she turned over in her +mind some stratagem by which to get the cake, a quarrel--an event as +rare as the sight of swallows in winter--broke out between la Grande +Nanon and Grandet. Armed with his keys, the master had come to dole +out provisions for the day's consumption. + +"Is there any bread left from yesterday?" he said to Nanon. + +"Not a crumb, monsieur." + +Grandet took a large round loaf, well floured and moulded in one of +the flat baskets which they use for baking in Anjou, and was about to +cut it, when Nanon said to him,-- + +"We are five, to-day, monsieur." + +"That's true," said Grandet, "but your loaves weigh six pounds; +there'll be some left. Besides, these young fellows from Paris don't +eat bread, you'll see." + +"Then they must eat /frippe/?" said Nanon. + +/Frippe/ is a word of the local lexicon of Anjou, and means any +accompaniment of bread, from butter which is spread upon it, the +commonest kind of /frippe/, to peach preserve, the most distinguished +of all the /frippes/; those who in their childhood have licked the +/frippe/ and left the bread, will comprehend the meaning of Nanon's +speech. + +"No," answered Grandet, "they eat neither bread nor /frippe/; they are +something like marriageable girls." + +After ordering the meals for the day with his usual parsimony, the +goodman, having locked the closets containing the supplies, was about +to go towards the fruit-garden, when Nanon stopped him to say,-- + +"Monsieur, give me a little flour and some butter, and I'll make a +/galette/ for the young ones." + +"Are you going to pillage the house on account of my nephew?" + +"I wasn't thinking any more of your nephew than I was of your dog,-- +not more than you think yourself; for, look here, you've only forked +out six bits of sugar. I want eight." + +"What's all this, Nanon? I have never seen you like this before. What +have you got in your head? Are you the mistress here? You sha'n't have +more than six pieces of sugar." + +"Well, then, how is your nephew to sweeten his coffee?" + +"With two pieces; I'll go without myself." + +"Go without sugar at your age! I'd rather buy you some out of my own +pocket." + +"Mind your own business." + +In spite of the recent fall in prices, sugar was still in Grandet's +eyes the most valuable of all the colonial products; to him it was +always six francs a pound. The necessity of economizing it, acquired +under the Empire, had grown to be the most inveterate of his habits. +All women, even the greatest ninnies, know how to dodge and dodge to +get their ends; Nanon abandoned the sugar for the sake of getting the +/galette/. + +"Mademoiselle!" she called through the window, "do you want some +/galette/?" + +"No, no," answered Eugenie. + +"Come, Nanon," said Grandet, hearing his daughter's voice. "See here." +He opened the cupboard where the flour was kept, gave her a cupful, +and added a few ounces of butter to the piece he had already cut off. + +"I shall want wood for the oven," said the implacable Nanon. + +"Well, take what you want," he answered sadly; "but in that case you +must make us a fruit-tart, and you'll cook the whole dinner in the +oven. In that way you won't need two fires." + +"Goodness!" cried Nanon, "you needn't tell me that." + +Grandet cast a look that was well-nigh paternal upon his faithful +deputy. + +"Mademoiselle," she cried, when his back was turned, "we shall have +the /galette/." + +Pere Grandet returned from the garden with the fruit and arranged a +plateful on the kitchen-table. + +"Just see, monsieur," said Nanon, "what pretty boots your nephew has. +What leather! why it smells good! What does he clean it with, I +wonder? Am I to put your egg-polish on it?" + +"Nanon, I think eggs would injure that kind of leather. Tell him you +don't know how to black morocco; yes, that's morocco. He will get you +something himself in Saumur to polish those boots with. I have heard +that they put sugar into the blacking to make it shine." + +"They look good to eat," said the cook, putting the boots to her nose. +"Bless me! if they don't smell like madame's eau-de-cologne. Ah! how +funny!" + +"Funny!" said her master. "Do you call it funny to put more money into +boots than the man who stands in them is worth?" + +"Monsieur," she said, when Grandet returned the second time, after +locking the fruit-garden, "won't you have the /pot-au-feu/ put on once +or twice a week on account of your nephew?" + +"Yes." + +"Am I to go to the butcher's?" + +"Certainly not. We will make the broth of fowls; the farmers will +bring them. I shall tell Cornoiller to shoot some crows; they make the +best soup in the world." + +"Isn't it true, monsieur, that crows eat the dead?" + +"You are a fool, Nanon. They eat what they can get, like the rest of +the world. Don't we all live on the dead? What are legacies?" + +Monsieur Grandet, having no further orders to give, drew out his +watch, and seeing that he had half an hour to dispose of before +breakfast, he took his hat, went and kissed his daughter, and said to +her: + +"Do you want to come for a walk in the fields, down by the Loire? I +have something to do there." + +Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the +father and daughter went down the winding street to the shore. + +"Where are you going at this early hour?" said Cruchot, the notary, +meeting them. + +"To see something," answered Grandet, not duped by the matutinal +appearance of his friend. + +When Pere Grandet went to "see something," the notary knew by +experience there was something to be got by going with him; so he +went. + +"Come, Cruchot," said Grandet, "you are one of my friends. I'll show +you what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good ground." + +"Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for those +that were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?" said Maitre +Cruchot, opening his eyes with amazement. "What luck you have had! To +cut down your trees at the very time they ran short of white-wood at +Nantes, and to sell them at thirty francs!" + +Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most solemn +moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to bring down +upon her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet had now reached +the magnificent fields which he owned on the banks of the Loire, where +thirty workmen were employed in clearing away, filling up, and +levelling the spots formerly occupied by the poplars. + +"Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! Jean," he +cried to a laborer, "m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, b-both ways." + +"Four times eight feet," said the man. + +"Thirty-two feet lost," said Grandet to Cruchot. "I had three hundred +poplars in this one line, isn't that so? Well, then, three h-h-hundred +times thir-thirty-two lost m-m-me five hundred in h-h-hay; add twice +as much for the side rows,--fifteen hundred; the middle rows as much +more. So we may c-c-call it a th-thousand b-b-bales of h-h-hay--" + +"Very good," said Cruchot, to help out his friend; "a thousand bales +are worth about six hundred francs." + +"Say t-t-twelve hundred, be-c-cause there's three or four hundred +francs on the second crop. Well, then, c-c-calculate that t-twelve +thousand francs a year for f-f-forty years with interest c-c-comes +to--" + +"Say sixty thousand francs," said the notary. + +"I am willing; c-c-comes t-t-to sixty th-th-thousand. Very good," +continued Grandet, without stuttering: "two thousand poplars forty +years old will only yield me fifty thousand francs. There's a loss. I +have found that myself," said Grandet, getting on his high horse. +"Jean, fill up all the holes except those at the bank of the river; +there you are to plant the poplars I have bought. Plant 'em there, and +they'll get nourishment from the government," he said, turning to +Cruchot, and giving a slight motion to the wen on his nose, which +expressed more than the most ironical of smiles. + +"True enough; poplars should only be planted on poor soil," said +Cruchot, amazed at Grandet's calculations. + +"Y-y-yes, monsieur," answered the old man satirically. + +Eugenie, who was gazing at the sublime scenery of the Loire, and +paying no attention to her father's reckonings, presently turned an +ear to the remarks of Cruchot when she heard him say,-- + +"So you have brought a son-in-law from Paris. All Saumur is talking +about your nephew. I shall soon have the marriage-contract to draw up, +hey! Pere Grandet?" + +"You g-g-got up very early to t-t-tell me that," said Grandet, +accompanying the remark with a motion of his wen. "Well, old +c-c-comrade, I'll be frank, and t-t-tell you what you want t-t-to +know. I would rather, do you see, f-f-fling my daughter into the Loire +than g-g-give her to her c-c-cousin. You may t-t-tell that everywhere, +--no, never mind; let the world t-t-talk." + +This answer dazzled and blinded the young girl with sudden light. The +distant hopes upspringing in her heart bloomed suddenly, became real, +tangible, like a cluster of flowers, and she saw them cut down and +wilting on the earth. Since the previous evening she had attached +herself to Charles by those links of happiness which bind soul to +soul; from henceforth suffering was to rivet them. Is it not the noble +destiny of women to be more moved by the dark solemnities of grief +than by the splendors of fortune? How was it that fatherly feeling had +died out of her father's heart? Of what crime had Charles been guilty? +Mysterious questions! Already her dawning love, a mystery so profound, +was wrapping itself in mystery. She walked back trembling in all her +limbs; and when she reached the gloomy street, lately so joyous to +her, she felt its sadness, she breathed the melancholy which time and +events had printed there. None of love's lessons lacked. A few steps +from their own door she went on before her father and waited at the +threshold. But Grandet, who saw a newspaper in the notary's hand, +stopped short and asked,-- + +"How are the Funds?" + +"You never listen to my advice, Grandet," answered Cruchot. "Buy soon; +you will still make twenty per cent in two years, besides getting an +excellent rate of interest,--five thousand a year for eighty thousand +francs fifty centimes." + +"We'll see about that," answered Grandet, rubbing his chin. + +"Good God!" exclaimed the notary. + +"Well, what?" cried Grandet; and at the same moment Cruchot put the +newspaper under his eyes and said: + +"Read that!" + + "Monsieur Grandet, one of the most respected merchants in Paris, + blew his brains out yesterday, after making his usual appearance + at the Bourse. He had sent his resignation to the president of the + Chamber of Deputies, and had also resigned his functions as a + judge of the commercial courts. The failures of Monsieur Roguin + and Monsieur Souchet, his broker and his notary, had ruined him. + The esteem felt for Monsieur Grandet and the credit he enjoyed + were nevertheless such that he might have obtained the necessary + assistance from other business houses. It is much to be regretted + that so honorable a man should have yielded to momentary despair," + etc. + +"I knew it," said the old wine-grower to the notary. + +The words sent a chill of horror through Maitre Cruchot, who, +notwithstanding his impassibility as a notary, felt the cold running +down his spine as he thought that Grandet of Paris had possibly +implored in vain the millions of Grandet of Saumur. + +"And his son, so joyous yesterday--" + +"He knows nothing as yet," answered Grandet, with the same composure. + +"Adieu! Monsieur Grandet," said Cruchot, who now understood the state +of the case, and went off to reassure Monsieur de Bonfons. + +On entering, Grandet found breakfast ready. Madame Grandet, round +whose neck Eugenie had flung her arms, kissing her with the quick +effusion of feeling often caused by secret grief, was already seated +in her chair on castors, knitting sleeves for the coming winter. + +"You can begin to eat," said Nanon, coming downstairs four steps at a +time; "the young one is sleeping like a cherub. Isn't he a darling +with his eyes shut? I went in and I called him: no answer." + +"Let him sleep," said Grandet; "he'll wake soon enough to hear ill- +tidings." + +"What is it?" asked Eugenie, putting into her coffee the two little +bits of sugar weighing less than half an ounce which the old miser +amused himself by cutting up in his leisure hours. Madame Grandet, who +did not dare to put the question, gazed at her husband. + +"His father has blown his brains out." + +"My uncle?" said Eugenie. + +"Poor young man!" exclaimed Madame Grandet. + +"Poor indeed!" said Grandet; "he isn't worth a sou!" + +"Eh! poor boy, and he's sleeping like the king of the world!" said +Nanon in a gentle voice. + +Eugenie stopped eating. Her heart was wrung, as the young heart is +wrung when pity for the suffering of one she loves overflows, for the +first time, the whole being of a woman. The poor girl wept. + +"What are you crying about? You didn't know your uncle," said her +father, giving her one of those hungry tigerish looks he doubtless +threw upon his piles of gold. + +"But, monsieur," said Nanon, "who wouldn't feel pity for the poor +young man, sleeping there like a wooden shoe, without knowing what's +coming?" + +"I didn't speak to you, Nanon. Hold your tongue!" + +Eugenie learned at that moment that the woman who loves must be able +to hide her feelings. She did not answer. + +"You will say nothing to him about it, Ma'ame Grandet, till I return," +said the old man. "I have to go and straighten the line of my hedge +along the high-road. I shall be back at noon, in time for the second +breakfast, and then I will talk with my nephew about his affairs. As +for you, Mademoiselle Eugenie, if it is for that dandy you are crying, +that's enough, child. He's going off like a shot to the Indies. You +will never see him again." + +The father took his gloves from the brim of his hat, put them on with +his usual composure, pushed them in place by shoving the fingers of +both hands together, and went out. + +"Mamma, I am suffocating!" cried Eugenie when she was alone with her +mother; "I have never suffered like this." + +Madame Grandet, seeing that she turned pale, opened the window and let +her breathe fresh air. + +"I feel better!" said Eugenie after a moment. + +This nervous excitement in a nature hitherto, to all appearance, calm +and cold, reacted on Madame Grandet; she looked at her daughter with +the sympathetic intuition with which mothers are gifted for the +objects of their tenderness, and guessed all. In truth the life of the +Hungarian sisters, bound together by a freak of nature, could scarcely +have been more intimate than that of Eugenie and her mother,--always +together in the embrasure of that window, and sleeping together in the +same atmosphere. + +"My poor child!" said Madame Grandet, taking Eugenie's head and laying +it upon her bosom. + +At these words the young girl raised her head, questioned her mother +by a look, and seemed to search out her inmost thought. + +"Why send him to the Indies?" she said. "If he is unhappy, ought he +not to stay with us? Is he not our nearest relation?" + +"Yes, my child, it seems natural; but your father has his reasons: we +must respect them." + +The mother and daughter sat down in silence, the former upon her +raised seat, the latter in her little armchair, and both took up their +work. Swelling with gratitude for the full heart-understanding her +mother had given her, Eugenie kissed the dear hand, saying,-- + +"How good you are, my kind mamma!" + +The words sent a glow of light into the motherly face, worn and +blighted as it was by many sorrows. + +"You like him?" asked Eugenie. + +Madame Grandet only smiled in reply. Then, after a moment's silence, +she said in a low voice: "Do you love him already? That is wrong." + +"Wrong?" said Eugenie. "Why is it wrong? You are pleased with him, +Nanon is pleased with him; why should he not please me? Come, mamma, +let us set the table for his breakfast." + +She threw down her work, and her mother did the same, saying, "Foolish +child!" But she sanctioned the child's folly by sharing it. Eugenie +called Nanon. + +"What do you want now, mademoiselle?" + +"Nanon, can we have cream by midday?" + +"Ah! midday, to be sure you can," answered the old servant. + +"Well, let him have his coffee very strong; I heard Monsieur des +Grassins say that they make the coffee very strong in Paris. Put in a +great deal." + +"Where am I to get it?" + +"Buy some." + +"Suppose monsieur meets me?" + +"He has gone to his fields." + +"I'll run, then. But Monsieur Fessard asked me yesterday if the Magi +had come to stay with us when I bought the wax candle. All the town +will know our goings-on." + +"If your father finds it out," said Madame Grandet, "he is capable of +beating us." + +"Well, let him beat us; we will take his blows on our knees." + +Madame Grandet for all answer raised her eyes to heaven. Nanon put on +her hood and went off. Eugenie got out some clean table-linen, and +went to fetch a few bunches of grapes which she had amused herself by +hanging on a string across the attic; she walked softly along the +corridor, so as not to waken her cousin, and she could not help +listening at the door to his quiet breathing. + +"Sorrow is watching while he sleeps," she thought. + +She took the freshest vine-leaves and arranged her dish of grapes as +coquettishly as a practised house-keeper might have done, and placed +it triumphantly on the table. She laid hands on the pears counted out +by her father, and piled them in a pyramid mixed with leaves. She went +and came, and skipped and ran. She would have liked to lay under +contribution everything in her father's house; but the keys were in +his pocket. Nanon came back with two fresh eggs. At sight of them +Eugenie almost hugged her round the neck. + +"The farmer from Lande had them in his basket. I asked him for them, +and he gave them to me, the darling, for nothing, as an attention!" + + + +V + +After two hours' thought and care, during which Eugenie jumped up +twenty times from her work to see if the coffee were boiling, or to go +and listen to the noise her cousin made in dressing, she succeeded in +preparing a simple little breakfast, very inexpensive, but which, +nevertheless, departed alarmingly from the inveterate customs of the +house. The midday breakfast was always taken standing. Each took a +slice of bread, a little fruit or some butter, and a glass of wine. As +Eugenie looked at the table drawn up near the fire with an arm-chair +placed before her cousin's plate, at the two dishes of fruit, the egg- +cup, the bottle of white wine, the bread, and the sugar heaped up in a +saucer, she trembled in all her limbs at the mere thought of the look +her father would give her if he should come in at that moment. She +glanced often at the clock to see if her cousin could breakfast before +the master's return. + +"Don't be troubled, Eugenie; if your father comes in, I will take it +all upon myself," said Madame Grandet. + +Eugenie could not repress a tear. + +"Oh, my good mother!" she cried, "I have never loved you enough." + +Charles, who had been tramping about his room for some time, singing +to himself, now came down. Happily, it was only eleven o'clock. The +true Parisian! he had put as much dandyism into his dress as if he +were in the chateau of the noble lady then travelling in Scotland. He +came into the room with the smiling, courteous manner so becoming to +youth, which made Eugenie's heart beat with mournful joy. He had taken +the destruction of his castles in Anjou as a joke, and came up to his +aunt gaily. + +"Have you slept well, dear aunt? and you, too, my cousin?" + +"Very well, monsieur; did you?" said Madame Grandet. + +"I? perfectly." + +"You must be hungry, cousin," said Eugenie; "will you take your seat?" + +"I never breakfast before midday; I never get up till then. However, I +fared so badly on the journey that I am glad to eat something at once. +Besides--" here he pulled out the prettiest watch Breguet ever made. +"Dear me! I am early, it is only eleven o'clock!" + +"Early?" said Madame Grandet. + +"Yes; but I wanted to put my things in order. Well, I shall be glad to +have anything to eat,--anything, it doesn't matter what, a chicken, a +partridge." + +"Holy Virgin!" exclaimed Nanon, overhearing the words. + +"A partridge!" whispered Eugenie to herself; she would gladly have +given the whole of her little hoard for a partridge. + +"Come and sit down," said his aunt. + +The young dandy let himself drop into an easy-chair, just as a pretty +woman falls gracefully upon a sofa. Eugenie and her mother took +ordinary chairs and sat beside him, near the fire. + +"Do you always live here?" said Charles, thinking the room uglier by +daylight than it had seemed the night before. + +"Always," answered Eugenie, looking at him, "except during the +vintage. Then we go and help Nanon, and live at the Abbaye des +Noyers." + +"Don't you ever take walks?" + +"Sometimes on Sunday after vespers, when the weather is fine," said +Madame Grandet, "we walk on the bridge, or we go and watch the +haymakers." + +"Have you a theatre?" + +"Go to the theatre!" exclaimed Madame Grandet, "see a play! Why, +monsieur, don't you know it is a mortal sin?" + +"See here, monsieur," said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, "here are your +chickens,--in the shell." + +"Oh! fresh eggs," said Charles, who, like all people accustomed to +luxury, had already forgotten about his partridge, "that is delicious: +now, if you will give me the butter, my good girl." + +"Butter! then you can't have the /galette/." + +"Nanon, bring the butter," cried Eugenie. + +The young girl watched her cousin as he cut his sippets, with as much +pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where innocence and virtue +triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming mother, improved, and +trained by a woman of fashion, had the elegant, dainty, foppish +movements of a coxcomb. The compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a +young girl possess a power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles, +finding himself the object of the attentions of his aunt and cousin, +could not escape the influence of feelings which flowed towards him, +as it were, and inundated him. He gave Eugenie a bright, caressing +look full of kindness,--a look which seemed itself a smile. He +perceived, as his eyes lingered upon her, the exquisite harmony of +features in the pure face, the grace of her innocent attitude, the +magic clearness of the eyes, where young love sparkled and desire +shone unconsciously. + +"Ah! my dear cousin, if you were in full dress at the Opera, I assure +you my aunt's words would come true,--you would make the men commit +the mortal sin of envy, and the women the sin of jealousy." + +The compliment went to Eugenie's heart and set it beating, though she +did not understand its meaning. + +"Oh! cousin," she said, "you are laughing at a poor little country +girl." + +"If you knew me, my cousin, you would know that I abhor ridicule; it +withers the heart and jars upon all my feelings." Here he swallowed +his buttered sippet very gracefully. "No, I really have not enough +mind to make fun of others; and doubtless it is a great defect. In +Paris, when they want to disparage a man, they say: 'He has a good +heart.' The phrase means: 'The poor fellow is as stupid as a +rhinoceros.' But as I am rich, and known to hit the bull's-eye at +thirty paces with any kind of pistol, and even in the open fields, +ridicule respects me." + +"My dear nephew, that bespeaks a good heart." + +"You have a very pretty ring," said Eugenie; "is there any harm in +asking to see it?" + +Charles held out his hand after loosening the ring, and Eugenie +blushed as she touched the pink nails of her cousin with the tips of +her fingers. + +"See, mamma, what beautiful workmanship." + +"My! there's a lot of gold!" said Nanon, bringing in the coffee. + +"What is that?" exclaimed Charles, laughing, as he pointed to an +oblong pot of brown earthenware, glazed on the inside, and edged with +a fringe of ashes, from the bottom of which the coffee-grounds were +bubbling up and falling in the boiling liquid. + +"It is boiled coffee," said Nanon. + +"Ah! my dear aunt, I shall at least leave one beneficent trace of my +visit here. You are indeed behind the age! I must teach you to make +good coffee in a Chaptal coffee-pot." + +He tried to explain the process of a Chaptal coffee-pot. + +"Gracious! if there are so many things as all that to do," said Nanon, +"we may as well give up our lives to it. I shall never make coffee +that way; I know that! Pray, who is to get the fodder for the cow +while I make the coffee?" + +"I will make it," said Eugenie. + +"Child!" said Madame Grandet, looking at her daughter. + +The word recalled to their minds the sorrow that was about to fall +upon the unfortunate young man; the three women were silent, and +looked at him with an air of commiseration that caught his attention. + +"Is anything the matter, my cousin?" he said. + +"Hush!" said Madame Grandet to Eugenie, who was about to answer; "you +know, my daughter, that your father charged us not to speak to +monsieur--" + +"Say Charles," said young Grandet. + +"Ah! you are called Charles? What a beautiful name!" cried Eugenie. + +Presentiments of evil are almost always justified. At this moment +Nanon, Madame Grandet, and Eugenie, who had all three been thinking +with a shudder of the old man's return, heard the knock whose echoes +they knew but too well. + +"There's papa!" said Eugenie. + +She removed the saucer filled with sugar, leaving a few pieces on the +table-cloth; Nanon carried off the egg-cup; Madame Grandet sat up like +a frightened hare. It was evidently a panic, which amazed Charles, who +was wholly unable to understand it. + +"Why! what is the matter?" he asked. + +"My father has come," answered Eugenie. + +"Well, what of that?" + +Monsieur Grandet entered the room, threw his keen eye upon the table, +upon Charles, and saw the whole thing. + +"Ha! ha! so you have been making a feast for your nephew; very good, +very good, very good indeed!" he said, without stuttering. "When the +cat's away, the mice will play." + +"Feast!" thought Charles, incapable of suspecting or imagining the +rules and customs of the household. + +"Give me my glass, Nanon," said the master + +Eugenie brought the glass. Grandet drew a horn-handled knife with a +big blade from his breeches' pocket, cut a slice of bread, took a +small bit of butter, spread it carefully on the bread, and ate it +standing. At this moment Charlie was sweetening his coffee. Pere +Grandet saw the bits of sugar, looked at his wife, who turned pale, +and made three steps forward; he leaned down to the poor woman's ear +and said,-- + +"Where did you get all that sugar?" + +"Nanon fetched it from Fessard's; there was none." + +It is impossible to picture the profound interest the three women took +in this mute scene. Nanon had left her kitchen and stood looking into +the room to see what would happen. Charles, having tasted his coffee, +found it bitter and glanced about for the sugar, which Grandet had +already put away. + +"What do you want?" said his uncle. + +"The sugar." + +"Put in more milk," answered the master of the house; "your coffee +will taste sweeter." + +Eugenie took the saucer which Grandet had put away and placed it on +the table, looking calmly at her father as she did so. Most assuredly, +the Parisian woman who held a silken ladder with her feeble arms to +facilitate the flight of her lover, showed no greater courage than +Eugenie displayed when she replaced the sugar upon the table. The +lover rewarded his mistress when she proudly showed him her beautiful +bruised arm, and bathed every swollen vein with tears and kisses till +it was cured with happiness. Charles, on the other hand, never so much +as knew the secret of the cruel agitation that shook and bruised the +heart of his cousin, crushed as it was by the look of the old miser. + +"You are not eating your breakfast, wife." + +The poor helot came forward with a piteous look, cut herself a piece +of bread, and took a pear. Eugenie boldly offered her father some +grapes, saying,-- + +"Taste my preserves, papa. My cousin, you will eat some, will you not? +I went to get these pretty grapes expressly for you." + +"If no one stops them, they will pillage Saumur for you, nephew. When +you have finished, we will go into the garden; I have something to +tell you which can't be sweetened." + +Eugenie and her mother cast a look on Charles whose meaning the young +man could not mistake. + +"What is it you mean, uncle? Since the death of my poor mother"--at +these words his voice softened--"no other sorrow can touch me." + +"My nephew, who knows by what afflictions God is pleased to try us?" +said his aunt. + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta," said Grandet, "there's your nonsense beginning. I am +sorry to see those white hands of yours, nephew"; and he showed the +shoulder-of-mutton fists which Nature had put at the end of his own +arms. "There's a pair of hands made to pick up silver pieces. You've +been brought up to put your feet in the kid out of which we make the +purses we keep our money in. A bad look-out! Very bad!" + +"What do you mean, uncle? I'll be hanged if I understand a single word +of what you are saying." + +"Come!" said Grandet. + +The miser closed the blade of his knife with a snap, drank the last of +his wine, and opened the door. + +"My cousin, take courage!" + +The tone of the young girl struck terror to Charles's heart, and he +followed his terrible uncle, a prey to disquieting thoughts. Eugenie, +her mother, and Nanon went into the kitchen, moved by irresistible +curiosity to watch the two actors in the scene which was about to take +place in the garden, where at first the uncle walked silently ahead of +the nephew. Grandet was not at all troubled at having to tell Charles +of the death of his father; but he did feel a sort of compassion in +knowing him to be without a penny, and he sought for some phrase or +formula by which to soften the communication of that cruel truth. "You +have lost your father," seemed to him a mere nothing to say; fathers +die before their children. But "you are absolutely without means,"-- +all the misfortunes of life were summed up in those words! Grandet +walked round the garden three times, the gravel crunching under his +heavy step. + +In the crucial moments of life our minds fasten upon the locality +where joys or sorrows overwhelm us. Charles noticed with minute +attention the box-borders of the little garden, the yellow leaves as +they fluttered down, the dilapidated walls, the gnarled fruit-trees,-- +picturesque details which were destined to remain forever in his +memory, blending eternally, by the mnemonics that belong exclusively +to the passions, with the recollections of this solemn hour. + +"It is very fine weather, very warm," said Grandet, drawing a long +breath. + +"Yes, uncle; but why--" + +"Well, my lad," answered his uncle, "I have some bad news to give you. +Your father is ill--" + +"Then why am I here?" said Charles. "Nanon," he cried, "order post- +horses! I can get a carriage somewhere?" he added, turning to his +uncle, who stood motionless. + +"Horses and carriages are useless," answered Grandet, looking at +Charles, who remained silent, his eyes growing fixed. "Yes, my poor +boy, you guess the truth,--he is dead. But that's nothing; there is +something worse: he blew out his brains." + +"My father!" + +"Yes, but that's not the worst; the newspapers are all talking about +it. Here, read that." + +Grandet, who had borrowed the fatal article from Cruchot, thrust the +paper under his nephew's eyes. The poor young man, still a child, +still at an age when feelings wear no mask, burst into tears. + +"That's good!" thought Grandet; "his eyes frightened me. He'll be all +right if he weeps,--That is not the worst, my poor nephew," he said +aloud, not noticing whether Charles heard him, "that is nothing; you +will get over it: but--" + +"Never, never! My father! Oh, my father!" + +"He has ruined you, you haven't a penny." + +"What does that matter? My father! Where is my father?" + +His sobs resounded horribly against those dreary walls and +reverberated in the echoes. The three women, filled with pity, wept +also; for tears are often as contagious as laughter. Charles, without +listening further to his uncle, ran through the court and up the +staircase to his chamber, where he threw himself across the bed and +hid his face in the sheets, to weep in peace for his lost parents. + +"The first burst must have its way," said Grandet, entering the +living-room, where Eugenie and her mother had hastily resumed their +seats and were sewing with trembling hands, after wiping their eyes. +"But that young man is good for nothing; his head is more taken up +with the dead than with his money." + +Eugenie shuddered as she heard her father's comment on the most sacred +of all griefs. From that moment she began to judge him. Charles's +sobs, though muffled, still sounded through the sepulchral house; and +his deep groans, which seemed to come from the earth beneath, only +ceased towards evening, after growing gradually feebler. + +"Poor young man!" said Madame Grandet. + +Fatal exclamation! Pere Grandet looked at his wife, at Eugenie, and at +the sugar-bowl. He recollected the extraordinary breakfast prepared +for the unfortunate youth, and he took a position in the middle of the +room. + +"Listen to me," he said, with his usual composure. "I hope that you +will not continue this extravagance, Madame Grandet. I don't give you +MY money to stuff that young fellow with sugar." + +"My mother had nothing to do with it," said Eugenie; "it was I who--" + +"Is it because you are of age," said Grandet, interrupting his +daughter, "that you choose to contradict me? Remember, Eugenie--" + +"Father, the son of your brother ought to receive from us--" + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" exclaimed the cooper on four chromatic tones; "the +son of my brother this, my nephew that! Charles is nothing at all to +us; he hasn't a farthing, his father has failed; and when this dandy +has cried his fill, off he goes from here. I won't have him +revolutionize my household." + +"What is 'failing,' father?" asked Eugenie. + +"To fail," answered her father, "is to commit the most dishonorable +action that can disgrace a man." + +"It must be a great sin," said Madame Grandet, "and our brother may be +damned." + +"There, there, don't begin with your litanies!" said Grandet, +shrugging his shoulders. "To fail, Eugenie," he resumed, "is to commit +a theft which the law, unfortunately, takes under its protection. +People have given their property to Guillaume Grandet trusting to his +reputation for honor and integrity; he has made away with it all, and +left them nothing but their eyes to weep with. A highway robber is +better than a bankrupt: the one attacks you and you can defend +yourself, he risks his own life; but the other--in short, Charles is +dishonored." + +The words rang in the poor girl's heart and weighed it down with their +heavy meaning. Upright and delicate as a flower born in the depths of +a forest, she knew nothing of the world's maxims, of its deceitful +arguments and specious sophisms; she therefore believed the atrocious +explanation which her father gave her designedly, concealing the +distinction which exists between an involuntary failure and an +intentional one. + +"Father, could you not have prevented such a misfortune?" + +"My brother did not consult me. Besides, he owes four millions." + +"What is a 'million,' father?" she asked, with the simplicity of a +child which thinks it can find out at once all that it wants to know. + +"A million?" said Grandet, "why, it is a million pieces of twenty sous +each, and it takes five twenty sous pieces to make five francs." + +"Dear me!" cried Eugenie, "how could my uncle possibly have had four +millions? Is there any one else in France who ever had so many +millions?" Pere Grandet stroked his chin, smiled, and his wen seemed +to dilate. "But what will become of my cousin Charles?" + +"He is going off to the West Indies by his father's request, and he +will try to make his fortune there." + +"Has he got the money to go with?" + +"I shall pay for his journey as far as--yes, as far as Nantes." + +Eugenie sprang into his arms. + +"Oh, father, how good you are!" + +She kissed him with a warmth that almost made Grandet ashamed of +himself, for his conscience galled him a little. + +"Will it take much time to amass a million?" she asked. + +"Look here!" said the old miser, "you know what a napoleon is? Well, +it takes fifty thousand napoleons to make a million." + +"Mamma, we must say a great many /neuvaines/ for him." + +"I was thinking so," said Madame Grandet. + +"That's the way, always spending my money!" cried the father. "Do you +think there are francs on every bush?" + +At this moment a muffled cry, more distressing than all the others, +echoed through the garrets and struck a chill to the hearts of Eugenie +and her mother. + +"Nanon, go upstairs and see that he does not kill himself," said +Grandet. "Now, then," he added, looking at his wife and daughter, who +had turned pale at his words, "no nonsense, you two! I must leave you; +I have got to see about the Dutchmen who are going away to-day. And +then I must find Cruchot, and talk with him about all this." + +He departed. As soon as he had shut the door Eugenie and her mother +breathed more freely. Until this morning the young girl had never felt +constrained in the presence of her father; but for the last few hours +every moment wrought a change in her feelings and ideas. + +"Mamma, how many louis are there in a cask of wine?" + +"Your father sells his from a hundred to a hundred and fifty francs, +sometimes two hundred,--at least, so I've heard say." + +"Then papa must be rich?" + +"Perhaps he is. But Monsieur Cruchot told me he bought Froidfond two +years ago; that may have pinched him." + +Eugenie, not being able to understand the question of her father's +fortune, stopped short in her calculations. + +"He didn't even see me, the darling!" said Nanon, coming back from her +errand. "He's stretched out like a calf on his bed and crying like the +Madeleine, and that's a blessing! What's the matter with the poor dear +young man!" + +"Let us go and console him, mamma; if any one knocks, we can come +down." + +Madame Grandet was helpless against the sweet persuasive tones of her +daughter's voice. Eugenie was sublime: she had become a woman. The +two, with beating hearts, went up to Charles's room. The door was +open. The young man heard and saw nothing; plunged in grief, he only +uttered inarticulate cries. + +"How he loves his father!" said Eugenie in a low voice. + +In the utterance of those words it was impossible to mistake the hopes +of a heart that, unknown to itself, had suddenly become passionate. +Madame Grandet cast a mother's look upon her daughter, and then +whispered in her ear,-- + +"Take care, you will love him!" + +"Love him!" answered Eugenie. "Ah! if you did but know what my father +said to Monsieur Cruchot." + +Charles turned over, and saw his aunt and cousin. + +"I have lost my father, my poor father! If he had told me his secret +troubles we might have worked together to repair them. My God! my poor +father! I was so sure I should see him again that I think I kissed him +quite coldly--" + +Sobs cut short the words. + +"We will pray for him," said Madame Grandet. "Resign yourself to the +will of God." + +"Cousin," said Eugenie, "take courage! Your loss is irreparable; +therefore think only of saving your honor." + +With the delicate instinct of a woman who intuitively puts her mind +into all things, even at the moment when she offers consolation, +Eugenie sought to cheat her cousin's grief by turning his thoughts +inward upon himself. + +"My honor?" exclaimed the young man, tossing aside his hair with an +impatient gesture as he sat up on his bed and crossed his arms. "Ah! +that is true. My uncle said my father had failed." He uttered a heart- +rending cry, and hid his face in his hands. "Leave me, leave me, +cousin! My God! my God! forgive my father, for he must have suffered +sorely!" + +There was something terribly attractive in the sight of this young +sorrow, sincere without reasoning or afterthought. It was a virgin +grief which the simple hearts of Eugenie and her mother were fitted to +comprehend, and they obeyed the sign Charles made them to leave him to +himself. They went downstairs in silence and took their accustomed +places by the window and sewed for nearly an hour without exchanging a +word. Eugenie had seen in the furtive glance that she cast about the +young man's room--that girlish glance which sees all in the twinkling +of an eye--the pretty trifles of his dressing-case, his scissors, his +razors embossed with gold. This gleam of luxury across her cousin's +grief only made him the more interesting to her, possibly by way of +contrast. Never before had so serious an event, so dramatic a sight, +touched the imaginations of these two passive beings, hitherto sunk in +the stillness and calm of solitude. + +"Mamma," said Eugenie, "we must wear mourning for my uncle." + +"Your father will decide that," answered Madame Grandet. + +They relapsed into silence. Eugenie drew her stitches with a uniform +motion which revealed to an observer the teeming thoughts of her +meditation. The first desire of the girl's heart was to share her +cousin's mourning. + + + +VI + +About four o'clock an abrupt knock at the door struck sharply on the +heart of Madame Grandet. + +"What can have happened to your father?" she said to her daughter. + +Grandet entered joyously. After taking off his gloves, he rubbed his +hands hard enough to take off their skin as well, if his epidermis had +not been tanned and cured like Russia leather,--saving, of course, the +perfume of larch-trees and incense. Presently his secret escaped him. + +"Wife," he said, without stuttering, "I've trapped them all! Our wine +is sold! The Dutch and the Belgians have gone. I walked about the +market-place in front of their inn, pretending to be doing nothing. +That Belgian fellow--you know who I mean--came up to me. The owners of +all the good vineyards have kept back their vintages, intending to +wait; well, I didn't hinder them. The Belgian was in despair; I saw +that. In a minute the bargain was made. He takes my vintage at two +hundred francs the puncheon, half down. He paid me in gold; the notes +are drawn. Here are six louis for you. In three months wines will have +fallen." + +These words, uttered in a quiet tone of voice, were nevertheless so +bitterly sarcastic that the inhabitants of Saumur, grouped at this +moment in the market-place and overwhelmed by the news of the sale +Grandet had just effected, would have shuddered had they heard them. +Their panic would have brought the price of wines down fifty per cent +at once. + +"Did you have a thousand puncheons this year, father?" + +"Yes, little one." + +That term applied to his daughter was the superlative expression of +the old miser's joy. + +"Then that makes two hundred thousand pieces of twenty sous each?" + +"Yes, Mademoiselle Grandet." + +"Then, father, you can easily help Charles." + +The amazement, the anger, the stupefaction of Belshazzar when he saw +the /Mene-Tekel-Upharsin/ before his eyes is not to be compared with +the cold rage of Grandet, who, having forgotten his nephew, now found +him enshrined in the heart and calculations of his daughter. + +"What's this? Ever since that dandy put foot in MY house everything +goes wrong! You behave as if you had the right to buy sugar-plums and +make feasts and weddings. I won't have that sort of thing. I hope I +know my duty at my time of life! I certainly sha'n't take lessons from +my daughter, or from anybody else. I shall do for my nephew what it is +proper to do, and you have no need to poke your nose into it. As for +you, Eugenie," he added, facing her, "don't speak of this again, or +I'll send you to the Abbaye des Noyers with Nanon, see if I don't; and +no later than to-morrow either, if you disobey me! Where is that +fellow, has he come down yet?" + +"No, my friend," answered Madame Grandet. + +"What is he doing then?" + +"He is weeping for his father," said Eugenie. + +Grandet looked at his daughter without finding a word to say; after +all, he was a father. He made a couple of turns up and down the room, +and then went hurriedly to his secret den to think over an investment +he was meditating in the public Funds. The thinning out of his two +thousand acres of forest land had yielded him six hundred thousand +francs: putting this sum to that derived from the sale of his poplars +and to his other gains for the last year and for the current year, he +had amassed a total of nine hundred thousand francs, without counting +the two hundred thousand he had got by the sale just concluded. The +twenty per cent which Cruchot assured him would gain in a short time +from the Funds, then quoted at seventy, tempted him. He figured out +his calculation on the margin of the newspaper which gave the account +of his brother's death, all the while hearing the moans of his nephew, +but without listening to them. Nanon came and knocked on the wall to +summon him to dinner. On the last step of the staircase he was saying +to himself as he came down,-- + +"I'll do it; I shall get eight per cent interest. In two years I shall +have fifteen hundred thousand francs, which I will then draw out in +good gold,--Well, where's my nephew?" + +"He says he doesn't want anything to eat," answered Nanon; "that's not +good for him." + +"So much saved," retorted her master. + +"That's so," she said. + +"Bah! he won't cry long. Hunger drives the wolves out of the woods." + +The dinner was eaten in silence. + +"My good friend," said Madame Grandet, when the cloth was removed, "we +must put on mourning." + +"Upon my word, Madame Grandet! what will you invent next to spend +money on? Mourning is in the heart, and not in the clothes." + +"But mourning for a brother is indispensable; and the Church commands +us to--" + +"Buy your mourning out of your six louis. Give me a hat-band; that's +enough for me." + +Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven without uttering a word. Her +generous instincts, slumbering and long repressed but now suddenly and +for the first time awakened, were galled at every turn. The evening +passed to all appearance like a thousand other evenings of their +monotonous life, yet it was certainly the most horrible. Eugenie sewed +without raising her head, and did not use the workbox which Charles +had despised the night before. Madame Grandet knitted her sleeves. +Grandet twirled his thumbs for four hours, absorbed in calculations +whose results were on the morrow to astonish Saumur. No one came to +visit the family that day. The whole town was ringing with the news of +the business trick just played by Grandet, the failure of his brother, +and the arrival of his nephew. Obeying the desire to gossip over their +mutual interests, all the upper and middle-class wine-growers in +Saumur met at Monsieur des Grassins, where terrible imprecations were +being fulminated against the ex-mayor. Nanon was spinning, and the +whirr of her wheel was the only sound heard beneath the gray rafters +of that silent hall. + +"We don't waste our tongues," she said, showing her teeth, as large +and white as peeled almonds. + +"Nothing should be wasted," answered Grandet, rousing himself from his +reverie. He saw a perspective of eight millions in three years, and he +was sailing along that sheet of gold. "Let us go to bed. I will bid my +nephew good-night for the rest of you, and see if he will take +anything." + +Madame Grandet remained on the landing of the first storey to hear the +conversation that was about to take place between the goodman and his +nephew. Eugenie, bolder than her mother, went up two stairs. + +"Well, nephew, you are in trouble. Yes, weep, that's natural. A father +is a father; but we must bear our troubles patiently. I am a good +uncle to you, remember that. Come, take courage! Will you have a +little glass of wine?" (Wine costs nothing in Saumur, and they offer +it as tea is offered in China.) "Why!" added Grandet, "you have got no +light! That's bad, very bad; you ought to see what you are about," and +he walked to the chimney-piece. "What's this?" he cried. "A wax +candle! How the devil did they filch a wax candle? The spendthrifts +would tear down the ceilings of my house to boil the fellow's eggs." + +Hearing these words, mother and daughter slipped back into their rooms +and burrowed in their beds, with the celerity of frightened mice +getting back to their holes. + +"Madame Grandet, have you found a mine?" said the man, coming into the +chamber of his wife. + +"My friend, wait; I am saying my prayers," said the poor mother in a +trembling voice. + +"The devil take your good God!" growled Grandet in reply. + +Misers have no belief in a future life; the present is their all in +all. This thought casts a terrible light upon our present epoch, in +which, far more than at any former period, money sways the laws and +politics and morals. Institutions, books, men, and dogmas, all +conspire to undermine belief in a future life,--a belief upon which +the social edifice has rested for eighteen hundred years. The grave, +as a means of transition, is little feared in our day. The future, +which once opened to us beyond the requiems, has now been imported +into the present. To obtain /per fas et nefas/ a terrestrial paradise +of luxury and earthly enjoyment, to harden the heart and macerate the +body for the sake of fleeting possessions, as the martyrs once +suffered all things to reach eternal joys, this is now the universal +thought--a thought written everywhere, even in the very laws which ask +of the legislator, "What do you pay?" instead of asking him, "What do +you think?" When this doctrine has passed down from the bourgeoisie to +the populace, where will this country be? + +"Madame Grandet, have you done?" asked the old man. + +"My friend, I am praying for you." + +"Very good! Good-night; to-morrow morning we will have a talk." + +The poor woman went to sleep like a schoolboy who, not having learned +his lessons, knows he will see his master's angry face on the morrow. +At the moment when, filled with fear, she was drawing the sheet above +her head that she might stifle hearing, Eugenie, in her night-gown and +with naked feet, ran to her side and kissed her brow. + +"Oh! my good mother," she said, "to-morrow I will tell him it was I." + +"No; he would send you to Noyers. Leave me to manage it; he cannot eat +me." + +"Do you hear, mamma?" + +"What?" + +"/He/ is weeping still." + +"Go to bed, my daughter; you will take cold in your feet: the floor is +damp." + +***** + +Thus passed the solemn day which was destined to weight upon the whole +life of the rich and poor heiress, whose sleep was never again to be +so calm, nor yet so pure, as it had been up to this moment. It often +happens that certain actions of human life seem, literally speaking, +improbable, though actual. Is not this because we constantly omit to +turn the stream of psychological light upon our impulsive +determinations, and fail to explain the subtile reasons, mysteriously +conceived in our minds, which impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie's deep +passion should be analyzed in its most delicate fibres; for it became, +scoffers might say, a malady which influenced her whole existence. +Many people prefer to deny results rather than estimate the force of +ties and links and bonds, which secretly join one fact to another in +the moral order. Here, therefore, Eugenie's past life will offer to +observers of human nature an explanation of her naive want of +reflection and the suddenness of the emotions which overflowed her +soul. The more tranquil her life had been, the more vivid was her +womanly pity, the more simple-minded were the sentiments now developed +in her soul. + +Made restless by the events of the day, she woke at intervals to +listen to her cousin, thinking she heard the sighs which still echoed +in her heart. Sometimes she saw him dying of his trouble, sometimes +she dreamed that he fainted from hunger. Towards morning she was +certain that she heard a startling cry. She dressed at once and ran, +in the dawning light, with a swift foot to her cousin's chamber, the +door of which he had left open. The candle had burned down to the +socket. Charles, overcome by nature, was sleeping, dressed and sitting +in an armchair beside the bed, on which his head rested; he dreamed as +men dream on an empty stomach. Eugenie might weep at her ease; she +might admire the young and handsome face blotted with grief, the eyes +swollen with weeping, that seemed, sleeping as they were, to well +forth tears. Charles felt sympathetically the young girl's presence; +he opened his eyes and saw her pitying him. + +"Pardon me, my cousin," he said, evidently not knowing the hour nor +the place in which he found himself. + +"There are hearts who hear you, cousin, and /we/ thought you might +need something. You should go to bed; you tire yourself by sitting +thus." + +"That is true." + +"Well, then, adieu!" + +She escaped, ashamed and happy at having gone there. Innocence alone +can dare to be so bold. Once enlightened, virtue makes her +calculations as well as vice. Eugenie, who had not trembled beside her +cousin, could scarcely stand upon her legs when she regained her +chamber. Her ignorant life had suddenly come to an end; she reasoned, +she rebuked herself with many reproaches. + +"What will he think of me? He will think that I love him!" + +That was what she most wished him to think. An honest love has its own +prescience, and knows that love begets love. What an event for this +poor solitary girl thus to have entered the chamber of a young man! +Are there not thoughts and actions in the life of love which to +certain souls bear the full meaning of the holiest espousals? An hour +later she went to her mother and dressed her as usual. Then they both +came down and sat in their places before the window waiting for +Grandet, with that cruel anxiety which, according to the individual +character, freezes the heart or warms it, shrivels or dilates it, when +a scene is feared, a punishment expected,--a feeling so natural that +even domestic animals possess it, and whine at the slightest pain of +punishment, though they make no outcry when they inadvertently hurt +themselves. The goodman came down; but he spoke to his wife with an +absent manner, kissed Eugenie, and sat down to table without appearing +to remember his threats of the night before. + +"What has become of my nephew? The lad gives no trouble." + +"Monsieur, he is asleep," answered Nanon. + +"So much the better; he won't want a wax candle," said Grandet in a +jeering tone. + +This unusual clemency, this bitter gaiety, struck Madame Grandet with +amazement, and she looked at her husband attentively. The goodman-- +here it may be well to explain that in Touraine, Anjou, Pitou, and +Bretagne the word "goodman," already used to designate Grandet, is +bestowed as often upon harsh and cruel men as upon those of kindly +temperament, when either have reached a certain age; the title means +nothing on the score of individual gentleness--the goodman took his +hat and gloves, saying as he went out,-- + +"I am going to loiter about the market-place and find Cruchot." + +"Eugenie, your father certainly has something on his mind." + +Grandet, who was a poor sleeper, employed half his nights in the +preliminary calculations which gave such astonishing accuracy to his +views and observations and schemes, and secured to them the unfailing +success at sight of which his townsmen stood amazed. All human power +is a compound of time and patience. Powerful beings will and wait. The +life of a miser is the constant exercise of human power put to the +service of self. It rests on two sentiments only,--self-love and self- +interest; but self-interest being to a certain extent compact and +intelligent self-love, the visible sign of real superiority, it +follows that self-love and self-interest are two parts of the same +whole,--egotism. From this arises, perhaps, the excessive curiosity +shown in the habits of a miser's life whenever they are put before the +world. Every nature holds by a thread to those beings who challenge +all human sentiments by concentrating all in one passion. Where is the +man without desire? and what social desire can be satisfied without +money? + +Grandet unquestionably "had something on his mind," to use his wife's +expression. There was in him, as in all misers, a persistent craving +to play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally. +To impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual +proof that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who +suffer themselves to be preyed upon in this world. Oh! who has ever +truly understood the lamb lying peacefully at the feet of God?-- +touching emblem of all terrestrial victims, myth of their future, +suffering and weakness glorified! This lamb it is which the miser +fattens, puts in his fold, slaughters, cooks, eats, and then despises. +The pasture of misers is compounded of money and disdain. During the +night Grandet's ideas had taken another course, which was the reason +of his sudden clemency. He had hatched a plot by which to trick the +Parisians, to decoy and dupe and snare them, to drive them into a +trap, and make them go and come and sweat and hope and turn pale,--a +plot by which to amuse himself, the old provincial cooper, sitting +there beneath his gloomy rafters, or passing up and down the rotten +staircase of his house in Saumur. His nephew filled his mind. He +wished to save the honor of his dead brother without the cost of a +penny to the son or to himself. His own funds he was about to invest +for three years; he had therefore nothing further to do than to manage +his property in Saumur. He needed some nutriment for his malicious +activity, and he found it suddenly in his brother's failure. Feeling +nothing to squeeze between his own paws, he resolved to crush the +Parisians in behalf of Charles, and to play the part of a good brother +on the cheapest terms. The honor of the family counted for so little +in this scheme that his good intentions might be likened to the +interest a gambler takes in seeing a game well played in which he has +no stake. The Cruchots were a necessary part of his plan; but he would +not seek them,--he resolved to make them come to him, and to lead up +that very evening to a comedy whose plot he had just conceived, which +should make him on the morrow an object of admiration to the whole +town without its costing him a single penny. + +In her father's absence Eugenie had the happiness of busying herself +openly with her much-loved cousin, of spending upon him fearlessly the +treasures of her pity,--woman's sublime superiority, the sole she +desires to have recognized, the sole she pardons man for letting her +assume. Three or four times the young girl went to listen to her +cousin's breathing, to know if he were sleeping or awake; then, when +he had risen, she turned her thoughts to the cream, the eggs, the +fruits, the plates, the glasses,--all that was a part of his breakfast +became the object of some special care. At length she ran lightly up +the old staircase to listen to the noise her cousin made. Was he +dressing? Did he still weep? She reached the door. + +"My cousin!" + +"Yes, cousin." + +"Will you breakfast downstairs, or in your room?" + +"Where you like." + +"How do you feel?" + +"Dear cousin, I am ashamed of being hungry." + +This conversation, held through the closed door, was like an episode +in a poem to Eugenie. + +"Well, then, we will bring your breakfast to your own room, so as not +to annoy my father." + +She ran to the kitchen with the swiftness and lightness of a bird. + +"Nanon, go and do his room!" + +That staircase, so often traversed, which echoed to the slightest +noise, now lost its decaying aspect in the eyes of Eugenie. It grew +luminous; it had a voice and spoke to her; it was young like herself, +--young like the love it was now serving. Her mother, her kind, +indulgent mother, lent herself to the caprices of the child's love, +and after the room was put in order, both went to sit with the unhappy +youth and keep him company. Does not Christian charity make +consolation a duty? The two women drew a goodly number of little +sophistries from their religion wherewith to justify their conduct. +Charles was made the object of the tenderest and most loving care. His +saddened heart felt the sweetness of the gentle friendship, the +exquisite sympathy which these two souls, crushed under perpetual +restraint, knew so well how to display when, for an instant, they were +left unfettered in the regions of suffering, their natural sphere. + +Claiming the right of relationship, Eugenie began to fold the linen +and put in order the toilet articles which Charles had brought; thus +she could marvel at her ease over each luxurious bauble and the +various knick-knacks of silver or chased gold, which she held long in +her hand under a pretext of examining them. Charles could not see +without emotion the generous interest his aunt and cousin felt in him; +he knew society in Paris well enough to feel assured that, placed as +he now was, he would find all hearts indifferent or cold. Eugenie thus +appeared to him in the splendor of a special beauty, and from +thenceforth he admired the innocence of life and manners which the +previous evening he had been inclined to ridicule. So when Eugenie +took from Nanon the bowl of coffee and cream, and began to pour it out +for her cousin with the simplicity of real feeling, giving him a +kindly glance, the eyes of the Parisian filled with tears; he took her +hand and kissed it. + +"What troubles you?" she said. + +"Oh! these are tears of gratitude," he answered. + +Eugenie turned abruptly to the chimney-piece to take the candlesticks. + +"Here, Nanon, carry them away!" she said. + +When she looked again towards her cousin she was still blushing, but +her looks could at least deceive, and did not betray the excess of joy +which innundated her heart; yet the eyes of both expressed the same +sentiment as their souls flowed together in one thought,--the future +was theirs. This soft emotion was all the more precious to Charles in +the midst of his heavy grief because it was wholly unexpected. The +sound of the knocker recalled the women to their usual station. +Happily they were able to run downstairs with sufficient rapidity to +be seated at their work when Grandet entered; had he met them under +the archway it would have been enough to rouse his suspicions. After +breakfast, which the goodman took standing, the keeper from Froidfond, +to whom the promised indemnity had never yet been paid, made his +appearance, bearing a hare and some partridges shot in the park, with +eels and two pike sent as tribute by the millers. + +"Ha, ha! poor Cornoiller; here he comes, like fish in Lent. Is all +that fit to eat?" + +"Yes, my dear, generous master; it has been killed two days." + +"Come, Nanon, bestir yourself," said Grandet; "take these things, +they'll do for dinner. I have invited the two Cruchots." + +Nanon opened her eyes, stupid with amazement, and looked at everybody +in the room. + +"Well!" she said, "and how am I to get the lard and the spices?" + +"Wife," said Grandet, "give Nanon six francs, and remind me to get +some of the good wine out of the cellar." + +"Well, then, Monsieur Grandet," said the keeper, who had come prepared +with an harangue for the purpose of settling the question of the +indemnity, "Monsieur Grandet--" + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" said Grandet; "I know what you want to say. You are +a good fellow; we will see about it to-morrow, I'm too busy to-day. +Wife, give him five francs," he added to Madame Grandet as he +decamped. + +The poor woman was only too happy to buy peace at the cost of eleven +francs. She knew that Grandet would let her alone for a fortnight +after he had thus taken back, franc by franc, the money he had given +her. + +"Here, Cornoiller," she said, slipping ten francs into the man's hand, +"some day we will reward your services." + +Cornoiller could say nothing, so he went away. + +"Madame," said Nanon, who had put on her black coif and taken her +basket, "I want only three francs. You keep the rest; it'll go fast +enough somehow." + +"Have a good dinner, Nanon; my cousin will come down," said Eugenie. + +"Something very extraordinary is going on, I am certain of it," said +Madame Grandet. "This is only the third time since our marriage that +your father has given a dinner." + +***** + +About four o'clock, just as Eugenie and her mother had finished +setting the table for six persons, and after the master of the house +had brought up a few bottles of the exquisite wine which provincials +cherish with true affection, Charles came down into the hall. The +young fellow was pale; his gestures, the expression of his face, his +glance, and the tones of his voice, all had a sadness which was full +of grace. He was not pretending grief, he truly suffered; and the veil +of pain cast over his features gave him an interesting air dear to the +heart of women. Eugenie loved him the more for it. Perhaps she felt +that sorrow drew him nearer to her. Charles was no longer the rich and +distinguished young man placed in a sphere far above her, but a +relation plunged into frightful misery. Misery begets equality. Women +have this in common with the angels,--suffering humanity belongs to +them. Charles and Eugenie understood each other and spoke only with +their eyes; for the poor fallen dandy, orphaned and impoverished, sat +apart in a corner of the room, and was proudly calm and silent. Yet, +from time to time, the gentle and caressing glance of the young girl +shone upon him and constrained him away from his sad thoughts, drawing +him with her into the fields of hope and of futurity, where she loved +to hold him at her side. + + + +VII + +At this moment the town of Saumur was more excited about the dinner +given by Grandet to the Cruchots than it had been the night before at +the sale of his vintage, though that constituted a crime of high- +treason against the whole wine-growing community. If the politic old +miser had given his dinner from the same idea that cost the dog of +Alcibiades his tail, he might perhaps have been called a great man; +but the fact is, considering himself superior to a community which he +could trick on all occasions, he paid very little heed to what Saumur +might say. + +The des Grassins soon learned the facts of the failure and the violent +death of Guillaume Grandet, and they determined to go to their +client's house that very evening to commiserate his misfortune and +show him some marks of friendship, with a view of ascertaining the +motives which had led him to invite the Cruchots to dinner. At +precisely five o'clock Monsieur C. de Bonfons and his uncle the notary +arrived in their Sunday clothes. The party sat down to table and began +to dine with good appetites. Grandet was grave, Charles silent, +Eugenie dumb, and Madame Grandet did not say more than usual; so that +the dinner was, very properly, a repast of condolence. When they rose +from table Charles said to his aunt and uncle,-- + +"Will you permit me to retire? I am obliged to undertake a long and +painful correspondence." + +"Certainly, nephew." + +As soon as the goodman was certain that Charles could hear nothing and +was probably deep in his letter-writing, he said, with a dissimulating +glance at his wife,-- + +"Madame Grandet, what we have to talk about will be Latin to you; it +is half-past seven; you can go and attend to your household accounts. +Good-night, my daughter." + +He kissed Eugenie, and the two women departed. A scene now took place +in which Pere Grandet brought to bear, more than at any other moment +of his life, the shrewd dexterity he had acquired in his intercourse +with men, and which had won him from those whose flesh he sometimes +bit too sharply the nickname of "the old dog." If the mayor of Saumur +had carried his ambition higher still, if fortunate circumstances, +drawing him towards the higher social spheres, had sent him into +congresses where the affairs of nations were discussed, and had he +there employed the genius with which his personal interests had +endowed him, he would undoubtedly have proved nobly useful to his +native land. Yet it is perhaps equally certain that outside of Saumur +the goodman would have cut a very sorry figure. Possibly there are +minds like certain animals which cease to breed when transplanted from +the climates in which they are born. + +"M-m-mon-sieur le p-p-president, you said t-t-that b-b-bankruptcy--" + +The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited +him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes +complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural +defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that +while they listened they unconsciously made faces and moved their +lips, as if pronouncing the words over which he was hesitating and +stuttering at will. Here it may be well to give the history of this +impediment of the speech and hearing of Monsieur Grandet. No one in +Anjou heard better, or could pronounce more crisply the French +language (with an Angevin accent) than the wily old cooper. Some years +earlier, in spite of his shrewdness, he had been taken in by an +Israelite, who in the course of the discussion held his hand behind +his ear to catch sounds, and mangled his meaning so thoroughly in +trying to utter his words that Grandet fell a victim to his humanity +and was compelled to prompt the wily Jew with the words and ideas he +seemed to seek, to complete himself the arguments of the said Jew, to +say what that cursed Jew ought to have said for himself; in short, to +be the Jew instead of being Grandet. When the cooper came out of this +curious encounter he had concluded the only bargain of which in the +course of a long commercial life he ever had occasion to complain. But +if he lost at the time pecuniarily, he gained morally a valuable +lesson; later, he gathered its fruits. Indeed, the goodman ended by +blessing that Jew for having taught him the art of irritating his +commercial antagonist and leading him to forget his own thoughts in +his impatience to suggest those over which his tormentor was +stuttering. No affair had ever needed the assistance of deafness, +impediments of speech, and all the incomprehensible circumlocutions +with which Grandet enveloped his ideas, as much as the affair now in +hand. In the first place, he did not mean to shoulder the +responsibility of his own scheme; in the next, he was determined to +remain master of the conversation and to leave his real intentions in +doubt. + +"M-m-monsieur de B-B-Bonfons,"--for the second time in three years +Grandet called the Cruchot nephew Monsieur de Bonfons; the president +felt he might consider himself the artful old fellow's son-in-law,-- +"you-ou said th-th-that b-b-bankruptcy c-c-could, in some c-c-cases, +b-b-be p-p-prevented b-b-by--" + +"By the courts of commerce themselves. It is done constantly," said +Monsieur C. de Bonfons, bestriding Grandet's meaning, or thinking he +guessed it, and kindly wishing to help him out with it. "Listen." + +"Y-yes," said Grandet humbly, with the mischievous expression of a boy +who is inwardly laughing at his teacher while he pays him the greatest +attention. + +"When a man so respected and important as, for example, your late +brother--" + +"M-my b-b-brother, yes." + +"--is threatened with insolvency--" + +"They c-c-call it in-ins-s-solvency?" + +"Yes; when his failure is imminent, the court of commerce, to which he +is amenable (please follow me attentively), has the power, by a +decree, to appoint a receiver. Liquidation, you understand, is not the +same as failure. When a man fails, he is dishonored; but when he +merely liquidates, he remains an honest man." + +"T-t-that's very d-d-different, if it d-d-doesn't c-c-cost m-m-more," +said Grandet. + +"But a liquidation can be managed without having recourse to the +courts at all. For," said the president, sniffing a pinch of snuff, +"don't you know how failures are declared?" + +"N-n-no, I n-n-never t-t-thought," answered Grandet. + +"In the first place," resumed the magistrate, "by filing the schedule +in the record office of the court, which the merchant may do himself, +or his representative for him with a power of attorney duly certified. +In the second place, the failure may be declared under compulsion from +the creditors. Now if the merchant does not file his schedule, and if +no creditor appears before the courts to obtain a decree of insolvency +against the merchant, what happens?" + +"W-w-what h-h-happens?" + +"Why, the family of the deceased, his representatives, his heirs, or +the merchant himself, if he is not dead, or his friends if he is only +hiding, liquidate his business. Perhaps you would like to liquidate +your brother's affairs?" + +"Ah! Grandet," said the notary, "that would be the right thing to do. +There is honor down here in the provinces. If you save your name--for +it is your name--you will be a man--" + +"A noble man!" cried the president, interrupting his uncle. + +"Certainly," answered the old man, "my b-b-brother's name was +G-G-Grandet, like m-m-mine. Th-that's c-c-certain; I d-d-don't +d-d-deny it. And th-th-this l-l-liquidation might be, in m-m-many +ways, v-v-very advan-t-t-tageous t-t-to the interests of m-m-my +n-n-nephew, whom I l-l-love. But I must consider. I don't k-k-know the +t-t-tricks of P-P-Paris. I b-b-belong to Sau-m-mur, d-d-don't you see? +M-m-my vines, my d-d-drains--in short, I've my own b-b-business. I +never g-g-give n-n-notes. What are n-n-notes? I t-t-take a good +m-m-many, but I have never s-s-signed one. I d-d-don't understand such +things. I have h-h-heard say that n-n-notes c-c-can be b-b-bought up." + +"Of course," said the president. "Notes can be bought in the market, +less so much per cent. Don't you understand?" + +Grandet made an ear-trumpet of his hand, and the president repeated +his words. + +"Well, then," replied the man, "there's s-s-something to be g-g-got +out of it? I k-know n-nothing at my age about such th-th-things. I +l-l-live here and l-l-look after the v-v-vines. The vines g-g-grow, +and it's the w-w-wine that p-p-pays. L-l-look after the v-v-vintage, +t-t-that's my r-r-rule. My c-c-chief interests are at Froidfond. I +c-c-can't l-l-leave my h-h-house to m-m-muddle myself with a +d-d-devilish b-b-business I kn-know n-n-nothing about. You say I ought +to l-l-liquidate my b-b-brother's af-f-fairs, to p-p-prevent the +f-f-failure. I c-c-can't be in two p-p-places at once, unless I were a +little b-b-bird, and--" + +"I understand," cried the notary. "Well, my old friend, you have +friends, old friends, capable of devoting themselves to your +interests." + +"All right!" thought Grandet, "make haste and come to the point!" + +"Suppose one of them went to Paris and saw your brother Guillaume's +chief creditor and said to him--" + +"One m-m-moment," interrupted the goodman, "said wh-wh-what? Something +l-l-like this. Monsieur Gr-Grandet of Saumur this, Monsieur Grandet of +Saumur that. He l-loves his b-b-brother, he loves his n-nephew. +Grandet is a g-g-good uncle; he m-m-means well. He has sold his +v-v-vintage. D-d-don't declare a f-f-failure; c-c-call a meeting; +l-l-liquidate; and then Gr-Gr-Grandet will see what he c-c-can do. +B-b-better liquidate than l-let the l-l-law st-st-stick its n-n-nose +in. Hein? isn't it so?" + +"Exactly so," said the president. + +"B-because, don't you see, Monsieur de B-Bonfons, a man must l-l-look +b-b-before he l-leaps. If you c-c-can't, you c-c-can't. M-m-must know +all about the m-m-matter, all the resources and the debts, if you +d-d-don't want to be r-r-ruined. Hein? isn't it so?" + +"Certainly," said the president. "I'm of opinion that in a few months +the debts might be bought up for a certain sum, and then paid in full +by an agreement. Ha! ha! you can coax a dog a long way if you show him +a bit of lard. If there has been no declaration of failure, and you +hold a lien on the debts, you come out of the business as white as the +driven snow." + +"Sn-n-now," said Grandet, putting his hand to his ear, "wh-wh-what +about s-now?" + +"But," cried the president, "do pray attend to what I am saying." + +"I am at-t-tending." + +"A note is merchandise,--an article of barter which rises and falls in +prices. That is a deduction from Jeremy Bentham's theory about usury. +That writer has proved that the prejudice which condemned usurers to +reprobation was mere folly." + +"Whew!" ejaculated the goodman. + +"Allowing that money, according to Bentham, is an article of +merchandise, and that whatever represents money is equally +merchandise," resumed the president; "allowing also that it is +notorious that the commercial note, bearing this or that signature, is +liable to the fluctuation of all commercial values, rises or falls in +the market, is dear at one moment, and is worth nothing at another, +the courts decide--ah! how stupid I am, I beg your pardon--I am +inclined to think you could buy up your brother's debts for twenty- +five per cent." + +"D-d-did you c-c-call him Je-Je-Jeremy B-Ben?" + +"Bentham, an Englishman.' + +"That's a Jeremy who might save us a lot of lamentations in business," +said the notary, laughing. + +"Those Englishmen s-sometimes t-t-talk sense," said Grandet. "So, +ac-c-cording to Ben-Bentham, if my b-b-brother's n-notes are worth +n-n-nothing; if Je-Je--I'm c-c-correct, am I not? That seems c-c-clear +to my m-m-mind--the c-c-creditors would be--No, would not be; I +understand." + +"Let me explain it all," said the president. "Legally, if you acquire +a title to all the debts of the Maison Grandet, your brother or his +heirs will owe nothing to any one. Very good." + +"Very g-good," repeated Grandet. + +"In equity, if your brother's notes are negotiated--negotiated, do you +clearly understand the term?--negotiated in the market at a reduction +of so much per cent in value, and if one of your friends happening to +be present should buy them in, the creditors having sold them of their +own free-will without constraint, the estate of the late Grandet is +honorably released." + +"That's t-true; b-b-business is b-business," said the cooper. +"B-b-but, st-still, you know, it is d-d-difficult. I h-have n-no +m-m-money and n-no t-t-time." + +"Yes, but you need not undertake it. I am quite ready to go to Paris +(you may pay my expenses, they will only be a trifle). I will see the +creditors and talk with them and get an extension of time, and +everything can be arranged if you will add something to the assets so +as to buy up all title to the debts." + +"We-we'll see about th-that. I c-c-can't and I w-w-won't bind myself +without--He who c-c-can't, can't; don't you see?" + +"That's very true." + +"I'm all p-p-put ab-b-bout by what you've t-t-told me. This is the +f-first t-t-time in my life I have b-been obliged to th-th-think--" + +"Yes, you are not a lawyer." + +"I'm only a p-p-poor wine-g-grower, and know n-nothing about wh-what +you have just t-told me; I m-m-must th-think about it." + +"Very good," said the president, preparing to resume his argument. + +"Nephew!" said the notary, interrupting him in a warning tone. + +"Well, what, uncle?" answered the president. + +"Let Monsieur Grandet explain his own intentions. The matter in +question is of the first importance. Our good friend ought to define +his meaning clearly, and--" + +A loud knock, which announced the arrival of the des Grassins family, +succeeded by their entrance and salutations, hindered Cruchot from +concluding his sentence. The notary was glad of the interruption, for +Grandet was beginning to look suspiciously at him, and the wen gave +signs of a brewing storm. In the first place, the notary did not think +it becoming in a president of the Civil courts to go to Paris and +manipulate creditors and lend himself to an underhand job which +clashed with the laws of strict integrity; moreover, never having +known old Grandet to express the slightest desire to pay anything, no +matter what, he instinctively feared to see his nephew taking part in +the affair. He therefore profited by the entrance of the des Grassins +to take the nephew by the arm and lead him into the embrasure of the +window,-- + +"You have said enough, nephew; you've shown enough devotion. Your +desire to win the girl blinds you. The devil! you mustn't go at it +tooth and nail. Let me sail the ship now; you can haul on the braces. +Do you think it right to compromise your dignity as a magistrate in +such a--" + +He stopped, for he heard Monsieur des Grassins saying to the old +cooper as they shook hands,-- + +"Grandet, we have heard of the frightful misfortunes which have just +befallen your family,--the failure of the house of Guillaume Grandet +and the death of your brother. We have come to express our grief at +these sad events." + +"There is but one sad event," said the notary, interrupting the +banker,--"the death of Monsieur Grandet, junior; and he would never +have killed himself had he thought in time of applying to his brother +for help. Our old friend, who is honorable to his finger-nails, +intends to liquidate the debts of the Maison Grandet of Paris. To save +him the worry of legal proceedings, my nephew, the president, has just +offered to go to Paris and negotiate with the creditors for a +satisfactory settlement." + +These words, corroborated by Grandet's attitude as he stood silently +nursing his chin, astonished the three des Grassins, who had been +leisurely discussing the old man's avarice as they came along, very +nearly accusing him of fratricide. + +"Ah! I was sure of it," cried the banker, looking at his wife. "What +did I tell you just now, Madame des Grassins? Grandet is honorable to +the backbone, and would never allow his name to remain under the +slightest cloud! Money without honor is a disease. There is honor in +the provinces! Right, very right, Grandet. I'm an old soldier, and I +can't disguise my thoughts; I speak roughly. Thunder! it is sublime!" + +"Th-then s-s-sublime th-things c-c-cost d-dear," answered the goodman, +as the banker warmly wrung his hand. + +"But this, my dear Grandet,--if the president will excuse me,--is a +purely commercial matter, and needs a consummate business man. Your +agent must be some one fully acquainted with the markets,--with +disbursements, rebates, interest calculations, and so forth. I am +going to Paris on business of my own, and I can take charge of--" + +"We'll see about t-t-trying to m-m-manage it b-b-between us, under the +p-p-peculiar c-c-circumstances, b-b-but without b-b-binding m-m-myself +to anything th-that I c-c-could not do," said Grandet, stuttering; +"because, you see, monsieur le president naturally expects me to pay +the expenses of his journey." + +The goodman did not stammer over the last words. + +"Eh!" cried Madame des Grassins, "why it is a pleasure to go to Paris. +I would willingly pay to go myself." + +She made a sign to her husband, as if to encourage him in cutting the +enemy out of the commission, /coute que coute/; then she glanced +ironically at the two Cruchots, who looked chap-fallen. Grandet seized +the banker by a button and drew him into a corner of the room. + +"I have a great deal more confidence in you than in the president," he +said; "besides, I've other fish to fry," he added, wriggling his wen. +"I want to buy a few thousand francs in the Funds while they are at +eighty. They fall, I'm told, at the end of each month. You know all +about these things, don't you?" + +"Bless me! then, am I to invest enough to give you a few thousand +francs a year?" + +"That's not much to begin with. Hush! I don't want any one to know I +am going to play that game. You can make the investment by the end of +the month. Say nothing to the Cruchots; that'll annoy them. If you are +really going to Paris, we will see if there is anything to be done for +my poor nephew." + +"Well, it's all settled. I'll start to-morrow by the mail-post," said +des Grassins aloud, "and I will come and take your last directions at +--what hour will suit you?" + +"Five o'clock, just before dinner," said Grandet, rubbing his hands. + +The two parties stayed on for a short time. Des Grassins said, after a +pause, striking Grandet on the shoulder,-- + +"It is a good thing to have a relation like him." + +"Yes, yes; without making a show," said Grandet, "I am a g-good +relation. I loved my brother, and I will prove it, unless it +c-c-costs--" + +"We must leave you, Grandet," said the banker, interrupting him +fortunately before he got to the end of his sentence. "If I hurry my +departure, I must attend to some matters at once." + +"Very good, very good! I myself--in c-consequence of what I t-told you +--I must retire to my own room and 'd-d-deliberate,' as President +Cruchot says." + +"Plague take him! I am no longer Monsieur de Bonfons," thought the +magistrate ruefully, his face assuming the expression of a judge bored +by an argument. + +The heads of the two factions walked off together. Neither gave any +further thought to the treachery Grandet had been guilty of in the +morning against the whole wine-growing community; each tried to fathom +what the other was thinking about the real intentions of the wily old +man in this new affair, but in vain. + +"Will you go with us to Madame Dorsonval's?" said des Grassins to the +notary. + +"We will go there later," answered the president. "I have promised to +say good-evening to Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt, and we will go there +first, if my uncle is willing." + +"Farewell for the present!" said Madame des Grassins. + +When the Cruchots were a few steps off, Adolphe remarked to his +father,-- + +"Are not they fuming, hein?" + +"Hold your tongue, my son!" said his mother; "they might hear you. +Besides, what you say is not in good taste,--law-school language." + +"Well, uncle," cried the president when he saw the des Grassins +disappearing, "I began by being de Bonfons, and I have ended as +nothing but Cruchot." + +"I saw that that annoyed you; but the wind has set fair for the des +Grassins. What a fool you are, with all your cleverness! Let them sail +off on Grandet's 'We'll see about it,' and keep yourself quiet, young +man. Eugenie will none the less be your wife." + +In a few moments the news of Grandet's magnanimous resolve was +disseminated in three houses at the same moment, and the whole town +began to talk of his fraternal devotion. Every one forgave Grandet for +the sale made in defiance of the good faith pledged to the community; +they admired his sense of honor, and began to laud a generosity of +which they had never thought him capable. It is part of the French +nature to grow enthusiastic, or angry, or fervent about some meteor of +the moment. Can it be that collective beings, nationalities, peoples, +are devoid of memory? + +When Pere Grandet had shut the door he called Nanon. + +"Don't let the dog loose, and don't go to bed; we have work to do +together. At eleven o'clock Cornoiller will be at the door with the +chariot from Froidfond. Listen for him and prevent his knocking; tell +him to come in softly. Police regulations don't allow nocturnal +racket. Besides, the whole neighborhood need not know that I am +starting on a journey." + +So saying, Grandet returned to his private room, where Nanon heard him +moving about, rummaging, and walking to and fro, though with much +precaution, for he evidently did not wish to wake his wife and +daughter, and above all not to rouse the attention of his nephew, whom +he had begun to anathematize when he saw a thread of light under his +door. About the middle of the night Eugenie, intent on her cousin, +fancied she heard a cry like that of a dying person. It must be +Charles, she thought; he was so pale, so full of despair when she had +seen him last,--could he have killed himself? She wrapped herself +quickly in a loose garment,--a sort of pelisse with a hood,--and was +about to leave the room when a bright light coming through the chinks +of her door made her think of fire. But she recovered herself as she +heard Nanon's heavy steps and gruff voice mingling with the snorting +of several horses. + +"Can my father be carrying off my cousin?" she said to herself, +opening her door with great precaution lest it should creak, and yet +enough to let her see into the corridor. + +Suddenly her eye encountered that of her father; and his glance, vague +and unnoticing as it was, terrified her. The goodman and Nanon were +yoked together by a stout stick, each end of which rested on their +shoulders; a stout rope was passed over it, on which was slung a small +barrel or keg like those Pere Grandet still made in his bakehouse as +an amusement for his leisure hours. + +"Holy Virgin, how heavy it is!" said the voice of Nanon. + +"What a pity that it is only copper sous!" answered Grandet. "Take +care you don't knock over the candlestick." + +The scene was lighted by a single candle placed between two rails of +the staircase. + +"Cornoiller," said Grandet to his keeper /in partibus/, "have you +brought your pistols?" + +"No, monsieur. Mercy! what's there to fear for your copper sous?" + +"Oh! nothing," said Pere Grandet. + +"Besides, we shall go fast," added the man; "your farmers have picked +out their best horses." + +"Very good. You did not tell them where I was going?" + +"I didn't know where." + +"Very good. Is the carriage strong?" + +"Strong? hear to that, now! Why, it can carry three thousand weight. +How much does that old keg weigh?" + +"Goodness!" exclaimed Nanon. "I ought to know! There's pretty nigh +eighteen hundred--" + +"Will you hold your tongue, Nanon! You are to tell my wife I have gone +into the country. I shall be back to dinner. Drive fast, Cornoiller; I +must get to Angers before nine o'clock." + +The carriage drove off. Nanon bolted the great door, let loose the +dog, and went off to bed with a bruised shoulder, no one in the +neighborhood suspecting either the departure of Grandet or the object +of his journey. The precautions of the old miser and his reticence +were never relaxed. No one had ever seen a penny in that house, filled +as it was with gold. Hearing in the morning, through the gossip of the +port, that exchange on gold had doubled in price in consequence of +certain military preparations undertaken at Nantes, and that +speculators had arrived at Angers to buy coin, the old wine-grower, by +the simple process of borrowing horses from his farmers, seized the +chance of selling his gold and of bringing back in the form of +treasury notes the sum he intended to put into the Funds, having +swelled it considerably by the exchange. + + + +VIII + +"My father has gone," thought Eugenie, who heard all that took place +from the head of the stairs. Silence was restored in the house, and +the distant rumbling of the carriage, ceasing by degrees, no longer +echoed through the sleeping town. At this moment Eugenie heard in her +heart, before the sound caught her ears, a cry which pierced the +partitions and came from her cousin's chamber. A line of light, thin +as the blade of a sabre, shone through a chink in the door and fell +horizontally on the balusters of the rotten staircase. + +"He suffers!" she said, springing up the stairs. A second moan brought +her to the landing near his room. The door was ajar, she pushed it +open. Charles was sleeping; his head hung over the side of the old +armchair, and his hand, from which the pen had fallen, nearly touched +the floor. The oppressed breathing caused by the strained posture +suddenly frightened Eugenie, who entered the room hastily. + +"He must be very tired," she said to herself, glancing at a dozen +letters lying sealed upon the table. She read their addresses: "To +Messrs. Farry, Breilmann, & Co., carriage-makers"; "To Monsieur +Buisson, tailor," etc. + +"He has been settling all his affairs, so as to leave France at once," +she thought. Her eyes fell upon two open letters. The words, "My dear +Annette," at the head of one of them, blinded her for a moment. Her +heart beat fast, her feet were nailed to the floor. + +"His dear Annette! He loves! he is loved! No hope! What does he say to +her?" + +These thoughts rushed through her head and heart. She saw the words +everywhere, even on the bricks of the floor, in letters of fire. + +"Resign him already? No, no! I will not read the letter. I ought to go +away--What if I do read it?" + +She looked at Charles, then she gently took his head and placed it +against the back of the chair; he let her do so, like a child which, +though asleep, knows its mother's touch and receives, without awaking, +her kisses and watchful care. Like a mother Eugenie raised the +drooping hand, and like a mother she gently kissed the chestnut hair-- +"Dear Annette!" a demon shrieked the words in her ear. + +"I am doing wrong; but I must read it, that letter," she said. She +turned away her head, for her noble sense of honor reproached her. For +the first time in her life good and evil struggled together in her +heart. Up to that moment she had never had to blush for any action. +Passion and curiosity triumphed. As she read each sentence her heart +swelled more and more, and the keen glow which filled her being as she +did so, only made the joys of first love still more precious. + + My dear Annette,--Nothing could ever have separated us but the + great misfortune which has now overwhelmed me, and which no human + foresight could have prevented. My father has killed himself; his + fortune and mine are irretrievably lost. I am orphaned at an age + when, through the nature of my education, I am still a child; and + yet I must lift myself as a man out of the abyss into which I am + plunged. I have just spent half the night in facing my position. + If I wish to leave France an honest man,--and there is no doubt of + that,--I have not a hundred francs of my own with which to try my + fate in the Indies or in America. Yes, my poor Anna, I must seek + my fortune in those deadly climates. Under those skies, they tell + me, I am sure to make it. As for remaining in Paris, I cannot do + so. Neither my nature nor my face are made to bear the affronts, + the neglect, the disdain shown to a ruined man, the son of a + bankrupt! Good God! think of owing two millions! I should be + killed in a duel the first week; therefore I shall not return + there. Your love--the most tender and devoted love which ever + ennobled the heart of man--cannot draw me back. Alas! my beloved, + I have no money with which to go to you, to give and receive a + last kiss from which I might derive some strength for my forlorn + enterprise. + +"Poor Charles! I did well to read the letter. I have gold; I will give +it to him," thought Eugenie. + +She wiped her eyes, and went on reading. + + I have never thought of the miseries of poverty. If I have the + hundred louis required for the mere costs of the journey, I have + not a sou for an outfit. But no, I have not the hundred louis, not + even one louis. I don't know that anything will be left after I + have paid my debts in Paris. If I have nothing, I shall go quietly + to Nantes and ship as a common sailor; and I will begin in the new + world like other men who have started young without a sou and + brought back the wealth of the Indies. During this long day I have + faced my future coolly. It seems more horrible for me than for + another, because I have been so petted by a mother who adored me, + so indulged by the kindest of fathers, so blessed by meeting, on + my entrance into life, with the love of an Anna! The flowers of + life are all I have ever known. Such happiness could not last. + Nevertheless, my dear Annette, I feel more courage than a careless + young man is supposed to feel,--above all a young man used to the + caressing ways of the dearest woman in all Paris, cradled in + family joys, on whom all things smiled in his home, whose wishes + were a law to his father--oh, my father! Annette, he is dead! + + Well, I have thought over my position, and yours as well. I have + grown old in twenty-four hours. Dear Anna, if in order to keep me + with you in Paris you were to sacrifice your luxury, your dress, + your opera-box, we should even then not have enough for the + expenses of my extravagant ways of living. Besides, I would never + accept such sacrifices. No, we must part now and forever-- + +"He gives her up! Blessed Virgin! What happiness!" + +Eugenie quivered with joy. Charles made a movement, and a chill of +terror ran through her. Fortunately, he did not wake, and she resumed +her reading. + + When shall I return? I do not know. The climate of the West Indies + ages a European, so they say; especially a European who works + hard. Let us think what may happen ten years hence. In ten years + your daughter will be eighteen; she will be your companion, your + spy. To you society will be cruel, and your daughter perhaps more + cruel still. We have seen cases of the harsh social judgment and + ingratitude of daughters; let us take warning by them. Keep in the + depths of your soul, as I shall in mine, the memory of four years + of happiness, and be faithful, if you can, to the memory of your + poor friend. I cannot exact such faithfulness, because, do you + see, dear Annette, I must conform to the exigencies of my new + life; I must take a commonplace view of them and do the best I + can. Therefore I must think of marriage, which becomes one of the + necessities of my future existence; and I will admit to you that I + have found, here in Saumur, in my uncle's house, a cousin whose + face, manners, mind, and heart would please you, and who, besides, + seems to me-- + +"He must have been very weary to have ceased writing to her," thought +Eugenie, as she gazed at the letter which stopped abruptly in the +middle of the last sentence. + +Already she defended him. How was it possible that an innocent girl +should perceive the cold-heartedness evinced by this letter? To young +girls religiously brought up, whose minds are ignorant and pure, all +is love from the moment they set their feet within the enchanted +regions of that passion. They walk there bathed in a celestial light +shed from their own souls, which reflects its rays upon their lover; +they color all with the flame of their own emotion and attribute to +him their highest thoughts. A woman's errors come almost always from +her belief in good or her confidence in truth. In Eugenie's simple +heart the words, "My dear Annette, my loved one," echoed like the +sweetest language of love; they caressed her soul as, in childhood, +the divine notes of the /Venite adoremus/, repeated by the organ, +caressed her ear. Moreover, the tears which still lingered on the +young man's lashes gave signs of that nobility of heart by which young +girls are rightly won. How could she know that Charles, though he +loved his father and mourned him truly, was moved far more by paternal +goodness than by the goodness of his own heart? Monsieur and Madame +Guillaume Grandet, by gratifying every fancy of their son, and +lavishing upon him the pleasures of a large fortune, had kept him from +making the horrible calculations of which so many sons in Paris become +more or less guilty when, face to face with the enjoyments of the +world, they form desires and conceive schemes which they see with +bitterness must be put off or laid aside during the lifetime of their +parents. The liberality of the father in this instance had shed into +the heart of the son a real love, in which there was no afterthought +of self-interest. + +Nevertheless, Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs +of society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already an +old man under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful +education of social life, of that world where in one evening more +crimes are committed in thought and speech than justice ever punishes +at the assizes; where jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest +ideas; where no one is counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and +to see clear in that world is to believe in nothing, neither in +feelings, nor in men, nor even in events,--for events are falsified. +There, to "see clear" we must weigh a friend's purse daily, learn how +to keep ourselves adroitly on the top of the wave, cautiously admire +nothing, neither works of art nor glorious actions, and remember that +self-interest is the mainspring of all things here below. After +committing many follies, the great lady--the beautiful Annette-- +compelled Charles to think seriously; with her perfumed hand among his +curls, she talked to him of his future position; as she rearranged his +locks, she taught him lessons of worldly prudence; she made him +effeminate and materialized him,--a double corruption, but a delicate +and elegant corruption, in the best taste. + +"You are very foolish, Charles," she would say to him. "I shall have a +great deal of trouble in teaching you to understand the world. You +behaved extremely ill to Monsieur des Lupeaulx. I know very well he is +not an honorable man; but wait till he is no longer in power, then you +may despise him as much as you like. Do you know what Madame Campan +used to tell us?--'My dears, as long as a man is a minister, adore +him; when he falls, help to drag him in the gutter. Powerful, he is a +sort of god; fallen, he is lower than Marat in the sewer, because he +is living, and Marat is dead. Life is a series of combinations, and +you must study them and understand them if you want to keep yourselves +always in good position.'" + +Charles was too much a man of the world, his parents had made him too +happy, he had received too much adulation in society, to be possessed +of noble sentiments. The grain of gold dropped by his mother into his +heart was beaten thin in the smithy of Parisian society; he had spread +it superficially, and it was worn away by the friction of life. +Charles was only twenty-one years old. At that age the freshness of +youth seems inseparable from candor and sincerity of soul. The voice, +the glance, the face itself, seem in harmony with the feelings; and +thus it happens that the sternest judge, the most sceptical lawyer, +the least complying of usurers, always hesitate to admit decrepitude +of heart or the corruption of worldly calculation while the eyes are +still bathed in purity and no wrinkles seam the brow. Charles, so far, +had had no occasion to apply the maxims of Parisian morality; up to +this time he was still endowed with the beauty of inexperience. And +yet, unknown to himself, he had been inoculated with selfishness. The +germs of Parisian political economy, latent in his heart, would +assuredly burst forth, sooner or later, whenever the careless +spectator became an actor in the drama of real life. + +Nearly all young girls succumb to the tender promises such an outward +appearance seems to offer: even if Eugenie had been as prudent and +observing as provincial girls are often found to be, she was not +likely to distrust her cousin when his manners, words, and actions +were still in unison with the aspirations of a youthful heart. A mere +chance--a fatal chance--threw in her way the last effusions of real +feeling which stirred the young man's soul; she heard as it were the +last breathings of his conscience. She laid down the letter--to her so +full of love--and began smilingly to watch her sleeping cousin; the +fresh illusions of life were still, for her at least, upon his face; +she vowed to herself to love him always. Then she cast her eyes on the +other letter, without attaching much importance to this second +indiscretion; and though she read it, it was only to obtain new proofs +of the noble qualities which, like all women, she attributed to the +man her heart had chosen. + + My dear Alphonse,--When you receive this letter I shall be without + friends; but let me assure you that while I doubt the friendship + of the world, I have never doubted yours. I beg you therefore to + settle all my affairs, and I trust to you to get as much as you + can out of my possessions. By this time you know my situation. I + have nothing left, and I intend to go at once to the Indies. I + have just written to all the people to whom I think I owe money, + and you will find enclosed a list of their names, as correct as I + can make it from memory. My books, my furniture, my pictures, my + horses, etc., ought, I think, to pay my debts. I do not wish to + keep anything, except, perhaps, a few baubles which might serve as + the beginning of an outfit for my enterprise. My dear Alphonse, I + will send you a proper power of attorney under which you can make + these sales. Send me all my weapons. Keep Briton for yourself; + nobody would pay the value of that noble beast, and I would rather + give him to you--like a mourning-ring bequeathed by a dying man to + his executor. Farry, Breilmann, & Co. built me a very comfortable + travelling-carriage, which they have not yet delivered; persuade + them to keep it and not ask for any payment on it. If they refuse, + do what you can in the matter, and avoid everything that might + seem dishonorable in me under my present circumstances. I owe the + British Islander six louis, which I lost at cards; don't fail to + pay him-- + +"Dear cousin!" whispered Eugenie, throwing down the letter and running +softly back to her room, carrying one of the lighted candles. A thrill +of pleasure passed over her as she opened the drawer of an old oak +cabinet, a fine specimen of the period called the Renaissance, on +which could still be seen, partly effaced, the famous royal +salamander. She took from the drawer a large purse of red velvet with +gold tassels, edged with a tarnished fringe of gold wire,--a relic +inherited from her grandmother. She weighed it proudly in her hand, +and began with delight to count over the forgotten items of her little +hoard. First she took out twenty /portugaises/, still new, struck in +the reign of John V., 1725, worth by exchange, as her father told her, +five /lisbonnines/, or a hundred and sixty-eight francs, sixty-four +centimes each; their conventional value, however, was a hundred and +eighty francs apiece, on account of the rarity and beauty of the +coins, which shone like little suns. Item, five /genovines/, or five +hundred-franc pieces of Genoa; another very rare coin worth eighty- +seven francs on exchange, but a hundred francs to collectors. These +had formerly belonged to old Monsieur de la Bertelliere. Item, three +gold /quadruples/, Spanish, of Philip V., struck in 1729, given to her +one by one by Madame Gentillet, who never failed to say, using the +same words, when she made the gift, "This dear little canary, this +little yellow-boy, is worth ninety-eight francs! Keep it, my pretty +one, it will be the flower of your treasure." Item (that which her +father valued most of all, the gold of these coins being twenty-three +carats and a fraction), a hundred Dutch ducats, made in the year 1756, +and worth thirteen francs apiece. Item, a great curiosity, a species +of medal precious to the soul of misers,--three rupees with the sign +of the Scales, and five rupees with the sign of the Virgin, all in +pure gold of twenty-four carats; the magnificent money of the Great +Mogul, each of which was worth by mere weight thirty-seven francs, +forty centimes, but at least fifty francs to those connoisseurs who +love to handle gold. Item, the napoleon of forty francs received the +day before, which she had forgotten to put away in the velvet purse. +This treasure was all in virgin coins, true works of art, which +Grandet from time to time inquired after and asked to see, pointing +out to his daughter their intrinsic merits,--such as the beauty of the +milled edge, the clearness of the flat surface, the richness of the +lettering, whose angles were not yet rubbed off. + +Eugenie gave no thought to these rarities, nor to her father's mania +for them, nor to the danger she incurred in depriving herself of a +treasure so dear to him; no, she thought only of her cousin, and soon +made out, after a few mistakes of calculation, that she possessed +about five thousand eight hundred francs in actual value, which might +be sold for their additional value to collectors for nearly six +thousand. She looked at her wealth and clapped her hands like a happy +child forced to spend its overflowing joy in artless movements of the +body. Father and daughter had each counted up their fortune this +night,--he, to sell his gold; Eugenie to fling hers into the ocean of +affection. She put the pieces back into the old purse, took it in her +hand, and ran upstairs without hesitation. The secret misery of her +cousin made her forget the hour and conventional propriety; she was +strong in her conscience, in her devotion, in her happiness. + +As she stood upon the threshold of the door, holding the candle in one +hand and the purse in the other, Charles woke, caught sight of her, +and remained speechless with surprise. Eugenie came forward, put the +candle on the table, and said in a quivering voice: + +"My cousin, I must beg pardon for a wrong I have done you; but God +will pardon me--if you--will help me to wipe it out." + +"What is it?" asked Charles, rubbing his eyes. + +"I have read those letters." + +Charles colored. + +"How did it happen?" she continued; "how came I here? Truly, I do not +know. I am tempted not to regret too much that I have read them; they +have made me know your heart, your soul, and--" + +"And what?" asked Charles. + +"Your plans, your need of a sum--" + +"My dear cousin--" + +"Hush, hush! my cousin, not so loud; we must not wake others. See," +she said, opening her purse, "here are the savings of a poor girl who +wants nothing. Charles, accept them! This morning I was ignorant of +the value of money; you have taught it to me. It is but a means, after +all. A cousin is almost a brother; you can surely borrow the purse of +your sister." + +Eugenie, as much a woman as a young girl, never dreamed of refusal; +but her cousin remained silent. + +"Oh! you will not refuse?" cried Eugenie, the beatings of whose heart +could be heard in the deep silence. + +Her cousin's hesitation mortified her; but the sore need of his +position came clearer still to her mind, and she knelt down. + +"I will never rise till you have taken that gold!" she said. "My +cousin, I implore you, answer me! let me know if you respect me, if +you are generous, if--" + +As he heard this cry of noble distress the young man's tears fell upon +his cousin's hands, which he had caught in his own to keep her from +kneeling. As the warm tears touched her, Eugenie sprang to the purse +and poured its contents upon the table. + +"Ah! yes, yes, you consent?" she said, weeping with joy. "Fear +nothing, my cousin, you will be rich. This gold will bring you +happiness; some day you shall bring it back to me,--are we not +partners? I will obey all conditions. But you should not attach such +value to the gift." + +Charles was at last able to express his feelings. + +"Yes, Eugenie; my soul would be small indeed if I did not accept. And +yet,--gift for gift, confidence for confidence." + +"What do you mean?" she said, frightened. + +"Listen, dear cousin; I have here--" He interrupted himself to point +out a square box covered with an outer case of leather which was on +the drawers. "There," he continued, "is something as precious to me as +life itself. This box was a present from my mother. All day I have +been thinking that if she could rise from her grave, she would herself +sell the gold which her love for me lavished on this dressing-case; +but were I to do so, the act would seem to me a sacrilege." Eugenie +pressed his hand as she heard these last words. "No," he added, after +a slight pause, during which a liquid glance of tenderness passed +between them, "no, I will neither sell it nor risk its safety on my +journey. Dear Eugenie, you shall be its guardian. Never did friend +commit anything more sacred to another. Let me show it to you." + +He went to the box, took it from its outer coverings, opened it, and +showed his delighted cousin a dressing-case where the rich workmanship +gave to the gold ornaments a value far above their weight. + +"What you admire there is nothing," he said, pushing a secret spring +which opened a hidden drawer. "Here is something which to me is worth +the whole world." He drew out two portraits, masterpieces of Madame +Mirbel, richly set with pearls. + +"Oh, how beautiful! Is it the lady to whom you wrote that--" + +"No," he said, smiling; "this is my mother, and here is my father, +your aunt and uncle. Eugenie, I beg you on my knees, keep my treasure +safely. If I die and your little fortune is lost, this gold and these +pearls will repay you. To you alone could I leave these portraits; you +are worthy to keep them. But destroy them at last, so that they may +pass into no other hands." Eugenie was silent. "Ah, yes, say yes! You +consent?" he added with winning grace. + +Hearing the very words she had just used to her cousin now addressed +to herself, she turned upon him a look of love, her first look of +loving womanhood,--a glance in which there is nearly as much of +coquetry as of inmost depth. He took her hand and kissed it. + +"Angel of purity! between us two money is nothing, never can be +anything. Feeling, sentiment, must be all henceforth." + +"You are like your mother,--was her voice as soft as yours?" + +"Oh! much softer--" + +"Yes, for you," she said, dropping her eyelids. "Come, Charles, go to +bed; I wish it; you must be tired. Good-night." She gently disengaged +her hand from those of her cousin, who followed her to her room, +lighting the way. When they were both upon the threshold,-- + +"Ah!" he said, "why am I ruined?" + +"What matter?--my father is rich; I think so," she answered. + +"Poor child!" said Charles, making a step into her room and leaning +his back against the wall, "if that were so, he would never have let +my father die; he would not let you live in this poor way; he would +live otherwise himself." + +"But he owns Froidfond." + +"What is Froidfond worth?" + +"I don't know; but he has Noyers." + +"Nothing but a poor farm!" + +"He has vineyards and fields." + +"Mere nothing," said Charles disdainfully. "If your father had only +twenty-four thousand francs a year do you suppose you would live in +this cold, barren room?" he added, making a step in advance. "Ah! +there you will keep my treasures," he said, glancing at the old +cabinet, as if to hide his thoughts. + +"Go and sleep," she said, hindering his entrance into the disordered +room. + +Charles stepped back, and they bid each other good-night with a mutual +smile. + +Both fell asleep in the same dream; and from that moment the youth +began to wear roses with his mourning. The next day, before breakfast, +Madame Grandet found her daughter in the garden in company with +Charles. The young man was still sad, as became a poor fellow who, +plunged in misfortune, measures the depths of the abyss into which he +has fallen, and sees the terrible burden of his whole future life. + +"My father will not be home till dinner-time," said Eugenie, +perceiving the anxious look on her mother's face. + +It was easy to trace in the face and manners of the young girl and in +the singular sweetness of her voice a unison of thought between her +and her cousin. Their souls had espoused each other, perhaps before +they even felt the force of the feelings which bound them together. +Charles spent the morning in the hall, and his sadness was respected. +Each of the three women had occupations of her own. Grandet had left +all his affairs unattended to, and a number of persons came on +business,--the plumber, the mason, the slater, the carpenter, the +diggers, the dressers, the farmers; some to drive a bargain about +repairs, others to pay their rent or to be paid themselves for +services. Madame Grandet and Eugenie were obliged to go and come and +listen to the interminable talk of all these workmen and country folk. +Nanon put away in her kitchen the produce which they brought as +tribute. She always waited for her master's orders before she knew +what portion was to be used in the house and what was to be sold in +the market. It was the goodman's custom, like that of a great many +country gentlemen, to drink his bad wine and eat his spoiled fruit. + +Towards five in the afternoon Grandet returned from Angers, having +made fourteen thousand francs by the exchange on his gold, bringing +home in his wallet good treasury-notes which bore interest until the +day he should invest them in the Funds. He had left Cornoiller at +Angers to look after the horses, which were well-nigh foundered, with +orders to bring them home slowly after they were rested. + +"I have got back from Angers, wife," he said; "I am hungry." + +Nanon called out to him from the kitchen: "Haven't you eaten anything +since yesterday?" + +"Nothing," answered the old man. + +Nanon brought in the soup. Des Grassins came to take his client's +orders just as the family sat down to dinner. Grandet had not even +observed his nephew. + +"Go on eating, Grandet," said the banker; "we can talk. Do you know +what gold is worth in Angers? They have come from Nantes after it? I +shall send some of ours." + +"Don't send any," said Grandet; "they have got enough. We are such old +friends, I ought to save you from such a loss of time." + +"But gold is worth thirteen francs fifty centimes." + +"Say /was/ worth--" + +"Where the devil have they got any?" + +"I went to Angers last night," answered Grandet in a low voice. + +The banker shook with surprise. Then a whispered conversation began +between the two, during which Grandet and des Grassins frequently +looked at Charles. Presently des Grassins gave a start of +astonishment; probably Grandet was then instructing him to invest the +sum which was to give him a hundred thousand francs a year in the +Funds. + +"Monsieur Grandet," said the banker to Charles, "I am starting for +Paris; if you have any commissions--" + +"None, monsieur, I thank you," answered Charles. + +"Thank him better than that, nephew. Monsieur is going to settle the +affairs of the house of Guillaume Grandet." + +"Is there any hope?" said Charles eagerly. + +"What!" exclaimed his uncle, with well-acted pride, "are you not my +nephew? Your honor is ours. Is not your name Grandet?" + +Charles rose, seized Pere Grandet, kissed him, turned pale, and left +the room. Eugenie looked at her father with admiration. + +"Well, good-by, des Grassins; it is all in your hands. Decoy those +people as best you can; lead 'em by the nose." + +The two diplomatists shook hands. The old cooper accompanied the +banker to the front door. Then, after closing it, he came back and +plunged into his armchair, saying to Nanon,-- + +"Get me some black-currant ratafia." + +Too excited, however, to remain long in one place, he got up, looked +at the portrait of Monsieur de la Bertelliere, and began to sing, +doing what Nanon called his dancing steps,-- + + "Dans les gardes francaises + J'avais un bon papa." + +Nanon, Madame Grandet, and Eugenie looked at each other in silence. +The hilarity of the master always frightened them when it reached its +climax. The evening was soon over. Pere Grandet chose to go to bed +early, and when he went to bed, everybody else was expected to go too; +like as when Augustus drank, Poland was drunk. On this occasion Nanon, +Charles, and Eugenie were not less tired than the master. As for +Madame Grandet, she slept, ate, drank, and walked according to the +will of her husband. However, during the two hours consecrated to +digestion, the cooper, more facetious than he had ever been in his +life, uttered a number of his own particular apothegms,--a single one +of which will give the measure of his mind. When he had drunk his +ratafia, he looked at his glass and said,-- + +"You have no sooner put your lips to a glass than it is empty! Such is +life. You can't have and hold. Gold won't circulate and stay in your +purse. If it were not for that, life would be too fine." + +He was jovial and benevolent. When Nanon came with her spinning-wheel, +"You must be tired," he said; "put away your hemp." + +"Ah, bah! then I shall get sleepy," she answered. + +"Poor Nanon! Will you have some ratafia?" + +"I won't refuse a good offer; madame makes it a deal better than the +apothecaries. What they sell is all drugs." + +"They put too much sugar," said the master; "you can't taste anything +else." + + + +IX + +The following day the family, meeting at eight o'clock for the early +breakfast, made a picture of genuine domestic intimacy. Grief had +drawn Madame Grandet, Eugenie, and Charles /en rapport/; even Nanon +sympathized, without knowing why. The four now made one family. As to +the old man, his satisfied avarice and the certainty of soon getting +rid of the dandy without having to pay more than his journey to +Nantes, made him nearly indifferent to his presence in the house. He +left the two children, as he called Charles and Eugenie, free to +conduct themselves as they pleased, under the eye of Madame Grandet, +in whom he had implicit confidence as to all that concerned public and +religious morality. He busied himself in straightening the boundaries +of his fields and ditches along the high-road, in his poplar- +plantations beside the Loire, in the winter work of his vineyards, and +at Froidfond. All these things occupied his whole time. + +For Eugenie the springtime of love had come. Since the scene at night +when she gave her little treasure to her cousin, her heart had +followed the treasure. Confederates in the same secret, they looked at +each other with a mutual intelligence which sank to the depth of their +consciousness, giving a closer communion, a more intimate relation to +their feelings, and putting them, so to speak, beyond the pale of +ordinary life. Did not their near relationship warrant the gentleness +in their tones, the tenderness in their glances? Eugenie took delight +in lulling her cousin's pain with the pretty childish joys of a new- +born love. Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love +and the birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and +softest glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden +future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its +head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow +and its tears of joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the pretty +pebbles with which to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers +forgotten as soon as plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming +time, to spring forward into life? Love is our second transformation. +Childhood and love were one and the same thing to Eugenie and to +Charles; it was a first passion, with all its child-like play,--the +more caressing to their hearts because they now were wrapped in +sadness. Struggling at birth against the gloom of mourning, their love +was only the more in harmony with the provincial plainness of that +gray and ruined house. As they exchanged a few words beside the well +in the silent court, or lingered in the garden for the sunset hour, +sitting on a mossy seat saying to each other the infinite nothings of +love, or mused in the silent calm which reigned between the house and +the ramparts like that beneath the arches of a church, Charles +comprehended the sanctity of love; for his great lady, his dear +Annette, had taught him only its stormy troubles. At this moment he +left the worldly passion, coquettish, vain, and showy as it was, and +turned to the true, pure love. He loved even the house, whose customs +no longer seemed to him ridiculous. He got up early in the mornings +that he might talk with Eugenie for a moment before her father came to +dole out the provisions; when the steps of the old man sounded on the +staircase he escaped into the garden. The small criminality of this +morning /tete-a-tete/ which Nanon pretended not to see, gave to their +innocent love the lively charm of a forbidden joy. + +After breakfast, when Grandet had gone to his fields and his other +occupations, Charles remained with the mother and daughter, finding an +unknown pleasure in holding their skeins, in watching them at work, in +listening to their quiet prattle. The simplicity of this half-monastic +life, which revealed to him the beauty of these souls, unknown and +unknowing of the world, touched him keenly. He had believed such +morals impossible in France, and admitted their existence nowhere but +in Germany; even so, they seemed to him fabulous, only real in the +novels of Auguste Lafontaine. Soon Eugenie became to him the Margaret +of Goethe--before her fall. Day by day his words, his looks enraptured +the poor girl, who yielded herself up with delicious non-resistance to +the current of love; she caught her happiness as a swimmer seizes the +overhanging branch of a willow to draw himself from the river and lie +at rest upon its shore. Did no dread of a coming absence sadden the +happy hours of those fleeting days? Daily some little circumstance +reminded them of the parting that was at hand. + +Three days after the departure of des Grassins, Grandet took his +nephew to the Civil courts, with the solemnity which country people +attach to all legal acts, that he might sign a deed surrendering his +rights in his father's estate. Terrible renunciation! species of +domestic apostasy! Charles also went before Maitre Cruchot to make two +powers of attorney,--one for des Grassins, the other for the friend +whom he had charged with the sale of his belongings. After that he +attended to all the formalities necessary to obtain a passport for +foreign countries; and finally, when he received his simple mourning +clothes from Paris, he sent for the tailor of Saumur and sold to him +his useless wardrobe. This last act pleased Grandet exceedingly. + +"Ah! now you look like a man prepared to embark and make your +fortune," he said, when Charles appeared in a surtout of plain black +cloth. "Good! very good!" + +"I hope you will believe, monsieur," answered his nephew, "that I +shall always try to conform to my situation." + +"What's that?" said his uncle, his eyes lighting up at a handful of +gold which Charles was carrying. + +"Monsieur, I have collected all my buttons and rings and other +superfluities which may have some value; but not knowing any one in +Saumur, I wanted to ask you to--" + +"To buy them?" said Grandet, interrupting him. + +"No, uncle; only to tell me of an honest man who--" + +"Give me those things, I will go upstairs and estimate their value; I +will come back and tell you what it is to a fraction. Jeweller's +gold," examining a long chain, "eighteen or nineteen carats." + +The goodman held out his huge hand and received the mass of gold, +which he carried away. + +"Cousin," said Grandet, "may I offer you these two buttons? They can +fasten ribbons round your wrists; that sort of bracelet is much the +fashion just now." + +"I accept without hesitation," she answered, giving him an +understanding look. + +"Aunt, here is my mother's thimble; I have always kept it carefully in +my dressing-case," said Charles, presenting a pretty gold thimble to +Madame Grandet, who for many years had longed for one. + +"I cannot thank you; no words are possible, my nephew," said the poor +mother, whose eyes filled with tears. "Night and morning in my prayers +I shall add one for you, the most earnest of all--for those who +travel. If I die, Eugenie will keep this treasure for you." + +"They are worth nine hundred and eighty-nine francs, seventy-five +centimes," said Grandet, opening the door. "To save you the pain of +selling them, I will advance the money--in /livres/." + +The word /livres/ on the littoral of the Loire signifies that crown +prices of six /livres/ are to be accepted as six francs without +deduction. + +"I dared not propose it to you," answered Charles; "but it was most +repugnant to me to sell my jewels to some second-hand dealer in your +own town. People should wash their dirty linen at home, as Napoleon +said. I thank you for your kindness." + +Grandet scratched his ear, and there was a moment's silence. + +"My dear uncle," resumed Charles, looking at him with an uneasy air, +as if he feared to wound his feelings, "my aunt and cousin have been +kind enough to accept a trifling remembrance of me. Will you allow me +to give you these sleeve-buttons, which are useless to me now? They +will remind you of a poor fellow who, far away, will always think of +those who are henceforth all his family." + +"My lad, my lad, you mustn't rob yourself this way! Let me see, wife, +what have you got?" he added, turning eagerly to her. "Ah! a gold +thimble. And you, little girl? What! diamond buttons? Yes, I'll accept +your present, nephew," he answered, shaking Charles by the hand. "But +--you must let me--pay--your--yes, your passage to the Indies. Yes, I +wish to pay your passage because--d'ye see, my boy?--in valuing your +jewels I estimated only the weight of the gold; very likely the +workmanship is worth something. So let us settle it that I am to give +you fifteen hundred francs--in /livres/; Cruchot will lend them to me. +I haven't got a copper farthing here,--unless Perrotet, who is +behindhand with his rent, should pay up. By the bye, I'll go and see +him." + +He took his hat, put on his gloves, and went out. + +"Then you are really going?" said Eugenie to her cousin, with a sad +look, mingled with admiration. + +"I must," he said, bowing his head. + +For some days past, Charles's whole bearing, manners, and speech had +become those of a man who, in spite of his profound affliction, feels +the weight of immense obligations and has the strength to gather +courage from misfortune. He no longer repined, he became a man. +Eugenie never augured better of her cousin's character than when she +saw him come down in the plain black clothes which suited well with +his pale face and sombre countenance. On that day the two women put on +their own mourning, and all three assisted at a Requiem celebrated in +the parish church for the soul of the late Guillaume Grandet. + +At the second breakfast Charles received letters from Paris and began +to read them. + +"Well, cousin, are you satisfied with the management of your affairs?" +said Eugenie in a low voice. + +"Never ask such questions, my daughter," said Grandet. "What the +devil! do I tell you my affairs? Why do you poke your nose into your +cousin's? Let the lad alone!" + +"Oh! I haven't any secrets," said Charles. + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta, nephew; you'll soon find out that you must hold your +tongue in business." + +When the two lovers were alone in the garden, Charles said to Eugenie, +drawing her down on the old bench beneath the walnut-tree,-- + +"I did right to trust Alphonse; he has done famously. He has managed +my affairs with prudence and good faith. I now owe nothing in Paris. +All my things have been sold; and he tells me that he has taken the +advice of an old sea-captain and spent three thousand francs on a +commercial outfit of European curiosities which will be sure to be in +demand in the Indies. He has sent my trunks to Nantes, where a ship is +loading for San Domingo. In five days, Eugenie, we must bid each other +farewell--perhaps forever, at least for years. My outfit and ten +thousand francs, which two of my friends send me, are a very small +beginning. I cannot look to return for many years. My dear cousin, do +not weight your life in the scales with mine; I may perish; some good +marriage may be offered to you--" + +"Do you love me?" she said. + +"Oh, yes! indeed, yes!" he answered, with a depth of tone that +revealed an equal depth of feeling. + +"I shall wait, Charles--Good heavens! there is my father at his +window," she said, repulsing her cousin, who leaned forward to kiss +her. + +She ran quickly under the archway. Charles followed her. When she saw +him, she retreated to the foot of the staircase and opened the swing- +door; then, scarcely knowing where she was going, Eugenie reached the +corner near Nanon's den, in the darkest end of the passage. There +Charles caught her hand and drew her to his heart. Passing his arm +about her waist, he made her lean gently upon him. Eugenie no longer +resisted; she received and gave the purest, the sweetest, and yet, +withal, the most unreserved of kisses. + +"Dear Eugenie, a cousin is better than a brother, for he can marry +you," said Charles. + +"So be it!" cried Nanon, opening the door of her lair. + +The two lovers, alarmed, fled into the hall, where Eugenie took up her +work and Charles began to read the litanies of the Virgin in Madame +Grandet's prayer-book. + +"Mercy!" cried Nanon, "now they're saying their prayers." + +As soon as Charles announced his immediate departure, Grandet +bestirred himself to testify much interest in his nephew. He became +very liberal of all that cost him nothing; took pains to find a +packer; declared the man asked too much for his cases; insisted on +making them himself out of old planks; got up early in the morning to +fit and plane and nail together the strips, out of which he made, to +his own satisfaction, some strong cases, in which he packed all +Charles's effects; he also took upon himself to send them by boat down +the Loire, to insure them, and get them to Nantes in proper time. + +After the kiss taken in the passage, the hours fled for Eugenie with +frightful rapidity. Sometimes she thought of following her cousin. +Those who have known that most endearing of all passions,--the one +whose duration is each day shortened by time, by age, by mortal +illness, by human chances and fatalities,--they will understand the +poor girl's tortures. She wept as she walked in the garden, now so +narrow to her, as indeed the court, the house, the town all seemed. +She launched in thought upon the wide expanse of the ocean he was +about to traverse. At last the eve of his departure came. That +morning, in the absence of Grandet and of Nanon, the precious case +which contained the two portraits was solemnly installed in the only +drawer of the old cabinet which could be locked, where the now empty +velvet purse was lying. This deposit was not made without a goodly +number of tears and kisses. When Eugenie placed the key within her +bosom she had no courage to forbid the kiss with which Charles sealed +the act. + +"It shall never leave that place, my friend," she said. + +"Then my heart will be always there." + +"Ah! Charles, it is not right," she said, as though she blamed him. + +"Are we not married?" he said. "I have thy promise,--then take mine." + +"Thine; I am thine forever!" they each said, repeating the words twice +over. + +No promise made upon this earth was ever purer. The innocent sincerity +of Eugenie had sanctified for a moment the young man's love. + +On the morrow the breakfast was sad. Nanon herself, in spite of the +gold-embroidered robe and the Jeannette cross bestowed by Charles, had +tears in her eyes. + +"The poor dear monsieur who is going on the seas--oh, may God guide +him!" + +At half-past ten the whole family started to escort Charles to the +diligence for Nantes. Nanon let loose the dog, locked the door, and +insisted on carrying the young man's carpet-bag. All the tradesmen in +the tortuous old street were on the sill of their shop-doors to watch +the procession, which was joined in the market-place by Maitre +Cruchot. + +"Eugenie, be sure you don't cry," said her mother. + +"Nephew," said Grandet, in the doorway of the inn from which the coach +started, kissing Charles on both cheeks, "depart poor, return rich; +you will find the honor of your father safe. I answer for that myself, +I--Grandet; for it will only depend on you to--" + +"Ah! my uncle, you soften the bitterness of my departure. Is it not +the best gift that you could make me?" + +Not understanding his uncle's words which he had thus interrupted, +Charles shed tears of gratitude upon the tanned cheeks of the old +miser, while Eugenie pressed the hand of her cousin and that of her +father with all her strength. The notary smiled, admiring the sly +speech of the old man, which he alone had understood. The family stood +about the coach until it started; then as it disappeared upon the +bridge, and its rumble grew fainter in the distance, Grandet said: + +"Good-by to you!" + +Happily no one but Maitre Cruchot heard the exclamation. Eugenie and +her mother had gone to a corner of the quay from which they could +still see the diligence and wave their white handkerchiefs, to which +Charles made answer by displaying his. + +"Ah! mother, would that I had the power of God for a single moment," +said Eugenie, when she could no longer see her lover's handkerchief. + +***** + +Not to interrupt the current of events which are about to take place +in the bosom of the Grandet family, it is necessary to cast a +forestalling eye upon the various operations which the goodman carried +on in Paris by means of Monsieur des Grassins. A month after the +latter's departure from Saumur, Grandet, became possessed of a +certificate of a hundred thousand francs a year from his investment in +the Funds, bought at eighty francs net. The particulars revealed at +his death by the inventory of his property threw no light upon the +means which his suspicious nature took to remit the price of the +investment and receive the certificate thereof. Maitre Cruchot was of +opinion that Nanon, unknown to herself, was the trusty instrument by +which the money was transported; for about this time she was absent +five days, under a pretext of putting things to rights at Froidfond,-- +as if the goodman were capable of leaving anything lying about or out +of order! + +In all that concerned the business of the house of Guillaume Grandet +the old cooper's intentions were fulfilled to the letter. The Bank of +France, as everybody knows, affords exact information about all the +large fortunes in Paris and the provinces. The names of des Grassins +and Felix Grandet of Saumur were well known there, and they enjoyed +the esteem bestowed on financial celebrities whose wealth comes from +immense and unencumbered territorial possessions. The arrival of the +Saumur banker for the purpose, it was said, of honorably liquidating +the affairs of Grandet of Paris, was enough to avert the shame of +protested notes from the memory of the defunct merchant. The seals on +the property were taken off in presence of the creditors, and the +notary employed by Grandet went to work at once on the inventory of +the assets. Soon after this, des Grassins called a meeting of the +creditors, who unanimously elected him, conjointly with Francois +Keller, the head of a rich banking-house and one of those principally +interested in the affair, as liquidators, with full power to protect +both the honor of the family and the interests of the claimants. The +credit of Grandet of Saumur, the hopes he diffused by means of des +Grassins in the minds of all concerned, facilitated the transactions. +Not a single creditor proved recalcitrant; no one thought of passing +his claim to his profit-and-loss account; each and all said +confidently, "Grandet of Saumur will pay." + +Six months went by. The Parisians had redeemed the notes in +circulation as they fell due, and held them under lock and key in +their desks. First result aimed at by the old cooper! Nine months +after this preliminary meeting, the two liquidators distributed forty- +seven per cent to each creditor on his claim. This amount was obtained +by the sale of the securities, property, and possessions of all kinds +belonging to the late Guillaume Grandet, and was paid over with +scrupulous fidelity. Unimpeachable integrity was shown in the +transaction. The creditors gratefully acknowledged the remarkable and +incontestable honor displayed by the Grandets. When these praises had +circulated for a certain length of time, the creditors asked for the +rest of their money. It became necessary to write a collective letter +to Grandet of Saumur. + +"Here it comes!" said the old man as he threw the letter into the +fire. "Patience, my good friends!" + +In answer to the proposals contained in the letter, Grandet of Saumur +demanded that all vouchers for claims against the estate of his +brother should be deposited with a notary, together with aquittances +for the forty-seven per cent already paid; he made this demand under +pretence of sifting the accounts and finding out the exact condition +of the estate. It roused at once a variety of difficulties. Generally +speaking, the creditor is a species of maniac, ready to agree to +anything one day, on the next breathing fire and slaughter; later on, +he grows amicable and easy-going. To-day his wife is good-humored, his +last baby has cut its first tooth, all is well at home, and he is +determined not to lose a sou; on the morrow it rains, he can't go out, +he is gloomy, he says yes to any proposal that is made to him, so long +as it will put an end to the affair; on the third day he declares he +must have guarantees; by the end of the month he wants his debtor's +head, and becomes at heart an executioner. The creditor is a good deal +like the sparrow on whose tail confiding children are invited to put +salt,--with this difference, that he applies the image to his claim, +the proceeds of which he is never able to lay hold of. Grandet had +studied the atmospheric variations of creditors, and the creditors of +his brother justified all his calculations. Some were angry, and +flatly refused to give in their vouchers. + +"Very good; so much the better," said Grandet, rubbing his hands over +the letter in which des Grassins announced the fact. + +Others agreed to the demand, but only on condition that their rights +should be fully guaranteed; they renounced none, and even reserved the +power of ultimately compelling a failure. On this began a long +correspondence, which ended in Grandet of Saumur agreeing to all +conditions. By means of this concession the placable creditors were +able to bring the dissatisfied creditors to reason. The deposit was +then made, but not without sundry complaints. + +"Your goodman," they said to des Grassins, "is tricking us." + +Twenty-three months after the death of Guillaume Grandet many of the +creditors, carried away by more pressing business in the markets of +Paris, had forgotten their Grandet claims, or only thought of them to +say: + +"I begin to believe that forty-seven per cent is all I shall ever get +out of that affair." + +The old cooper had calculated on the power of time, which, as he used +to say, is a pretty good devil after all. By the end of the third year +des Grassins wrote to Grandet that he had brought the creditors to +agree to give up their claims for ten per cent on the two million four +hundred thousand francs still due by the house of Grandet. Grandet +answered that the notary and the broker whose shameful failures had +caused the death of his brother were still living, that they might now +have recovered their credit, and that they ought to be sued, so as to +get something out of them towards lessening the total of the deficit. + +By the end of the fourth year the liabilities were definitely +estimated at a sum of twelve hundred thousand francs. Many +negotiations, lasting over six months, took place between the +creditors and the liquidators, and between the liquidators and +Grandet. To make a long story short, Grandet of Saumur, anxious by +this time to get out of the affair, told the liquidators, about the +ninth month of the fourth year, that his nephew had made a fortune in +the Indies and was disposed to pay his father's debts in full; he +therefore could not take upon himself to make any settlement without +previously consulting him; he had written to him, and was expecting an +answer. The creditors were held in check until the middle of the fifth +year by the words, "payment in full," which the wily old miser threw +out from time to time as he laughed in his beard, saying with a smile +and an oath, "Those Parisians!" + +But the creditors were reserved for a fate unexampled in the annals of +commerce. When the events of this history bring them once more into +notice, they will be found still in the position Grandet had resolved +to force them into from the first. + +As soon as the Funds reached a hundred and fifteen, Pere Grandet sold +out his interests and withdrew two million four hundred thousand +francs in gold, to which he added, in his coffers, the six hundred +thousand francs compound interest which he had derived from the +capital. Des Grassins now lived in Paris. In the first place he had +been made a deputy; then he became infatuated (father of a family as +he was, though horribly bored by the provincial life of Saumur) with a +pretty actress at the Theatre de Madame, known as Florine, and he +presently relapsed into the old habits of his army life. It is useless +to speak of his conduct; Saumur considered it profoundly immoral. His +wife was fortunate in the fact of her property being settled upon +herself, and in having sufficient ability to keep up the banking-house +in Saumur, which was managed in her name and repaired the breach in +her fortune caused by the extravagance of her husband. The Cruchotines +made so much talk about the false position of the quasi-widow that she +married her daughter very badly, and was forced to give up all hope of +an alliance between Eugenie Grandet and her son. Adolphe joined his +father in Paris and became, it was said, a worthless fellow. The +Cruchots triumphed. + +"Your husband hasn't common sense," said Grandet as he lent Madame des +Grassins some money on a note securely endorsed. "I am very sorry for +you, for you are a good little woman." + +"Ah, monsieur," said the poor lady, "who could have believed that when +he left Saumur to go to Paris on your business he was going to his +ruin?" + +"Heaven is my witness, madame, that up to the last moment I did all I +could to prevent him from going. Monsieur le president was most +anxious to take his place; but he was determined to go, and now we all +see why." + +In this way Grandet made it quite plain that he was under no +obligation to des Grassins. + +***** + +In all situations women have more cause for suffering than men, and +they suffer more. Man has strength and the power of exercising it; he +acts, moves, thinks, occupies himself; he looks ahead, and sees +consolation in the future. It was thus with Charles. But the woman +stays at home; she is always face to face with the grief from which +nothing distracts her; she goes down to the depths of the abyss which +yawns before her, measures it, and often fills it with her tears and +prayers. Thus did Eugenie. She initiated herself into her destiny. To +feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself,--is not this the sum of +woman's life? Eugenie was to be in all things a woman, except in the +one thing that consoles for all. Her happiness, picked up like nails +scattered on a wall--to use the fine simile of Bossuet--would never so +much as fill even the hollow of her hand. Sorrows are never long in +coming; for her they came soon. The day after Charles's departure the +house of Monsieur Grandet resumed its ordinary aspect in the eyes of +all, except in those of Eugenie, to whom it grew suddenly empty. She +wished, if it could be done unknown to her father, that Charles's room +might be kept as he had left it. Madame Grandet and Nanon were willing +accomplices in this /statu quo/. + +"Who knows but he may come back sooner than we think for?" she said. + +"Ah, don't I wish I could see him back!" answered Nanon. "I took to +him! He was such a dear, sweet young man,--pretty too, with his curly +hair." Eugenie looked at Nanon. "Holy Virgin! don't look at me that +way, mademoiselle; your eyes are like those of a lost soul." + +From that day the beauty of Mademoiselle Grandet took a new character. +The solemn thoughts of love which slowly filled her soul, and the +dignity of the woman beloved, gave to her features an illumination +such as painters render by a halo. Before the coming of her cousin, +Eugenie might be compared to the Virgin before the conception; after +he had gone, she was like the Virgin Mother,--she had given birth to +love. These two Marys so different, so well represented by Spanish +art, embody one of those shining symbols with which Christianity +abounds. + +Returning from Mass on the morning after Charles's departure,--having +made a vow to hear it daily,--Eugenie bought a map of the world, which +she nailed up beside her looking-glass, that she might follow her +cousin on his westward way, that she might put herself, were it ever +so little, day by day into the ship that bore him, and see him and ask +him a thousand questions,--"Art thou well? Dost thou suffer? Dost thou +think of me when the star, whose beauty and usefulness thou hast +taught me to know, shines upon thee?" In the mornings she sat pensive +beneath the walnut-tree, on the worm-eaten bench covered with gray +lichens, where they had said to each other so many precious things, so +many trifles, where they had built the pretty castles of their future +home. She thought of the future now as she looked upward to the bit of +sky which was all the high walls suffered her to see; then she turned +her eyes to the angle where the sun crept on, and to the roof above +the room in which he had slept. Hers was the solitary love, the +persistent love, which glides into every thought and becomes the +substance, or, as our fathers might have said, the tissue of life. +When the would-be friends of Pere Grandet came in the evening for +their game at cards, she was gay and dissimulating; but all the +morning she talked of Charles with her mother and Nanon. Nanon had +brought herself to see that she could pity the sufferings of her young +mistress without failing in her duty to the old master, and she would +say to Eugenie,-- + +"If I had a man for myself I'd--I'd follow him to hell, yes, I'd +exterminate myself for him; but I've none. I shall die and never know +what life is. Would you believe, mamz'elle, that old Cornoiller (a +good fellow all the same) is always round my petticoats for the sake +of my money,--just for all the world like the rats who come smelling +after the master's cheese and paying court to you? I see it all; I've +got a shrewd eye, though I am as big as a steeple. Well, mamz'elle, it +pleases me, but it isn't love." + + + +X + +Two months went by. This domestic life, once so monotonous, was now +quickened with the intense interest of a secret that bound these women +intimately together. For them Charles lived and moved beneath the grim +gray rafters of the hall. Night and morning Eugenie opened the +dressing-case and gazed at the portrait of her aunt. One Sunday +morning her mother surprised her as she stood absorbed in finding her +cousin's features in his mother's face. Madame Grandet was then for +the first time admitted into the terrible secret of the exchange made +by Charles against her daughter's treasure. + +"You gave him all!" cried the poor mother, terrified. "What will you +say to your father on New Year's Day when he asks to see your gold?" + +Eugenie's eyes grew fixed, and the two women lived through mortal +terror for more than half the morning. They were so troubled in mind +that they missed high Mass, and only went to the military service. In +three days the year 1819 would come to an end. In three days a +terrible drama would begin, a bourgeois tragedy, without poison, or +dagger, or the spilling of blood; but--as regards the actors in it-- +more cruel than all the fabled horrors in the family of the Atrides. + +"What will become of us?" said Madame Grandet to her daughter, letting +her knitting fall upon her knees. + +The poor mother had gone through such anxiety for the past two months +that the woollen sleeves which she needed for the coming winter were +not yet finished. This domestic fact, insignificant as it seems, bore +sad results. For want of those sleeves, a chill seized her in the +midst of a sweat caused by a terrible explosion of anger on the part +of her husband. + +"I have been thinking, my poor child, that if you had confided your +secret to me we should have had time to write to Monsieur des Grassins +in Paris. He might have sent us gold pieces like yours; though Grandet +knows them all, perhaps--" + +"Where could we have got the money?" + +"I would have pledged my own property. Besides, Monsieur des Grassins +would have--" + +"It is too late," said Eugenie in a broken, hollow voice. "To-morrow +morning we must go and wish him a happy New Year in his chamber." + +"But, my daughter, why should I not consult the Cruchots?" + +"No, no; it would be delivering me up to them, and putting ourselves +in their power. Besides, I have chosen my course. I have done right, I +repent of nothing. God will protect me. His will be done! Ah! mother, +if you had read his letter, you, too, would have thought only of him." + +The next morning, January 1, 1820, the horrible fear to which mother +and daughter were a prey suggested to their minds a natural excuse by +which to escape the solemn entrance into Grandet's chamber. The winter +of 1819-1820 was one of the coldest of that epoch. The snow encumbered +the roofs. + +Madame Grandet called to her husband as soon as she heard him stirring +in his chamber, and said,-- + +"Grandet, will you let Nanon light a fire here for me? The cold is so +sharp that I am freezing under the bedclothes. At my age I need some +comforts. Besides," she added, after a slight pause, "Eugenie shall +come and dress here; the poor child might get an illness from dressing +in her cold room in such weather. Then we will go and wish you a happy +New Year beside the fire in the hall." + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta, what a tongue! a pretty way to begin the new year, +Madame Grandet! You never talked so much before; but you haven't been +sopping your bread in wine, I know that." + +There was a moment's silence. + +"Well," resumed the goodman, who no doubt had some reason of his own +for agreeing to his wife's request, "I'll do what you ask, Madame +Grandet. You are a good woman, and I don't want any harm to happen to +you at your time of life,--though as a general thing the Bertellieres +are as sound as a roach. Hein! isn't that so?" he added after a pause. +"Well, I forgive them; we got their property in the end." And he +coughed. + +"You are very gay this morning, monsieur," said the poor woman +gravely. + +"I'm always gay,-- + + "'Gai, gai, gai, le tonnelier, + Raccommodez votre cuvier!'" + +he answered, entering his wife's room fully dressed. "Yes, on my word, +it is cold enough to freeze you solid. We shall have a fine breakfast, +wife. Des Grassins has sent me a pate-de-foie-gras truffled! I am +going now to get it at the coach-office. There'll be a double napoleon +for Eugenie in the package," he whispered in Madame Grandet's ear. "I +have no gold left, wife. I had a few stray pieces--I don't mind +telling you that--but I had to let them go in business." + +Then, by way of celebrating the new year, he kissed her on the +forehead. + +"Eugenie," cried the mother, when Grandet was fairly gone, "I don't +know which side of the bed your father got out of, but he is good- +tempered this morning. Perhaps we shall come out safe after all?" + +"What's happened to the master?" said Nanon, entering her mistress's +room to light the fire. "First place, he said, 'Good-morning; happy +New Year, you big fool! Go and light my wife's fire, she's cold'; and +then, didn't I feel silly when he held out his hand and gave me a six- +franc piece, which isn't worn one bit? Just look at it, madame! Oh, +the kind man! He is a good man, that's a fact. There are some people +who the older they get the harder they grow; but he,--why he's getting +soft and improving with time, like your ratafia! He is a good, good +man--" + +The secret of Grandet's joy lay in the complete success of his +speculation. Monsieur des Grassins, after deducting the amount which +the old cooper owed him for the discount on a hundred and fifty +thousand francs in Dutch notes, and for the surplus which he had +advanced to make up the sum required for the investment in the Funds +which was to produce a hundred thousand francs a year, had now sent +him, by the diligence, thirty thousand francs in silver coin, the +remainder of his first half-year's interest, informing him at the same +time that the Funds had already gone up in value. They were then +quoted at eighty-nine; the shrewdest capitalists bought in, towards +the last of January, at ninety-three. Grandet had thus gained in two +months twelve per cent on his capital; he had simplified his accounts, +and would in future receive fifty thousand francs interest every six +months, without incurring any taxes or costs for repairs. He +understood at last what it was to invest money in the public +securities,--a system for which provincials have always shown a marked +repugnance,--and at the end of five years he found himself master of a +capital of six millions, which increased without much effort of his +own, and which, joined to the value and proceeds of his territorial +possessions, gave him a fortune that was absolutely colossal. The six +francs bestowed on Nanon were perhaps the reward of some great service +which the poor servant had rendered to her master unawares. + +"Oh! oh! where's Pere Grandet going? He has been scurrying about since +sunrise as if to a fire," said the tradespeople to each other as they +opened their shops for the day. + +When they saw him coming back from the wharf, followed by a porter +from the coach-office wheeling a barrow which was laden with sacks, +they all had their comments to make:-- + +"Water flows to the river; the old fellow was running after his gold," +said one. + +"He gets it from Paris and Froidfond and Holland," said another. + +"He'll end by buying up Saumur," cried a third. + +"He doesn't mind the cold, he's so wrapped up in his gains," said a +wife to her husband. + +"Hey! hey! Monsieur Grandet, if that's too heavy for you," said a +cloth-dealer, his nearest neighbor, "I'll take it off your hands." + +"Heavy?" said the cooper, "I should think so; it's all sous!" + +"Silver sous," said the porter in a low voice. + +"If you want me to take care of you, keep your tongue between your +teeth," said the goodman to the porter as they reached the door. + +"The old fox! I thought he was deaf; seems he can hear fast enough in +frosty weather." + +"Here's twenty sous for your New Year, and /mum/!" said Grandet. "Be +off with you! Nanon shall take back your barrow. Nanon, are the +linnets at church?" + +"Yes, monsieur." + +"Then lend a hand! go to work!" he cried, piling the sacks upon her. +In a few moments all were carried up to his inner room, where he shut +himself in with them. "When breakfast is ready, knock on the wall," he +said as he disappeared. "Take the barrow back to the coach-office." + +The family did not breakfast that day until ten o'clock. + +"Your father will not ask to see your gold downstairs," said Madame +Grandet as they got back from Mass. "You must pretend to be very +chilly. We may have time to replace the treasure before your fete- +day." + +Grandet came down the staircase thinking of his splendid speculation +in government securities, and wondering how he could metamorphose his +Parisian silver into solid gold; he was making up his mind to invest +in this way everything he could lay hands on until the Funds should +reach a par value. Fatal reverie for Eugenie! As soon as he came in, +the two women wished him a happy New Year,--his daughter by putting +her arms round his neck and caressing him; Madame Grandet gravely and +with dignity. + +"Ha! ha! my child," he said, kissing his daughter on both cheeks. "I +work for you, don't you see? I think of your happiness. Must have +money to be happy. Without money there's not a particle of happiness. +Here! there's a new napoleon for you. I sent to Paris for it. On my +word of honor, it's all the gold I have; you are the only one that has +got any gold. I want to see your gold, little one." + +"Oh! it is too cold; let us have breakfast," answered Eugenie. + +"Well, after breakfast, then; it will help the digestion. That fat +des Grassins sent me the pate. Eat as much as you like, my children, +it costs nothing. Des Grassins is getting along very well. I am +satisfied with him. The old fish is doing Charles a good service, and +gratis too. He is making a very good settlement of that poor deceased +Grandet's business. Hoo! hoo!" he muttered, with his mouth full, after +a pause, "how good it is! Eat some, wife; that will feed you for at +least two days." + +"I am not hungry. I am very poorly; you know that." + +"Ah, bah! you can stuff yourself as full as you please without danger, +you're a Bertelliere; they are all hearty. You are a bit yellow, +that's true; but I like yellow, myself." + +The expectation of ignominious and public death is perhaps less +horrible to a condemned criminal than the anticipation of what was +coming after breakfast to Madame Grandet and Eugenie. The more +gleefully the old man talked and ate, the more their hearts shrank +within them. The daughter, however, had an inward prop at this crisis, +--she gathered strength through love. + +"For him! for him!" she cried within her, "I would die a thousand +deaths." + +At this thought, she shot a glance at her mother which flamed with +courage. + +"Clear away," said Grandet to Nanon when, about eleven o'clock, +breakfast was over, "but leave the table. We can spread your little +treasure upon it," he said, looking at Eugenie. "Little? Faith! no; it +isn't little. You possess, in actual value, five thousand nine hundred +and fifty-nine francs and the forty I gave you just now. That makes +six thousand francs, less one. Well, now see here, little one! I'll +give you that one franc to make up the round number. Hey! what are you +listening for, Nanon? Mind your own business; go and do your work." + +Nanon disappeared. + +"Now listen, Eugenie; you must give me back your gold. You won't +refuse your father, my little girl, hein?" + +The two women were dumb. + +"I have no gold myself. I had some, but it is all gone. I'll give you +in return six thousand francs in /livres/, and you are to put them +just where I tell you. You mustn't think anything more about your +'dozen.' When I marry you (which will be soon) I shall get you a +husband who can give you the finest 'dozen' ever seen in the +provinces. Now attend to me, little girl. There's a fine chance for +you; you can put your six thousand francs into government funds, and +you will receive every six months nearly two hundred francs interest, +without taxes, or repairs, or frost, or hail, or floods, or anything +else to swallow up the money. Perhaps you don't like to part with your +gold, hey, my girl? Never mind, bring it to me all the same. I'll get +you some more like it,--like those Dutch coins and the /portugaises/, +the rupees of Mogul, and the /genovines/,--I'll give you some more on +your fete-days, and in three years you'll have got back half your +little treasure. What's that you say? Look up, now. Come, go and get +it, the precious metal. You ought to kiss me on the eyelids for +telling you the secrets and the mysteries of the life and death of +money. Yes, silver and gold live and swarm like men; they come, and +go, and sweat, and multiply--" + +Eugenie rose; but after making a few steps towards the door she turned +abruptly, looked her father in the face, and said,-- + +"I have not got /my/ gold." + +"You have not got your gold!" cried Grandet, starting up erect, like a +horse that hears a cannon fired beside him. + +"No, I have not got it." + +"You are mistaken, Eugenie." + +"No." + +"By the shears of my father!" + +Whenever the old man swore that oath the rafters trembled. + +"Holy Virgin! Madame is turning pale," cried Nanon. + +"Grandet, your anger will kill me," said the poor mother. + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta! nonsense; you never die in your family! Eugenie, what +have you done with your gold?" he cried, rushing upon her. + +"Monsieur," said the daughter, falling at Madame Grandet's knees, "my +mother is ill. Look at her; do not kill her." + +Grandet was frightened by the pallor which overspread his wife's face, +usually so yellow. + +"Nanon, help me to bed," said the poor woman in a feeble voice; "I am +dying--" + +Nanon gave her mistress an arm, Eugenie gave her another; but it was +only with infinite difficulty that they could get her upstairs, she +fell with exhaustion at every step. Grandet remained alone. However, +in a few moments he went up six or eight stairs and called out,-- + +"Eugenie, when your mother is in bed, come down." + +"Yes, father." + +She soon came, after reassuring her mother. + +"My daughter," said Grandet, "you will now tell me what you have done +with your gold." + +"My father, if you make me presents of which I am not the sole +mistress, take them back," she answered coldly, picking up the +napoleon from the chimney-piece and offering it to him. + +Grandet seized the coin and slipped it into his breeches' pocket. + +"I shall certainly never give you anything again. Not so much as +that!" he said, clicking his thumb-nail against a front tooth. "Do you +dare to despise your father? have you no confidence in him? Don't you +know what a father is? If he is nothing for you, he is nothing at all. +Where is your gold?" + +"Father, I love and respect you, in spite of your anger; but I humbly +ask you to remember that I am twenty-three years old. You have told me +often that I have attained my majority, and I do not forget it. I have +used my money as I chose to use it, and you may be sure that it was +put to a good use--" + +"What use?" + +"That is an inviolable secret," she answered. "Have you no secrets?" + +"I am the head of the family; I have my own affairs." + +"And this is mine." + +"It must be something bad if you can't tell it to your father, +Mademoiselle Grandet." + +"It is good, and I cannot tell it to my father." + +"At least you can tell me when you parted with your gold?" + +Eugenie made a negative motion with her head. + +"You had it on your birthday, hein?" + +She grew as crafty through love as her father was through avarice, and +reiterated the negative sign. + +"Was there ever such obstinacy! It's a theft," cried Grandet, his +voice going up in a crescendo which gradually echoed through the +house. "What! here, in my own home, under my very eyes, somebody has +taken your gold!--the only gold we have!--and I'm not to know who has +got it! Gold is a precious thing. Virtuous girls go wrong sometimes, +and give--I don't know what; they do it among the great people, and +even among the bourgeoisie. But give their gold!--for you have given +it to some one, hein?--" + +Eugenie was silent and impassive. + +"Was there ever such a daughter? Is it possible that I am your father? +If you have invested it anywhere, you must have a receipt--" + +"Was I free--yes or no--to do what I would with my own? Was it not +mine?" + +"You are a child." + +"Of age." + +Dumbfounded by his daughter's logic, Grandet turned pale and stamped +and swore. When at last he found words, he cried: "Serpent! Cursed +girl! Ah, deceitful creature! You know I love you, and you take +advantage of it. She'd cut her father's throat! Good God! you've given +our fortune to that ne'er-do-well,--that dandy with morocco boots! By +the shears of my father! I can't disinherit you, but I curse you,--you +and your cousin and your children! Nothing good will come of it! Do +you hear? If it was to Charles--but, no; it's impossible. What! has +that wretched fellow robbed me?--" + +He looked at his daughter, who continued cold and silent. + +"She won't stir; she won't flinch! She's more Grandet than I'm +Grandet! Ha! you have not given your gold for nothing? Come, speak the +truth!" + +Eugenie looked at her father with a sarcastic expression that stung +him. + +"Eugenie, you are here, in my house,--in your father's house. If you +wish to stay here, you must submit yourself to me. The priests tell +you to obey me." Eugenie bowed her head. "You affront me in all I hold +most dear. I will not see you again until you submit. Go to your +chamber. You will stay there till I give you permission to leave it. +Nanon will bring you bread and water. You hear me--go!" + +Eugenie burst into tears and fled up to her mother. Grandet, after +marching two or three times round the garden in the snow without +heeding the cold, suddenly suspected that his daughter had gone to her +mother; only too happy to find her disobedient to his orders, he +climbed the stairs with the agility of a cat and appeared in Madame +Grandet's room just as she was stroking Eugenie's hair, while the +girl's face was hidden in her motherly bosom. + +"Be comforted, my poor child," she was saying; "your father will get +over it." + +"She has no father!" said the old man. "Can it be you and I, Madame +Grandet, who have given birth to such a disobedient child? A fine +education,--religious, too! Well! why are you not in your chamber? +Come, to prison, to prison, mademoiselle!" + +"Would you deprive me of my daughter, monsieur?" said Madame Grandet, +turning towards him a face that was now red with fever. + +"If you want to keep her, carry her off! Clear out--out of my house, +both of you! Thunder! where is the gold? what's become of the gold?" + +Eugenie rose, looked proudly at her father, and withdrew to her room. +Grandet turned the key of the door. + +"Nanon," he cried, "put out the fire in the hall." + +Then he sat down in an armchair beside his wife's fire and said to +her,-- + +"Undoubtedly she has given the gold to that miserable seducer, +Charles, who only wanted our money." + +"I knew nothing about it," she answered, turning to the other side of +the bed, that she might escape the savage glances of her husband. "I +suffer so much from your violence that I shall never leave this room, +if I trust my own presentiments, till I am carried out of it in my +coffin. You ought to have spared me this suffering, monsieur,--you, to +whom I have caused no pain; that is, I think so. Your daughter loves +you. I believe her to be as innocent as the babe unborn. Do not make +her wretched. Revoke your sentence. The cold is very severe; you may +give her some serious illness." + +"I will not see her, neither will I speak to her. She shall stay in +her room, on bread and water, until she submits to her father. What +the devil! shouldn't a father know where the gold in his house has +gone to? She owned the only rupees in France, perhaps, and the Dutch +ducats and the /genovines/--" + +"Monsieur, Eugenie is our only child; and even if she had thrown them +into the water--" + +"Into the water!" cried her husband; "into the water! You are crazy, +Madame Grandet! What I have said is said; you know that well enough. +If you want peace in this household, make your daughter confess, pump +it out of her. Women understand how to do that better than we do. +Whatever she has done, I sha'n't eat her. Is she afraid of me? Even if +she has plastered Charles with gold from head to foot, he is on the +high seas, and nobody can get at him, hein!" + +"But, monsieur--" Excited by the nervous crisis through which she had +passed, and by the fate of her daughter, which brought forth all her +tenderness and all her powers of mind, Madame Grandet suddenly +observed a frightful movement of her husband's wen, and, in the very +act of replying, she changed her speech without changing the tones of +her voice,--"But, monsieur, I have not more influence over her than +you have. She has said nothing to me; she takes after you." + +"Tut, tut! Your tongue is hung in the middle this morning. Ta, ta, ta, +ta! You are setting me at defiance, I do believe. I daresay you are in +league with her." + +He looked fixedly at his wife. + +"Monsieur Grandet, if you wish to kill me, you have only to go on like +this. I tell you, monsieur,--and if it were to cost me my life, I +would say it,--you do wrong by your daughter; she is more in the right +than you are. That money belonged to her; she is incapable of making +any but a good use of it, and God alone has the right to know our good +deeds. Monsieur, I implore you, take Eugenie back into favor; forgive +her. If you will do this you will lessen the injury your anger has +done me; perhaps you will save my life. My daughter! oh, monsieur, +give me back my daughter!" + +"I shall decamp," he said; "the house is not habitable. A mother and +daughter talking and arguing like that! Broooouh! Pouah! A fine New +Year's present you've made me, Eugenie," he called out. "Yes, yes, cry +away! What you've done will bring you remorse, do you hear? What's the +good of taking the sacrament six times every three months, if you give +away your father's gold secretly to an idle fellow who'll eat your +heart out when you've nothing else to give him? You'll find out some +day what your Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and +supercilious airs. He has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to +carry off a young girl's treasure without the consent of her parents." + +When the street-door was shut, Eugenie came out of her room and went +to her mother. + +"What courage you have had for your daughter's sake!" she said. + +"Ah! my child, see where forbidden things may lead us. You forced me +to tell a lie." + +"I will ask God to punish only me." + +"Is it true," cried Nanon, rushing in alarmed, "that mademoiselle is +to be kept on bread and water for the rest of her life?" + +"What does that signify, Nanon?" said Eugenie tranquilly. + +"Goodness! do you suppose I'll eat /frippe/ when the daughter of the +house is eating dry bread? No, no!" + +"Don't say a word about all this, Nanon," said Eugenie. + +"I'll be as mute as a fish; but you'll see!" + +***** + +Grandet dined alone for the first time in twenty-four years. + +"So you're a widower, monsieur," said Nanon; "it must be disagreeable +to be a widower with two women in the house." + +"I did not speak to you. Hold your jaw, or I'll turn you off! What is +that I hear boiling in your saucepan on the stove?" + +"It is grease I'm trying out." + +"There will be some company to-night. Light the fire." + +The Cruchots, Madame des Grassins, and her son arrived at the usual +hour of eight, and were surprised to see neither Madame Grandet nor +her daughter. + +"My wife is not very well, and Eugenie is with her," said the old +wine-grower, whose face betrayed no emotion. + +At the end of an hour spent in idle conversation, Madame des Grassins, +who had gone up to see Madame Grandet, came down, and every one +inquired,-- + +"How is Madame Grandet?" + +"Not at all well," she answered; "her condition seems to me really +alarming. At her age you ought to take every precaution, Papa +Grandet." + +"We'll see about it," said the old man in an absent way. + +They all wished him good-night. When the Cruchots got into the street +Madame des Grassins said to them,-- + +"There is something going on at the Grandets. The mother is very ill +without her knowing it. The girl's eyes are red, as if she had been +crying all day. Can they be trying to marry her against her will?" + +***** + +When Grandet had gone to bed Nanon came softly to Eugenie's room in +her stockinged feet and showed her a pate baked in a saucepan. + +"See, mademoiselle," said the good soul, "Cornoiller gave me a hare. +You eat so little that this pate will last you full a week; in such +frosty weather it won't spoil. You sha'n't live on dry bread, I'm +determined; it isn't wholesome." + +"Poor Nanon!" said Eugenie, pressing her hand. + +"I've made it downright good and dainty, and /he/ never found it out. +I bought the lard and the spices out of my six francs: I'm the +mistress of my own money"; and she disappeared rapidly, fancying she +heard Grandet. + + + +XI + +For several months the old wine-grower came constantly to his wife's +room at all hours of the day, without ever uttering his daughter's +name, or seeing her, or making the smallest allusion to her. Madame +Grandet did not leave her chamber, and daily grew worse. Nothing +softened the old man; he remained unmoved, harsh, and cold as a +granite rock. He continued to go and come about his business as usual; +but ceased to stutter, talked less, and was more obdurate in business +transactions than ever before. Often he made mistakes in adding up his +figures. + +"Something is going on at the Grandets," said the Grassinists and the +Cruchotines. + +"What has happened in the Grandet family?" became a fixed question +which everybody asked everybody else at the little evening-parties of +Saumur. Eugenie went to Mass escorted by Nanon. If Madame des Grassins +said a few words to her on coming out of church, she answered in an +evasive manner, without satisfying any curiosity. However, at the end +of two months, it became impossible to hide, either from the three +Cruchots or from Madame des Grassins, the fact that Eugenie was in +confinement. There came a moment when all pretexts failed to explain +her perpetual absence. Then, though it was impossible to discover by +whom the secret had been betrayed, all the town became aware that ever +since New Year's day Mademoiselle Grandet had been kept in her room +without fire, on bread and water, by her father's orders, and that +Nanon cooked little dainties and took them to her secretly at night. +It was even known that the young woman was not able to see or take +care of her mother, except at certain times when her father was out of +the house. + +Grandet's conduct was severely condemned. The whole town outlawed him, +so to speak; they remembered his treachery, his hard-heartedness, and +they excommunicated him. When he passed along the streets, people +pointed him out and muttered at him. When his daughter came down the +winding street, accompanied by Nanon, on her way to Mass or Vespers, +the inhabitants ran to the windows and examined with intense curiosity +the bearing of the rich heiress and her countenance, which bore the +impress of angelic gentleness and melancholy. Her imprisonment and the +condemnation of her father were as nothing to her. Had she not a map +of the world, the little bench, the garden, the angle of the wall? Did +she not taste upon her lips the honey that love's kisses left there? +She was ignorant for a time that the town talked about her, just as +Grandet himself was ignorant of it. Pious and pure in heart before +God, her conscience and her love helped her to suffer patiently the +wrath and vengeance of her father. + +One deep grief silenced all others. Her mother, that gentle, tender +creature, made beautiful by the light which shone from the inner to +the outer as she approached the tomb,--her mother was perishing from +day to day. Eugenie often reproached herself as the innocent cause of +the slow, cruel malady that was wasting her away. This remorse, though +her mother soothed it, bound her still closer to her love. Every +morning, as soon as her father left the house, she went to the bedside +of her mother, and there Nanon brought her breakfast. The poor girl, +sad, and suffering through the sufferings of her mother, would turn +her face to the old servant with a mute gesture, weeping, and yet not +daring to speak of her cousin. It was Madame Grandet who first found +courage to say,-- + +"Where is /he/? Why does /he/ not write?" + +"Let us think about him, mother, but not speak of him. You are ill-- +you, before all." + +"All" meant "him." + +"My child," said Madame Grandet, "I do not wish to live. God protects +me and enables me to look with joy to the end of my misery." + +Every utterance of this woman was unfalteringly pious and Christian. +Sometimes, during the first months of the year, when her husband came +to breakfast with her and tramped up and down the room, she would say +to him a few religious words, always spoken with angelic sweetness, +yet with the firmness of a woman to whom approaching death lends a +courage she had lacked in life. + +"Monsieur, I thank you for the interest you take in my health," she +would answer when he made some commonplace inquiry; "but if you really +desire to render my last moments less bitter and to ease my grief, +take back your daughter: be a Christian, a husband, and a father." + +When he heard these words, Grandet would sit down by the bed with the +air of a man who sees the rain coming and quietly gets under the +shelter of a gateway till it is over. When these touching, tender, and +religious supplications had all been made, he would say,-- + +"You are rather pale to-day, my poor wife." + +Absolute forgetfulness of his daughter seemed graven on his stony +brow, on his closed lips. He was unmoved by the tears which flowed +down the white cheeks of his unhappy wife as she listened to his +meaningless answers. + +"May God pardon you," she said, "even as I pardon you! You will some +day stand in need of mercy." + +Since Madame Grandet's illness he had not dared to make use of his +terrible "Ta, ta, ta, ta!" Yet, for all that, his despotic nature was +not disarmed by this angel of gentleness, whose ugliness day by day +decreased, driven out by the ineffable expression of moral qualities +which shone upon her face. She was all soul. The spirit of prayer +seemed to purify her and refine those homely features and make them +luminous. Who has not seen the phenomenon of a like transfiguration on +sacred faces where the habits of the soul have triumphed over the +plainest features, giving them that spiritual illumination whose light +comes from the purity and nobility of the inward thought? The +spectacle of this transformation wrought by the struggle which +consumed the last shreds of the human life of this woman, did somewhat +affect the old cooper, though feebly, for his nature was of iron; if +his language ceased to be contemptuous, an imperturbable silence, +which saved his dignity as master of the household, took its place and +ruled his conduct. + +When the faithful Nanon appeared in the market, many quips and quirks +and complaints about the master whistled in her ears; but however +loudly public opinion condemned Monsieur Grandet, the old servant +defended him, for the honor of the family. + +"Well!" she would say to his detractors, "don't we all get hard as we +grow old? Why shouldn't he get horny too? Stop telling lies. +Mademoiselle lives like a queen. She's alone, that's true; but she +likes it. Besides, my masters have good reasons." + +At last, towards the end of spring, Madame Grandet, worn out by grief +even more than by illness, having failed, in spite of her prayers, to +reconcile the father and daughter, confided her secret troubles to the +Cruchots. + +"Keep a girl of twenty-three on bread and water!" cried Monsieur de +Bonfons; "without any reason, too! Why, that constitutes wrongful +cruelty; she can contest, as much in as upon--" + +"Come, nephew, spare us your legal jargon," said the notary. "Set your +mind at ease, madame; I will put a stop to such treatment to-morrow." + +Eugenie, hearing herself mentioned, came out of her room. + +"Gentlemen," she said, coming forward with a proud step, "I beg you +not to interfere in this matter. My father is master in his own house. +As long as I live under his roof I am bound to obey him. His conduct +is not subject to the approbation or the disapprobation of the world; +he is accountable to God only. I appeal to your friendship to keep +total silence in this affair. To blame my father is to attack our +family honor. I am much obliged to you for the interest you have shown +in me; you will do me an additional service if you will put a stop to +the offensive rumors which are current in the town, of which I am +accidentally informed." + +"She is right," said Madame Grandet. + +"Mademoiselle, the best way to stop such rumors is to procure your +liberty," answered the old notary respectfully, struck with the beauty +which seclusion, melancholy, and love had stamped upon her face. + +"Well, my daughter, let Monsieur Cruchot manage the matter if he is so +sure of success. He understands your father, and how to manage him. If +you wish to see me happy for my few remaining days, you must, at any +cost, be reconciled to your father." + +On the morrow Grandet, in pursuance of a custom he had begun since +Eugenie's imprisonment, took a certain number of turns up and down the +little garden; he had chosen the hour when Eugenie brushed and +arranged her hair. When the old man reached the walnut-tree he hid +behind its trunk and remained for a few moments watching his +daughter's movements, hesitating, perhaps, between the course to which +the obstinacy of his character impelled him and his natural desire to +embrace his child. Sometimes he sat down on the rotten old bench where +Charles and Eugenie had vowed eternal love; and then she, too, looked +at her father secretly in the mirror before which she stood. If he +rose and continued his walk, she sat down obligingly at the window and +looked at the angle of the wall where the pale flowers hung, where the +Venus-hair grew from the crevices with the bindweed and the sedum,--a +white or yellow stone-crop very abundant in the vineyards of Saumur +and at Tours. Maitre Cruchot came early, and found the old wine-grower +sitting in the fine June weather on the little bench, his back against +the division wall of the garden, engaged in watching his daughter. + +"What may you want, Maitre Cruchot?" he said, perceiving the notary. + +"I came to speak to you on business." + +"Ah! ah! have you brought some gold in exchange for my silver?" + +"No, no, I have not come about money; it is about your daughter +Eugenie. All the town is talking of her and you." + +"What does the town meddle for? A man's house is his castle." + +"Very true; and a man may kill himself if he likes, or, what is worse, +he may fling his money into the gutter." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Why, your wife is very ill, my friend. You ought to consult Monsieur +Bergerin; she is likely to die. If she does die without receiving +proper care, you will not be very easy in mind, I take it." + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta! you know a deal about my wife! These doctors, if they +once get their foot in your house, will come five and six times a +day." + +"Of course you will do as you think best. We are old friends; there is +no one in all Saumur who takes more interest than I in what concerns +you. Therefore, I was bound to tell you this. However, happen what +may, you have the right to do as you please; you can choose your own +course. Besides, that is not what brings me here. There is another +thing which may have serious results for you. After all, you can't +wish to kill your wife; her life is too important to you. Think of +your situation in connection with your daughter if Madame Grandet +dies. You must render an account to Eugenie, because you enjoy your +wife's estate only during her lifetime. At her death your daughter can +claim a division of property, and she may force you to sell Froidfond. +In short, she is her mother's heir, and you are not." + +These words fell like a thunderbolt on the old man, who was not as +wise about law as he was about business. He had never thought of a +legal division of the estate. + +"Therefore I advise you to treat her kindly," added Cruchot, in +conclusion. + +"But do you know what she has done, Cruchot?" + +"What?" asked the notary, curious to hear the truth and find out the +cause of the quarrel. + +"She has given away her gold!" + +"Well, wasn't it hers?" said the notary. + +"They all tell me that!" exclaimed the old man, letting his arms fall +to his sides with a movement that was truly tragic. + +"Are you going--for a mere nothing,"--resumed Cruchot, "to put +obstacles in the way of the concessions which you will be obliged to +ask from your daughter as soon as her mother dies?" + +"Do you call six thousand francs a mere nothing?" + +"Hey! my old friend, do you know what the inventory of your wife's +property will cost, if Eugenie demands the division?" + +"How much?" + +"Two, three, four thousand francs, perhaps! The property would have to +be put up at auction and sold, to get at its actual value. Instead of +that, if you are on good terms with--" + +"By the shears of my father!" cried Grandet, turning pale as he +suddenly sat down, "we will see about it, Cruchot." + +After a moment's silence, full of anguish perhaps, the old man looked +at the notary and said,-- + +"Life is very hard! It has many griefs! Cruchot," he continued +solemnly, "you would not deceive me? Swear to me upon your honor that +all you've told me is legally true. Show me the law; I must see the +law!" + +"My poor friend," said the notary, "don't I know my own business?" + +"Then it is true! I am robbed, betrayed, killed, destroyed by my own +daughter!" + +"It is true that your daughter is her mother's heir." + +"Why do we have children? Ah! my wife, I love her! Luckily she's sound +and healthy; she's a Bertelliere." + +"She has not a month to live." + +Grandet struck his forehead, went a few steps, came back, cast a +dreadful look on Cruchot, and said,-- + +"What can be done?" + +"Eugenie can relinquish her claim to her mother's property. Should she +do this you would not disinherit her, I presume?--but if you want to +come to such a settlement, you must not treat her harshly. What I am +telling you, old man, is against my own interests. What do I live by, +if it isn't liquidations, inventories, conveyances, divisions of +property?--" + +"We'll see, we'll see! Don't let's talk any more about it, Cruchot; it +wrings my vitals. Have you received any gold?" + +"No; but I have a few old louis, a dozen or so, which you may have. My +good friend, make it up with Eugenie. Don't you know all Saumur is +pelting you with stones?" + +"The scoundrels!" + +"Come, the Funds are at ninety-nine. Do be satisfied for once in your +life." + +"At ninety-nine! Are they, Cruchot?" + +"Yes." + +"Hey, hey! Ninety-nine!" repeated the old man, accompanying the notary +to the street-door. Then, too agitated by what he had just heard to +stay in the house, he went up to his wife's room and said,-- + +"Come, mother, you may have your daughter to spend the day with you. +I'm going to Froidfond. Enjoy yourselves, both of you. This is our +wedding-day, wife. See! here are sixty francs for your altar at the +Fete-Dieu; you've wanted one for a long time. Come, cheer up, enjoy +yourself, and get well! Hurrah for happiness!" + +He threw ten silver pieces of six francs each upon the bed, and took +his wife's head between his hands and kissed her forehead. + +"My good wife, you are getting well, are not you?" + +"How can you think of receiving the God of mercy in your house when +you refuse to forgive your daughter?" she said with emotion. + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" said Grandet in a coaxing voice. "We'll see about +that." + +"Merciful heaven! Eugenie," cried the mother, flushing with joy, "come +and kiss your father; he forgives you!" + +But the old man had disappeared. He was going as fast as his legs +could carry him towards his vineyards, trying to get his confused +ideas into order. Grandet had entered his seventy-sixth year. During +the last two years his avarice had increased upon him, as all the +persistent passions of men increase at a certain age. As if to +illustrate an observation which applies equally to misers, ambitious +men, and others whose lives are controlled by any dominant idea, his +affections had fastened upon one special symbol of his passion. The +sight of gold, the possession of gold, had become a monomania. His +despotic spirit had grown in proportion to his avarice, and to part +with the control of the smallest fraction of his property at the death +of his wife seemed to him a thing "against nature." To declare his +fortune to his daughter, to give an inventory of his property, landed +and personal, for the purposes of division-- + +"Why," he cried aloud in the midst of a field where he was pretending +to examine a vine, "it would be cutting my throat!" + +He came at last to a decision, and returned to Saumur in time for +dinner, resolved to unbend to Eugenie, and pet and coax her, that he +might die regally, holding the reins of his millions in his own hands +so long as the breath was in his body. At the moment when the old man, +who chanced to have his pass-key in his pocket, opened the door and +climbed with a stealthy step up the stairway to go into his wife's +room, Eugenie had brought the beautiful dressing-case from the oak +cabinet and placed it on her mother's bed. Mother and daughter, in +Grandet's absence, allowed themselves the pleasure of looking for a +likeness to Charles in the portrait of his mother. + +"It is exactly his forehead and his mouth," Eugenie was saying as the +old man opened the door. At the look which her husband cast upon the +gold, Madame Grandet cried out,-- + +"O God, have pity upon us!" + +The old man sprang upon the box as a famished tiger might spring upon +a sleeping child. + +"What's this?" he said, snatching the treasure and carrying it to the +window. "Gold, good gold!" he cried. "All gold,--it weighs two pounds! +Ha, ha! Charles gave you that for your money, did he? Hein! Why didn't +you tell me so? It was a good bargain, little one! Yes, you are my +daughter, I see that--" Eugenie trembled in every limb. "This came +from Charles, of course, didn't it?" continued the old man. + +"Yes, father; it is not mine. It is a sacred trust." + +"Ta, ta, ta, ta! He took your fortune, and now you can get it back." + +"Father!" + +Grandet took his knife to pry out some of the gold; to do this, he +placed the dressing-case on a chair. Eugenie sprang forward to recover +it; but her father, who had his eye on her and on the treasure too, +pushed her back so violently with a thrust of his arm that she fell +upon her mother's bed. + +"Monsieur, monsieur!" cried the mother, lifting herself up. + +Grandet had opened his knife, and was about to apply it to the gold. + +"Father!" cried Eugenie, falling on her knees and dragging herself +close to him with clasped hands, "father, in the name of all the +saints and the Virgin! in the name of Christ who died upon the cross! +in the name of your eternal salvation, father! for my life's sake, +father!--do not touch that! It is neither yours nor mine. It is a +trust placed in my hands by an unhappy relation: I must give it back +to him uninjured!" + +"If it is a trust, why were you looking at it? To look at it is as bad +as touching it." + +"Father, don't destroy it, or you will disgrace me! Father, do you +hear?" + +"Oh, have pity!" said the mother. + +"Father!" cried Eugenie in so startling a voice that Nanon ran +upstairs terrified. Eugenie sprang upon a knife that was close at +hand. + +"Well, what now?" said Grandet coldly, with a callous smile. + +"Oh, you are killing me!" said the mother. + +"Father, if your knife so much as cuts a fragment of that gold, I will +stab myself with this one! You have already driven my mother to her +death; you will now kill your child! Do as you choose! Wound for +wound!" + +Grandet held his knife over the dressing-case and hesitated as he +looked at his daughter. + +"Are you capable of doing it, Eugenie?" he said. + +"Yes, yes!" said the mother. + +"She'll do it if she says so!" cried Nanon. "Be reasonable, monsieur, +for once in your life." + +The old man looked at the gold and then at his daughter alternately +for an instant. Madame Grandet fainted. + +"There! don't you see, monsieur, that madame is dying?" cried Nanon. + +"Come, come, my daughter, we won't quarrel for a box! Here, take it!" +he cried hastily, flinging the case upon the bed. "Nanon, go and fetch +Monsieur Bergerin! Come, mother," said he, kissing his wife's hand, +"it's all over! There! we've made up--haven't we, little one? No more +dry bread; you shall have all you want--Ah, she opens her eyes! Well, +mother, little mother, come! See, I'm kissing Eugenie! She loves her +cousin, and she may marry him if she wants to; she may keep his case. +But don't die, mother; live a long time yet, my poor wife! Come, try +to move! Listen! you shall have the finest altar that ever was made in +Saumur." + +"Oh, how can you treat your wife and daughter so!" said Madame Grandet +in a feeble voice. + +"I won't do so again, never again," cried her husband; "you shall see, +my poor wife!" He went to his inner room and returned with a handful +of louis, which he scattered on the bed. "Here, Eugenie! see, wife! +all these are for you," he said, fingering the coins. "Come, be happy, +wife! feel better, get well; you sha'n't want for anything, nor +Eugenie either. Here's a hundred /louis d'or/ for her. You won't give +these away, will you, Eugenie, hein?" + +Madame Grandet and her daughter looked at each other in astonishment. + +"Take back your money, father; we ask for nothing but your affection." + +"Well, well, that's right!" he said, pocketing the coins; "let's be +good friends! We will all go down to dinner to-day, and we'll play +loto every evening for two sous. You shall both be happy. Hey, wife?" + +"Alas! I wish I could, if it would give you pleasure," said the dying +woman; "but I cannot rise from my bed." + +"Poor mother," said Grandet, "you don't know how I love you! and you +too, my daughter!" He took her in his arms and kissed her. "Oh, how +good it is to kiss a daughter when we have been angry with her! There, +mother, don't you see it's all over now? Go and put that away, +Eugenie," he added, pointing to the case. "Go, don't be afraid! I +shall never speak of it again, never!" + +Monsieur Bergerin, the celebrated doctor of Saumur, presently arrived. +After an examination, he told Grandet positively that his wife was +very ill; but that perfect peace of mind, a generous diet, and great +care might prolong her life until the autumn. + +"Will all that cost much?" said the old man. "Will she need +medicines?" + +"Not much medicine, but a great deal of care," answered the doctor, +who could scarcely restrain a smile. + +"Now, Monsieur Bergerin," said Grandet, "you are a man of honor, are +not you? I trust to you! Come and see my wife how and when you think +necessary. Save my good wife! I love her,--don't you see?--though I +never talk about it; I keep things to myself. I'm full of trouble. +Troubles began when my brother died; I have to spend enormous sums on +his affairs in Paris. Why, I'm paying through my nose; there's no end +to it. Adieu, monsieur! If you can save my wife, save her. I'll spare +no expense, not even if it costs me a hundred or two hundred francs." + +In spite of Grandet's fervent wishes for the health of his wife, whose +death threatened more than death to him; in spite of the consideration +he now showed on all occasions for the least wish of his astonished +wife and daughter; in spite of the tender care which Eugenie lavished +upon her mother,--Madame Grandet rapidly approached her end. Every day +she grew weaker and wasted visibly, as women of her age when attacked +by serious illness are wont to do. She was fragile as the foliage in +autumn; the radiance of heaven shone through her as the sun strikes +athwart the withering leaves and gilds them. It was a death worthy of +her life,--a Christian death; and is not that sublime? In the month of +October, 1822, her virtues, her angelic patience, her love for her +daughter, seemed to find special expression; and then she passed away +without a murmur. Lamb without spot, she went to heaven, regretting +only the sweet companion of her cold and dreary life, for whom her +last glance seemed to prophesy a destiny of sorrows. She shrank from +leaving her ewe-lamb, white as herself, alone in the midst of a +selfish world that sought to strip her of her fleece and grasp her +treasures. + +"My child," she said as she expired, "there is no happiness except in +heaven; you will know it some day." + + + +XII + +On the morrow of this death Eugenie felt a new motive for attachment +to the house in which she was born, where she had suffered so much, +where her mother had just died. She could not see the window and the +chair on its castors without weeping. She thought she had mistaken the +heart of her old father when she found herself the object of his +tenderest cares. He came in the morning and gave her his arm to take +her to breakfast; he looked at her for hours together with an eye that +was almost kind; he brooded over her as though she had been gold. The +old man was so unlike himself, he trembled so often before his +daughter, that Nanon and the Cruchotines, who witnessed his weakness, +attributed it to his great age, and feared that his faculties were +giving away. But the day on which the family put on their mourning, +and after dinner, to which meal Maitre Cruchot (the only person who +knew his secret) had been invited, the conduct of the old miser was +explained. + +"My dear child," he said to Eugenie when the table had been cleared +and the doors carefully shut, "you are now your mother's heiress, and +we have a few little matters to settle between us. Isn't that so, +Cruchot?" + +"Yes." + +"Is it necessary to talk of them to-day, father?" + +"Yes, yes, little one; I can't bear the uncertainty in which I'm +placed. I think you don't want to give me pain?" + +"Oh! father--" + +"Well, then! let us settle it all to-night." + +"What is it you wish me to do?" + +"My little girl, it is not for me to say. Tell her, Cruchot." + +"Mademoiselle, your father does not wish to divide the property, nor +sell the estate, nor pay enormous taxes on the ready money which he +may possess. Therefore, to avoid all this, he must be released from +making the inventory of his whole fortune, part of which you inherit +from your mother, and which is now undivided between you and your +father--" + +"Cruchot, are you quite sure of what you are saying before you tell it +to a mere child?" + +"Let me tell it my own way, Grandet." + +"Yes, yes, my friend. Neither you nor my daughter wish to rob me,--do +you, little one?" + +"But, Monsieur Cruchot, what am I to do?" said Eugenie impatiently. + +"Well," said the notary, "it is necessary to sign this deed, by which +you renounce your rights to your mother's estate and leave your father +the use and disposition, during his lifetime, of all the property +undivided between you, of which he guarantees you the capital." + +"I do not understand a word of what you are saying," returned Eugenie; +"give me the deed, and show me where I am to sign it." + +Pere Grandet looked alternately at the deed and at his daughter, at +his daughter and at the deed, undergoing as he did so such violent +emotion that he wiped the sweat from his brow. + +"My little girl," he said, "if, instead of signing this deed, which +will cost a great deal to record, you would simply agree to renounce +your rights as heir to your poor dear, deceased mother's property, and +would trust to me for the future, I should like it better. In that +case I will pay you monthly the good round sum of a hundred francs. +See, now, you could pay for as many masses as you want for anybody-- +Hein! a hundred francs a month--in /livres/?" + +"I will do all you wish, father." + +"Mademoiselle," said the notary, "it is my duty to point out to you +that you are despoiling yourself without guarantee--" + +"Good heavens! what is all that to me?" + +"Hold your tongue, Cruchot! It's settled, all settled," cried Grandet, +taking his daughter's hand and striking it with his own. "Eugenie, you +won't go back on your word?--you are an honest girl, hein?" + +"Oh! father!--" + +He kissed her effusively, and pressed her in his arms till he almost +choked her. + +"Go, my good child, you restore your father's life; but you only +return to him that which he gave you: we are quits. This is how +business should be done. Life is a business. I bless you! you are a +virtuous girl, and you love your father. Do just what you like in +future. To-morrow, Cruchot," he added, looking at the horrified +notary, "you will see about preparing the deed of relinquishment, and +then enter it on the records of the court." + +The next morning Eugenie signed the papers by which she herself +completed her spoliation. At the end of the first year, however, in +spite of his bargain, the old man had not given his daughter one sou +of the hundred francs he had so solemnly pledged to her. When Eugenie +pleasantly reminded him of this, he could not help coloring, and went +hastily to his secret hiding-place, from whence he brought down about +a third of the jewels he had taken from his nephew, and gave them to +her. + +"There, little one," he said in a sarcastic tone, "do you want those +for your twelve hundred francs?" + +"Oh! father, truly? will you really give them to me?" + +"I'll give you as many more next year," he said, throwing them into +her apron. "So before long you'll get all his gewgaws," he added, +rubbing his hands, delighted to be able to speculate on his daughter's +feelings. + +Nevertheless, the old man, though still robust, felt the importance of +initiating his daughter into the secrets of his thrift and its +management. For two consecutive years he made her order the household +meals in his presence and receive the rents, and he taught her slowly +and successively the names and remunerative capacity of his vineyards +and his farms. About the third year he had so thoroughly accustomed +her to his avaricious methods that they had turned into the settled +habits of her own life, and he was able to leave the household keys in +her charge without anxiety, and to install her as mistress of the +house. + +***** + +Five years passed away without a single event to relieve the +monotonous existence of Eugenie and her father. The same actions were +performed daily with the automatic regularity of clockwork. The deep +sadness of Mademoiselle Grandet was known to every one; but if others +surmised the cause, she herself never uttered a word that justified +the suspicions which all Saumur entertained about the state of the +rich heiress's heart. Her only society was made up of the three +Cruchots and a few of their particular friends whom they had, little +by little, introduced into the Grandet household. They had taught her +to play whist, and they came every night for their game. During the +year 1827 her father, feeling the weight of his infirmities, was +obliged to initiate her still further into the secrets of his landed +property, and told her that in case of difficulty she was to have +recourse to Maitre Cruchot, whose integrity was well known to him. + +Towards the end of this year the old man, then eighty-two, was seized +by paralysis, which made rapid progress. Dr. Bergerin gave him up. +Eugenie, feeling that she was about to be left alone in the world, +came, as it were, nearer to her father, and clasped more tightly this +last living link of affection. To her mind, as in that of all loving +women, love was the whole of life. Charles was not there, and she +devoted all her care and attention to the old father, whose faculties +had begun to weaken, though his avarice remained instinctively acute. +The death of this man offered no contrast to his life. In the morning +he made them roll him to a spot between the chimney of his chamber and +the door of the secret room, which was filled, no doubt, with gold. He +asked for an explanation of every noise he heard, even the slightest; +to the great astonishment of the notary, he even heard the watch-dog +yawning in the court-yard. He woke up from his apparent stupor at the +day and hour when the rents were due, or when accounts had to be +settled with his vine-dressers, and receipts given. At such times he +worked his chair forward on its castors until he faced the door of the +inner room. He made his daughter open it, and watched while she placed +the bags of money one upon another in his secret receptacles and +relocked the door. Then she returned silently to her seat, after +giving him the key, which he replaced in his waistcoat pocket and +fingered from time to time. His old friend the notary, feeling sure +that the rich heiress would inevitably marry his nephew the president, +if Charles Grandet did not return, redoubled all his attentions; he +came every day to take Grandet's orders, went on his errands to +Froidfond, to the farms and the fields and the vineyards, sold the +vintages, and turned everything into gold and silver, which found +their way in sacks to the secret hiding-place. + +At length the last struggle came, in which the strong frame of the old +man slowly yielded to destruction. He was determined to sit at the +chimney-corner facing the door of the secret room. He drew off and +rolled up all the coverings which were laid over him, saying to Nanon, +"Put them away, lock them up, for fear they should be stolen." + +So long as he could open his eyes, in which his whole being had now +taken refuge, he turned them to the door behind which lay his +treasures, saying to his daughter, "Are they there? are they there?" +in a tone of voice which revealed a sort of panic fear. + +"Yes, my father," she would answer. + +"Take care of the gold--put gold before me." + +Eugenie would then spread coins on a table before him, and he would +sit for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like a child +who, at the moment it first begins to see, gazes in stupid +contemplation at the same object, and like the child, a distressful +smile would flicker upon his face. + +"It warms me!" he would sometimes say, as an expression of beatitude +stole across his features. + +When the cure of the parish came to administer the last sacraments, +the old man's eyes, sightless, apparently, for some hours, kindled at +the sight of the cross, the candlesticks, and the holy-water vessel of +silver; he gazed at them fixedly, and his wen moved for the last time. +When the priest put the crucifix of silver-gilt to his lips, that he +might kiss the Christ, he made a frightful gesture, as if to seize it; +and that last effort cost him his life. He called Eugenie, whom he did +not see, though she was kneeling beside him bathing with tears his +stiffening hand, which was already cold. + +"My father, bless me!" she entreated. + +"Take care of it all. You will render me an account yonder!" he said, +proving by these last words that Christianity must always be the +religion of misers. + +***** + +Eugenie Grandet was now alone in the world in that gray house, with +none but Nanon to whom she could turn with the certainty of being +heard and understood,--Nanon the sole being who loved her for herself +and with whom she could speak of her sorrows. La Grande Nanon was a +providence for Eugenie. She was not a servant, but a humble friend. +After her father's death Eugenie learned from Maitre Cruchot that she +possessed an income of three hundred thousand francs from landed and +personal property in the arrondissement of Saumur; also six millions +invested at three per cent in the Funds (bought at sixty, and now +worth seventy-six francs); also two millions in gold coin, and a +hundred thousand francs in silver crown-pieces, besides all the +interest which was still to be collected. The sum total of her +property reached seventeen millions. + +"Where is my cousin?" was her one thought. + +The day on which Maitre Cruchot handed in to his client a clear and +exact schedule of the whole inheritance, Eugenie remained alone with +Nanon, sitting beside the fireplace in the vacant hall, where all was +now a memory, from the chair on castors which her mother had sat in, +to the glass from which her cousin drank. + +"Nanon, we are alone--" + +"Yes, mademoiselle; and if I knew where he was, the darling, I'd go on +foot to find him." + +"The ocean is between us," she said. + +While the poor heiress wept in company of an old servant, in that cold +dark house, which was to her the universe, the whole province rang, +from Nantes to Orleans, with the seventeen millions of Mademoiselle +Grandet. Among her first acts she had settled an annuity of twelve +hundred francs on Nanon, who, already possessed of six hundred more, +became a rich and enviable match. In less than a month that good soul +passed from single to wedded life under the protection of Antoine +Cornoiller, who was appointed keeper of all Mademoiselle Grandet's +estates. Madame Cornoiller possessed one striking advantage over her +contemporaries. Although she was fifty-nine years of age, she did not +look more than forty. Her strong features had resisted the ravages of +time. Thanks to the healthy customs of her semi-conventual life, she +laughed at old age from the vantage-ground of a rosy skin and an iron +constitution. Perhaps she never looked as well in her life as she did +on her marriage-day. She had all the benefits of her ugliness, and was +big and fat and strong, with a look of happiness on her indestructible +features which made a good many people envy Cornoiller. + +"Fast colors!" said the draper. + +"Quite likely to have children," said the salt merchant. "She's +pickled in brine, saving your presence." + +"She is rich, and that fellow Cornoiller has done a good thing for +himself," said a third man. + +When she came forth from the old house on her way to the parish +church, Nanon, who was loved by all the neighborhood, received many +compliments as she walked down the tortuous street. Eugenie had given +her three dozen silver forks and spoons as a wedding present. +Cornoiller, amazed at such magnificence, spoke of his mistress with +tears in his eyes; he would willingly have been hacked in pieces in +her behalf. Madame Cornoiller, appointed housekeeper to Mademoiselle +Grandet, got as much happiness out of her new position as she did from +the possession of a husband. She took charge of the weekly accounts; +she locked up the provisions and gave them out daily, after the manner +of her defunct master; she ruled over two servants,--a cook, and a +maid whose business it was to mend the house-linen and make +mademoiselle's dresses. Cornoiller combined the functions of keeper +and bailiff. It is unnecessary to say that the women-servants selected +by Nanon were "perfect treasures." Mademoiselle Grandet thus had four +servants, whose devotion was unbounded. The farmers perceived no +change after Monsieur Grandet's death; the usages and customs he had +sternly established were scrupulously carried out by Monsieur and +Madame Cornoiller. + +At thirty years of age Eugenie knew none of the joys of life. Her +pale, sad childhood had glided on beside a mother whose heart, always +misunderstood and wounded, had known only suffering. Leaving this life +joyfully, the mother pitied the daughter because she still must live; +and she left in her child's soul some fugitive remorse and many +lasting regrets. Eugenie's first and only love was a wellspring of +sadness within her. Meeting her lover for a few brief days, she had +given him her heart between two kisses furtively exchanged; then he +had left her, and a whole world lay between them. This love, cursed by +her father, had cost the life of her mother and brought her only +sorrow, mingled with a few frail hopes. Thus her upward spring towards +happiness had wasted her strength and given her nothing in exchange +for it. In the life of the soul, as in the physical life, there is an +inspiration and a respiration; the soul needs to absorb the sentiments +of another soul and assimilate them, that it may render them back +enriched. Were it not for this glorious human phenomenon, there would +be no life for the heart; air would be wanting; it would suffer, and +then perish. Eugenie had begun to suffer. For her, wealth was neither +a power nor a consolation; she could not live except through love, +through religion, through faith in the future. Love explained to her +the mysteries of eternity. Her heart and the Gospel taught her to know +two worlds; she bathed, night and day, in the depths of two infinite +thoughts, which for her may have had but one meaning. She drew back +within herself, loving, and believing herself beloved. For seven years +her passion had invaded everything. Her treasuries were not the +millions whose revenues were rolling up; they were Charles's dressing- +case, the portraits hanging above her bed, the jewels recovered from +her father and proudly spread upon a bed of wool in a drawer of the +oaken cabinet, the thimble of her aunt, used for a while by her +mother, which she wore religiously as she worked at a piece of +embroidery,--a Penelope's web, begun for the sole purpose of putting +upon her finger that gold so rich in memories. + +It seemed unlikely that Mademoiselle Grandet would marry during the +period of her mourning. Her genuine piety was well known. Consequently +the Cruchots, whose policy was sagely guided by the old abbe, +contented themselves for the time being with surrounding the great +heiress and paying her the most affectionate attentions. Every evening +the hall was filled with a party of devoted Cruchotines, who sang the +praises of its mistress in every key. She had her doctor in ordinary, +her grand almoner, her chamberlain, her first lady of honor, her prime +minister; above all, her chancellor, a chancellor who would fain have +said much to her. If the heiress had wished for a train-bearer, one +would instantly have been found. She was a queen, obsequiously +flattered. Flattery never emanates from noble souls; it is the gift of +little minds, who thus still further belittle themselves to worm their +way into the vital being of the persons around whom they crawl. +Flattery means self-interest. So the people who, night after night, +assembled in Mademoiselle Grandet's house (they called her +Mademoiselle de Froidfond) outdid each other in expressions of +admiration. This concert of praise, never before bestowed upon +Eugenie, made her blush under its novelty; but insensibly her ear +became habituated to the sound, and however coarse the compliments +might be, she soon was so accustomed to hear her beauty lauded that if +any new-comer had seemed to think her plain, she would have felt the +reproach far more than she might have done eight years earlier. She +ended at last by loving the incense, which she secretly laid at the +feet of her idol. By degrees she grew accustomed to be treated as a +sovereign and to see her court pressing around her every evening. + +Monsieur de Bonfons was the hero of the little circle, where his wit, +his person, his education, his amiability, were perpetually praised. +One or another would remark that in seven years he had largely +increased his fortune, that Bonfons brought in at least ten thousand +francs a year, and was surrounded, like the other possessions of the +Cruchots, by the vast domains of the heiress. + +"Do you know, mademoiselle," said an habitual visitor, "that the +Cruchots have an income of forty thousand francs among them!" + +"And then, their savings!" exclaimed an elderly female Cruchotine, +Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt. + +"A gentleman from Paris has lately offered Monsieur Cruchot two +hundred thousand francs for his practice," said another. "He will sell +it if he is appointed /juge de paix/." + +"He wants to succeed Monsieur de Bonfons as president of the Civil +courts, and is taking measures," replied Madame d'Orsonval. "Monsieur +le president will certainly be made councillor." + +"Yes, he is a very distinguished man," said another,--"don't you think +so, mademoiselle?" + +Monsieur de Bonfons endeavored to put himself in keeping with the role +he sought to play. In spite of his forty years, in spite of his dusky +and crabbed features, withered like most judicial faces, he dressed in +youthful fashions, toyed with a bamboo cane, never took snuff in +Mademoiselle de Froidfond's house, and came in a white cravat and a +shirt whose pleated frill gave him a family resemblance to the race of +turkeys. He addressed the beautiful heiress familiarly, and spoke of +her as "Our dear Eugenie." In short, except for the number of +visitors, the change from loto to whist, and the disappearance of +Monsieur and Madame Grandet, the scene was about the same as the one +with which this history opened. The pack were still pursuing Eugenie +and her millions; but the hounds, more in number, lay better on the +scent, and beset the prey more unitedly. If Charles could have dropped +from the Indian Isles, he would have found the same people and the +same interests. Madame des Grassins, to whom Eugenie was full of +kindness and courtesy, still persisted in tormenting the Cruchots. +Eugenie, as in former days, was the central figure of the picture; and +Charles, as heretofore, would still have been the sovereign of all. +Yet there had been some progress. The flowers which the president +formerly presented to Eugenie on her birthdays and fete-days had now +become a daily institution. Every evening he brought the rich heiress +a huge and magnificent bouquet, which Madame Cornoiller placed +conspicuously in a vase, and secretly threw into a corner of the +court-yard when the visitors had departed. + +Early in the spring, Madame des Grassins attempted to trouble the +peace of the Cruchotines by talking to Eugenie of the Marquis de +Froidfond, whose ancient and ruined family might be restored if the +heiress would give him back his estates through marriage. Madame des +Grassins rang the changes on the peerage and the title of marquise, +until, mistaking Eugenie's disdainful smile for acquiescence, she went +about proclaiming that the marriage with "Monsieur Cruchot" was not +nearly as certain as people thought. + +"Though Monsieur de Froidfond is fifty," she said, "he does not look +older than Monsieur Cruchot. He is a widower, and he has children, +that's true. But then he is a marquis; he will be peer of France; and +in times like these where you will find a better match? I know it for +a fact that Pere Grandet, when he put all his money into Froidfond, +intended to graft himself upon that stock; he often told me so. He was +a deep one, that old man!" + +"Ah! Nanon," said Eugenie, one night as she was going to bed, "how is +it that in seven years he has never once written to me?" + + + +XIII + +While these events were happening in Saumur, Charles was making his +fortune in the Indies. His commercial outfit had sold well. He began +by realizing a sum of six thousand dollars. Crossing the line had +brushed a good many cobwebs out of his brain; he perceived that the +best means of attaining fortune in tropical regions, as well as in +Europe, was to buy and sell men. He went to the coast of Africa and +bought Negroes, combining his traffic in human flesh with that of +other merchandise equally advantageous to his interests. He carried +into this business an activity which left him not a moment of leisure. +He was governed by the desire of reappearing in Paris with all the +prestige of a large fortune, and by the hope of regaining a position +even more brilliant than the one from which he had fallen. + +By dint of jostling with men, travelling through many lands, and +studying a variety of conflicting customs, his ideas had been modified +and had become sceptical. He ceased to have fixed principles of right +and wrong, for he saw what was called a crime in one country lauded as +a virtue in another. In the perpetual struggle of selfish interests +his heart grew cold, then contracted, and then dried up. The blood of +the Grandets did not fail of its destiny; Charles became hard, and +eager for prey. He sold Chinamen, Negroes, birds' nests, children, +artists; he practised usury on a large scale; the habit of defrauding +custom-houses soon made him less scrupulous about the rights of his +fellow men. He went to the Island of St. Thomas and bought, for a mere +song, merchandise that had been captured by pirates, and took it to +ports where he could sell it at a good price. If the pure and noble +face of Eugenie went with him on his first voyage, like that image of +the Virgin which Spanish mariners fastened to their masts, if he +attributed his first success to the magic influence of the prayers and +intercessions of his gentle love, later on women of other kinds,-- +blacks, mulattoes, whites, and Indian dancing-girls,--orgies and +adventures in many lands, completely effaced all recollection of his +cousin, of Saumur, of the house, the bench, the kiss snatched in the +dark passage. He remembered only the little garden shut in with +crumbling walls, for it was there he learned the fate that had +overtaken him; but he rejected all connection with his family. His +uncle was an old dog who had filched his jewels; Eugenie had no place +in his heart nor in his thoughts, though she did have a place in his +accounts as a creditor for the sum of six thousand francs. + +Such conduct and such ideas explain Charles Grandet's silence. In the +Indies, at St. Thomas, on the coast of Africa, at Lisbon, and in the +United States the adventurer had taken the pseudonym of Shepherd, that +he might not compromise his own name. Charles Shepherd could safely be +indefatigable, bold, grasping, and greedy of gain, like a man who +resolves to snatch his fortune /quibus cumque viis/, and makes haste +to have done with villany, that he may spend the rest of his life as +an honest man. + +With such methods, prosperity was rapid and brilliant; and in 1827 +Charles Grandet returned to Bordeaux on the "Marie Caroline," a fine +brig belonging to a royalist house of business. He brought with him +nineteen hundred thousand francs worth of gold-dust, from which he +expected to derive seven or eight per cent more at the Paris mint. On +the brig he met a gentleman-in-ordinary to His Majesty Charles X., +Monsieur d'Aubrion, a worthy old man who had committed the folly of +marrying a woman of fashion with a fortune derived from the West India +Islands. To meet the costs of Madame d'Aubrion's extravagance, he had +gone out to the Indies to sell the property, and was now returning +with his family to France. + +Monsieur and Madame d'Aubrion, of the house of d'Aubrion de Buch, a +family of southern France, whose last /captal/, or chief, died before +1789, were now reduced to an income of about twenty thousand francs, +and they possessed an ugly daughter whom the mother was resolved to +marry without a /dot/,--the family fortune being scarcely sufficient +for the demands of her own life in Paris. This was an enterprise whose +success might have seemed problematical to most men of the world, in +spite of the cleverness with which such men credit a fashionable +woman; in fact, Madame d'Aubrion herself, when she looked at her +daughter, almost despaired of getting rid of her to any one, even to a +man craving connection with nobility. Mademoiselle d'Aubrion was a +long, spare, spindling demoiselle, like her namesake the insect; her +mouth was disdainful; over it hung a nose that was too long, thick at +the end, sallow in its normal condition, but very red after a meal,--a +sort of vegetable phenomenon which is particularly disagreeable when +it appears in the middle of a pale, dull, and uninteresting face. In +one sense she was all that a worldly mother, thirty-eight years of age +and still a beauty with claims to admiration, could have wished. +However, to counterbalance her personal defects, the marquise gave her +daughter a distinguished air, subjected her to hygienic treatment +which provisionally kept her nose at a reasonable flesh-tint, taught +her the art of dressing well, endowed her with charming manners, +showed her the trick of melancholy glances which interest a man and +make him believe that he has found a long-sought angel, taught her the +manoeuvre of the foot,--letting it peep beneath the petticoat, to show +its tiny size, at the moment when the nose became aggressively red; in +short, Madame d'Aubrion had cleverly made the very best of her +offspring. By means of full sleeves, deceptive pads, puffed dresses +amply trimmed, and high-pressure corsets, she had obtained such +curious feminine developments that she ought, for the instruction of +mothers, to have exhibited them in a museum. + +Charles became very intimate with Madame d'Aubrion precisely because +she was desirous of becoming intimate with him. Persons who were on +board the brig declared that the handsome Madame d'Aubrion neglected +no means of capturing so rich a son-in-law. On landing at Bordeaux in +June, 1827, Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle d'Aubrion, and Charles +lodged at the same hotel and started together for Paris. The hotel +d'Aubrion was hampered with mortgages; Charles was destined to free +it. The mother told him how delighted she would be to give up the +ground-floor to a son-in-law. Not sharing Monsieur d'Aubrion's +prejudices on the score of nobility, she promised Charles Grandet to +obtain a royal ordinance from Charles X. which would authorize him, +Grandet, to take the name and arms of d'Aubrion and to succeed, by +purchasing the entailed estate for thirty-six thousand francs a year, +to the titles of Captal de Buch and Marquis d'Aubrion. By thus uniting +their fortunes, living on good terms, and profiting by sinecures, the +two families might occupy the hotel d'Aubrion with an income of over a +hundred thousand francs. + +"And when a man has a hundred thousand francs a year, a name, a +family, and a position at court,--for I will get you appointed as +gentleman-of-the-bedchamber,--he can do what he likes," she said to +Charles. "You can then become anything you choose,--master of the +rolls in the council of State, prefect, secretary to an embassy, the +ambassador himself, if you like. Charles X. is fond of d'Aubrion; they +have known each other from childhood." + +Intoxicated with ambition, Charles toyed with the hopes thus cleverly +presented to him in the guise of confidences poured from heart to +heart. Believing his father's affairs to have been settled by his +uncle, he imagined himself suddenly anchored in the Faubourg Saint- +Germain,--that social object of all desire, where, under shelter of +Mademoiselle Mathilde's purple nose, he was to reappear as the Comte +d'Aubrion, very much as the Dreux reappeared in Breze. Dazzled by the +prosperity of the Restoration, which was tottering when he left +France, fascinated by the splendor of aristocratic ideas, his +intoxication, which began on the brig, increased after he reached +Paris, and he finally determined to take the course and reach the high +position which the selfish hopes of his would-be mother-in-law pointed +out to him. His cousin counted for no more than a speck in this +brilliant perspective; but he went to see Annette. True woman of the +world, Annette advised her old friend to make the marriage, and +promised him her support in all his ambitious projects. In her heart +she was enchanted to fasten an ugly and uninteresting girl on Charles, +whose life in the West Indies had rendered him very attractive. His +complexion had bronzed, his manners had grown decided and bold, like +those of a man accustomed to make sharp decisions, to rule, and to +succeed. Charles breathed more at his ease in Paris, conscious that he +now had a part to play. + +Des Grassins, hearing of his return, of his approaching marriage and +his large fortune, came to see him, and inquired about the three +hundred thousand francs still required to settle his father's debts. +He found Grandet in conference with a goldsmith, from whom he had +ordered jewels for Mademoiselle d'Aubrion's /corbeille/, and who was +then submitting the designs. Charles had brought back magnificent +diamonds, and the value of their setting, together with the plate and +jewelry of the new establishment, amounted to more than two hundred +thousand francs. He received des Grassins, whom he did not recognize, +with the impertinence of a young man of fashion conscious of having +killed four men in as many duels in the Indies. Monsieur des Grassins +had already called several times. Charles listened to him coldly, and +then replied, without fully understanding what had been said to him,-- + +"My father's affairs are not mine. I am much obliged, monsieur, for +the trouble you have been good enough to take,--by which, however, I +really cannot profit. I have not earned two millions by the sweat of +my brow to fling them at the head of my father's creditors." + +"But suppose that your father's estate were within a few days to be +declared bankrupt?" + +"Monsieur, in a few days I shall be called the Comte d'Aubrion; you +will understand, therefore, that what you threaten is of no +consequence to me. Besides, you know as well as I do that when a man +has an income of a hundred thousand francs his father has /never +failed/." So saying, he politely edged Monsieur des Grassins to the +door. + +***** + +At the beginning of August in the same year, Eugenie was sitting on +the little wooden bench where her cousin had sworn to love her +eternally, and where she usually breakfasted if the weather were fine. +The poor girl was happy, for the moment, in the fresh and joyous +summer air, letting her memory recall the great and the little events +of her love and the catastrophes which had followed it. The sun had +just reached the angle of the ruined wall, so full of chinks, which no +one, through a caprice of the mistress, was allowed to touch, though +Cornoiller often remarked to his wife that "it would fall and crush +somebody one of these days." At this moment the postman knocked, and +gave a letter to Madame Cornoiller, who ran into the garden, crying +out: + +"Mademoiselle, a letter!" She gave it to her mistress, adding, "Is it +the one you expected?" + +The words rang as loudly in the heart of Eugenie as they echoed in +sound from wall to wall of the court and garden. + +"Paris--from him--he has returned!" + +Eugenie turned pale and held the letter for a moment. She trembled so +violently that she could not break the seal. La Grande Nanon stood +before her, both hands on her hips, her joy puffing as it were like +smoke through the cracks of her brown face. + +"Read it, mademoiselle!" + +"Ah, Nanon, why did he return to Paris? He went from Saumur." + +"Read it, and you'll find out." + +Eugenie opened the letter with trembling fingers. A cheque on the +house of "Madame des Grassins and Coret, of Saumur," fluttered down. +Nanon picked it up. + + My dear Cousin,-- + +"No longer 'Eugenie,'" she thought, and her heart quailed. + + You-- + +"He once said 'thou.'" She folded her arms and dared not read another +word; great tears gathered in her eyes. + +"Is he dead?" asked Nanon. + +"If he were, he could not write," said Eugenie. + +She then read the whole letter, which was as follows: + + My dear Cousin,--You will, I am sure, hear with pleasure of the + success of my enterprise. You brought me luck; I have come back + rich, and I have followed the advice of my uncle, whose death, + together with that of my aunt, I have just learned from Monsieur + des Grassins. The death of parents is in the course of nature, and + we must succeed them. I trust you are by this time consoled. + Nothing can resist time, as I am well aware. Yes, my dear cousin, + the day of illusions is, unfortunately, gone for me. How could it + be otherwise? Travelling through many lands, I have reflected upon + life. I was a child when I went away,--I have come back a man. + To-day, I think of many I did not dream of then. You are free, my + dear cousin, and I am free still. Nothing apparently hinders the + realization of our early hopes; but my nature is too loyal to hide + from you the situation in which I find myself. I have not + forgotten our relations; I have always remembered, throughout my + long wanderings, the little wooden seat-- + +Eugenie rose as if she were sitting on live coals, and went away and +sat down on the stone steps of the court. + + --the little wooden seat where we vowed to love each other + forever, the passage, the gray hall, my attic chamber, and the + night when, by your delicate kindness, you made my future easier + to me. Yes, these recollections sustained my courage; I said in my + heart that you were thinking of me at the hour we had agreed upon. + Have you always looked at the clouds at nine o'clock? Yes, I am + sure of it. I cannot betray so true a friendship,--no, I must not + deceive you. An alliance has been proposed to me which satisfies + all my ideas of matrimony. Love in marriage is a delusion. My + present experience warns me that in marrying we are bound to obey + all social laws and meet the conventional demands of the world. + Now, between you and me there are differences which might affect + your future, my dear cousin, even more than they would mine. I + will not here speak of your customs and inclinations, your + education, nor yet of your habits, none of which are in keeping + with Parisian life, or with the future which I have marked out for + myself. My intention is to keep my household on a stately footing, + to receive much company,--in short, to live in the world; and I + think I remember that you love a quiet and tranquil life. I will + be frank, and make you the judge of my situation; you have the + right to understand it and to judge it. + + I possess at the present moment an income of eighty thousand + francs. This fortune enables me to marry into the family of + Aubrion, whose heiress, a young girl nineteen years of age, brings + me a title, a place of gentleman-of-the-bed-chamber to His + Majesty, and a very brilliant position. I will admit to you, my + dear cousin, that I do not love Mademoiselle d'Aubrion; but in + marrying her I secure to my children a social rank whose + advantages will one day be incalculable: monarchical principles + are daily coming more and more into favor. Thus in course of time + my son, when he becomes Marquis d'Aubrion, having, as he then will + have, an entailed estate with a rental of forty thousand francs a + year, can obtain any position in the State which he may think + proper to select. We owe ourselves to our children. + + You see, my cousin, with what good faith I lay the state of my + heart, my hopes, and my fortune before you. Possibly, after seven + years' separation, you have yourself forgotten our youthful loves; + but I have never forgotten either your kindness or my own words. I + remember all, even words that were lightly uttered,--words by + which a man less conscientious than I, with a heart less youthful + and less upright, would scarcely feel himself bound. In telling + you that the marriage I propose to make is solely one of + convenience, that I still remember our childish love, am I not + putting myself entirely in your hands and making you the mistress + of my fate? am I not telling you that if I must renounce my social + ambitions, I shall willingly content myself with the pure and + simple happiness of which you have shown me so sweet an image? + +"Tan, ta, ta--tan, ta, ti," sang Charles Grandet to the air of /Non +piu andrai/, as he signed himself,-- + +Your devoted cousin, +Charles. + + +"Thunder! that's doing it handsomely!" he said, as he looked about him +for the cheque; having found it, he added the words:-- + + P.S.--I enclose a cheque on the des Grassins bank for eight + thousand francs to your order, payable in gold, which includes the + capital and interest of the sum you were kind enough to lend me. I + am expecting a case from Bordeaux which contains a few things + which you must allow me to offer you as a mark of my unceasing + gratitude. You can send my dressing-case by the diligence to the + hotel d'Aubrion, rue Hillerin-Bertin. + +"By the diligence!" said Eugenie. "A thing for which I would have laid +down my life!" + +Terrible and utter disaster! The ship went down, leaving not a spar, +not a plank, on a vast ocean of hope! Some women when they see +themselves abandoned will try to tear their lover from the arms of a +rival, they will kill her, and rush to the ends of the earth,--to the +scaffold, to their tomb. That, no doubt, is fine; the motive of the +crime is a great passion, which awes even human justice. Other women +bow their heads and suffer in silence; they go their way dying, +resigned, weeping, forgiving, praying, and recollecting, till they +draw their last breath. This is love,--true love, the love of angels, +the proud love which lives upon its anguish and dies of it. Such was +Eugenie's love after she had read that dreadful letter. She raised her +eyes to heaven, thinking of the last words uttered by her dying +mother, who, with the prescience of death, had looked into the future +with clear and penetrating eyes: Eugenie, remembering that prophetic +death, that prophetic life, measured with one glance her own destiny. +Nothing was left for her; she could only unfold her wings, stretch +upward to the skies, and live in prayer until the day of her +deliverance. + +"My mother was right," she said, weeping. "Suffer--and die!" + + + +XIV + +Eugenie came slowly back from the garden to the house, and avoided +passing, as was her custom, through the corridor. But the memory of +her cousin was in the gray old hall and on the chimney-piece, where +stood a certain saucer and the old Sevres sugar-bowl which she used +every morning at her breakfast. + +This day was destined to be solemn throughout and full of events. +Nanon announced the cure of the parish church. He was related to the +Cruchots, and therefore in the interests of Monsieur de Bonfons. For +some time past the old abbe had urged him to speak to Mademoiselle +Grandet, from a purely religious point of view, about the duty of +marriage for a woman in her position. When she saw her pastor, Eugenie +supposed he had come for the thousand francs which she gave monthly to +the poor, and she told Nanon to go and fetch them; but the cure only +smiled. + +"To-day, mademoiselle," he said, "I have come to speak to you about a +poor girl in whom the whole town of Saumur takes an interest, who, +through lack of charity to herself, neglects her Christian duties." + +"Monsieur le cure, you have come to me at a moment when I cannot think +of my neighbor, I am filled with thoughts of myself. I am very +unhappy; my only refuge is in the Church; her bosom is large enough to +hold all human woe, her love so full that we may draw from its depths +and never drain it dry." + +"Mademoiselle, in speaking of this young girl we shall speak of you. +Listen! If you wish to insure your salvation you have only two paths +to take,--either leave the world or obey its laws. Obey either your +earthly destiny or your heavenly destiny." + +"Ah! your voice speaks to me when I need to hear a voice. Yes, God has +sent you to me; I will bid farewell to the world and live for God +alone, in silence and seclusion." + +"My daughter, you must think long before you take so violent a step. +Marriage is life, the veil is death." + +"Yes, death,--a quick death!" she said, with dreadful eagerness. + +"Death? but you have great obligations to fulfil to society, +mademoiselle. Are you not the mother of the poor, to whom you give +clothes and wood in winter and work in summer? Your great fortune is a +loan which you must return, and you have sacredly accepted it as such. +To bury yourself in a convent would be selfishness; to remain an old +maid is to fail in duty. In the first place, can you manage your vast +property alone? May you not lose it? You will have law-suits, you will +find yourself surrounded by inextricable difficulties. Believe your +pastor: a husband is useful; you are bound to preserve what God has +bestowed upon you. I speak to you as a precious lamb of my flock. You +love God too truly not to find your salvation in the midst of his +world, of which you are noble ornament and to which you owe your +example." + +At this moment Madame des Grassins was announced. She came incited by +vengeance and the sense of a great despair. + +"Mademoiselle," she said--"Ah! here is monsieur le cure; I am silent. +I came to speak to you on business; but I see that you are conferring +with--" + +"Madame," said the cure, "I leave the field to you." + +"Oh! monsieur le cure," said Eugenie, "come back later; your support +is very necessary to me just now." + +"Ah, yes, indeed, my poor child!" said Madame des Grassins. + +"What do you mean?" asked Eugenie and the cure together. + +"Don't I know about your cousin's return, and his marriage with +Mademoiselle d'Aubrion? A woman doesn't carry her wits in her pocket." + +Eugenie blushed, and remained silent for a moment. From this day forth +she assumed the impassible countenance for which her father had been +so remarkable. + +"Well, madame," she presently said, ironically, "no doubt I carry my +wits in my pocket, for I do not understand you. Speak, say what you +mean, before monsieur le cure; you know he is my director." + +"Well, then, mademoiselle, here is what des Grassins writes me. Read +it." + +Eugenie read the following letter:-- + + My dear Wife,--Charles Grandet has returned from the Indies and + has been in Paris about a month-- + +"A month!" thought Eugenie, her hand falling to her side. After a +pause she resumed the letter,-- + + I had to dance attendance before I was allowed to see the future + Vicomte d'Aubrion. Though all Paris is talking of his marriage and + the banns are published-- + +"He wrote to me after that!" thought Eugenie. She did not conclude the +thought; she did not cry out, as a Parisian woman would have done, +"The villain!" but though she said it not, contempt was none the less +present in her mind. + + The marriage, however, will not come off. The Marquis d'Aubrion + will never give his daughter to the son of a bankrupt. I went to + tell Grandet of the steps his uncle and I took in his father's + business, and the clever manoeuvres by which we had managed to + keep the creditor's quiet until the present time. The insolent + fellow had the face to say to me--to me, who for five years have + devoted myself night and day to his interests and his honor!--that + /his father's affairs were not his/! A solicitor would have had + the right to demand fees amounting to thirty or forty thousand + francs, one per cent on the total of the debts. But patience! + there are twelve hundred thousand francs legitimately owing to the + creditors, and I shall at once declare his father a bankrupt. + + I went into this business on the word of that old crocodile + Grandet, and I have made promises in the name of his family. If + Monsieur de vicomte d'Aubrion does not care for his honor, I care + for mine. I shall explain my position to the creditors. Still, I + have too much respect for Mademoiselle Eugenie (to whom under + happier circumstances we once hoped to be allied) to act in this + matter before you have spoken to her about it-- + +There Eugenie paused, and coldly returned the letter without finishing +it. + +"I thank you," she said to Madame des Grassins. + +"Ah! you have the voice and manner of your deceased father," Madame +des Grassins replied. + +"Madame, you have eight thousand francs to pay us," said Nanon, +producing Charles's cheque. + +"That's true; have the kindness to come with me now, Madame +Cornoiller." + +"Monsieur le cure," said Eugenie with a noble composure, inspired by +the thought she was about to express, "would it be a sin to remain a +virgin after marriage?" + +"That is a case of conscience whose solution is not within my +knowledge. If you wish to know what the celebrated Sanchez says of it +in his treatise 'De Matrimonio,' I shall be able to tell you +to-morrow." + +The cure went away; Mademoiselle Grandet went up to her father's +secret room and spent the day there alone, without coming down to +dinner, in spite of Nanon's entreaties. She appeared in the evening at +the hour when the usual company began to arrive. Never was the old +hall so full as on this occasion. The news of Charles's return and his +foolish treachery had spread through the whole town. But however +watchful the curiosity of the visitors might be, it was left +unsatisfied. Eugenie, who expected scrutiny, allowed none of the cruel +emotions that wrung her soul to appear on the calm surface of her +face. She was able to show a smiling front in answer to all who tried +to testify their interest by mournful looks or melancholy speeches. +She hid her misery behind a veil of courtesy. Towards nine o'clock the +games ended and the players left the tables, paying their losses and +discussing points of the game as they joined the rest of the company. +At the moment when the whole party rose to take leave, an unexpected +and striking event occurred, which resounded through the length and +breadth of Saumur, from thence through the arrondissement, and even to +the four surrounding prefectures. + +"Stay, monsieur le president," said Eugenie to Monsieur de Bonfons as +she saw him take his cane. + +There was not a person in that numerous assembly who was unmoved by +these words. The president turned pale, and was forced to sit down. + +"The president gets the millions," said Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt. + +"It is plain enough; the president marries Mademoiselle Grandet," +cried Madame d'Orsonval. + +"All the trumps in one hand," said the abbe. + +"A love game," said the notary. + +Each and all said his say, made his pun, and looked at the heiress +mounted on her millions as on a pedestal. The drama begun nine years +before had reached its conclusion. To tell the president, in face of +all Saumur, to "stay," was surely the same thing as proclaiming him +her husband. In provincial towns social conventionalities are so +rigidly enforced than an infraction like this constituted a solemn +promise. + +"Monsieur le president," said Eugenie in a voice of some emotion when +they were left alone, "I know what pleases you in me. Swear to leave +me free during my whole life, to claim none of the rights which +marriage will give you over me, and my hand is yours. Oh!" she added, +seeing him about to kneel at her feet, "I have more to say. I must not +deceive you. In my heart I cherish one inextinguishable feeling. +Friendship is the only sentiment which I can give to a husband. I wish +neither to affront him nor to violate the laws of my own heart. But +you can possess my hand and my fortune only at the cost of doing me an +inestimable service." + +"I am ready for all things," said the president. + +"Here are fifteen hundred thousand francs," she said, drawing from her +bosom a certificate of a hundred shares in the Bank of France. "Go to +Paris,--not to-morrow, but instantly. Find Monsieur des Grassins, +learn the names of my uncle's creditors, call them together, pay them +in full all that was owing, with interest at five per cent from the +day the debt was incurred to the present time. Be careful to obtain a +full and legal receipt, in proper form, before a notary. You are a +magistrate, and I can trust this matter in your hands. You are a man +of honor; I will put faith in your word, and meet the dangers of life +under shelter of your name. Let us have mutual indulgence. We have +known each other so long that we are almost related; you would not +wish to render me unhappy." + +The president fell at the feet of the rich heiress, his heart beating +and wrung with joy. + +"I will be your slave!" he said. + +"When you obtain the receipts, monsieur," she resumed, with a cold +glance, "you will take them with all the other papers to my cousin +Grandet, and you will give him this letter. On your return I will keep +my word." + +The president understood perfectly that he owed the acquiescence of +Mademoiselle Grandet to some bitterness of love, and he made haste to +obey her orders, lest time should effect a reconciliation between the +pair. + +When Monsieur de Bonfons left her, Eugenie fell back in her chair and +burst into tears. All was over. + +The president took the mail-post, and reached Paris the next evening. +The morning after his arrival he went to see des Grassins, and +together they summoned the creditors to meet at the notary's office +where the vouchers had been deposited. Not a single creditor failed to +be present. Creditors though they were, justice must be done to them, +--they were all punctual. Monsieur de Bonfons, in the name of +Mademoiselle Grandet, paid them the amount of their claims with +interest. The payment of interest was a remarkable event in the +Parisian commerce of that day. When the receipts were all legally +registered, and des Grassins had received for his services the sum of +fifty thousand francs allowed to him by Eugenie, the president made +his way to the hotel d'Aubrion and found Charles just entering his own +apartment after a serious encounter with his prospective father-in- +law. The old marquis had told him plainly that he should not marry his +daughter until all the creditors of Guillaume Grandet had been paid in +full. + +The president gave Charles the following letter:-- + + My Cousin,--Monsieur le president de Bonfons has undertaken to + place in your hands the aquittance for all claims upon my uncle, + also a receipt by which I acknowledge having received from you the + sum total of those claims. I have heard of a possible failure, and + I think that the son of a bankrupt may not be able to marry + Mademoiselle d'Aubrion. Yes, my cousin, you judged rightly of my + mind and of my manners. I have, it is true, no part in the world; + I understand neither its calculations nor its customs; and I could + not give you the pleasures that you seek in it. Be happy, + according to the social conventions to which you have sacrificed + our love. To make your happiness complete I can only offer you + your father's honor. Adieu! You will always have a faithful friend + in your cousin + +Eugenie. + + +The president smiled at the exclamation which the ambitious young man +could not repress as he received the documents. + +"We shall announce our marriages at the same time," remarked Monsieur +de Bonfons. + +"Ah! you marry Eugenie? Well, I am delighted; she is a good girl. +But," added Charles, struck with a luminous idea, "she must be rich?" + +"She had," said the president, with a mischievous smile, "about +nineteen millions four days ago; but she has only seventeen millions +to-day." + +Charles looked at him thunderstruck. + +"Seventeen mil--" + +"Seventeen millions; yes, monsieur. We shall muster, Mademoiselle +Grandet and I, an income of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs +when we marry." + +"My dear cousin," said Charles, recovering a little of his assurance, +"we can push each other's fortunes." + +"Agreed," said the president. "Here is also a little case which I am +charged to give into your own hands," he added, placing on the table +the leather box which contained the dressing-case. + +"Well, my dear friend," said Madame d'Aubrion, entering the room +without noticing the president, "don't pay any attention to what poor +Monsieur d'Aubrion has just said to you; the Duchesse de Chaulieu has +turned his head. I repeat, nothing shall interfere with the +marriage--" + +"Very good, madame. The three millions which my father owed were paid +yesterday." + +"In money?" she asked. + +"Yes, in full, capital and interest; and I am about to do honor to his +memory--" + +"What folly!" exclaimed his mother-in-law. "Who is this?" she +whispered in Grandet's ear, perceiving the president. + +"My man of business," he answered in a low voice. + +The marquise bowed superciliously to Monsieur de Bonfons. + +"We are pushing each other's fortunes already," said the president, +taking up his hat. "Good-by, cousin." + +"He is laughing at me, the old cockatoo! I'd like to put six inches of +iron into him!" muttered Charles. + +The president was out of hearing. Three days later Monsieur de +Bonfons, on his return to Saumur, announced his marriage with Eugenie. +Six months after the marriage he was appointed councillor in the Cour +royale at Angers. Before leaving Saumur Madame de Bonfons had the gold +of certain jewels, once so precious to her, melted up, and put, +together with the eight thousand francs paid back by her cousin, into +a golden pyx, which she gave to the parish church where she had so +long prayed for /him/. She now spent her time between Angers and +Saumur. Her husband, who had shown some public spirit on a certain +occasion, became a judge in the superior courts, and finally, after a +few years, president of them. He was anxiously awaiting a general +election, in the hope of being returned to the Chamber of deputies. He +hankered after a peerage; and then-- + +"The king will be his cousin, won't he?" said Nanon, la Grande Nanon, +Madame Cornoiller, bourgeoise of Saumur, as she listened to her +mistress, who was recounting the honors to which she was called. + +Nevertheless, Monsieur de Bonfons (he had finally abolished his +patronymic of Cruchot) did not realize any of his ambitious ideas. He +died eight days after his election as deputy of Saumur. God, who sees +all and never strikes amiss, punished him, no doubt, for his sordid +calculations and the legal cleverness with which, /accurante Cruchot/, +he had drawn up his marriage contract, in which husband and wife gave +to each other, "in case they should have no children, their entire +property of every kind, landed or otherwise, without exception or +reservation, dispensing even with the formality of an inventory; +provided that said omission of said inventory shall not injure their +heirs and assigns, it being understood that this deed of gift is, +etc., etc." This clause of the contract will explain the profound +respect which monsieur le president always testified for the wishes, +and above all, for the solitude of Madame de Bonfons. Women cited him +as the most considerate and delicate of men, pitied him, and even went +so far as to find fault with the passion and grief of Eugenie, blaming +her, as women know so well how to blame, with cruel but discreet +insinuation. + +"Madame de Bonfons must be very ill to leave her husband entirely +alone. Poor woman! Is she likely to get well? What is it? Something +gastric? A cancer?"--"She has grown perfectly yellow. She ought to +consult some celebrated doctor in Paris."--"How can she be happy +without a child? They say she loves her husband; then why not give him +an heir?--in his position, too!"--"Do you know, it is really dreadful! +If it is the result of mere caprice, it is unpardonable. Poor +president!" + +Endowed with the delicate perception which a solitary soul acquires +through constant meditation, through the exquisite clear-sightedness +with which a mind aloof from life fastens on all that falls within its +sphere, Eugenie, taught by suffering and by her later education to +divine thought, knew well that the president desired her death that he +might step into possession of their immense fortune, augmented by the +property of his uncle the notary and his uncle the abbe, whom it had +lately pleased God to call to himself. The poor solitary pitied the +president. Providence avenged her for the calculations and the +indifference of a husband who respected the hopeless passion on which +she spent her life because it was his surest safeguard. To give life +to a child would give death to his hopes,--the hopes of selfishness, +the joys of ambition, which the president cherished as he looked into +the future. + +God thus flung piles of gold upon this prisoner to whom gold was a +matter of indifference, who longed for heaven, who lived, pious and +good, in holy thoughts, succoring the unfortunate in secret, and never +wearying of such deeds. Madame de Bonfons became a widow at thirty- +six. She is still beautiful, but with the beauty of a woman who is +nearly forty years of age. Her face is white and placid and calm; her +voice gentle and self-possessed; her manners are simple. She has the +noblest qualities of sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never +soiled her soul by contact with the world; but she has also the rigid +bearing of an old maid and the petty habits inseparable from the +narrow round of provincial life. In spite of her vast wealth, she +lives as the poor Eugenie Grandet once lived. The fire is never +lighted on her hearth until the day when her father allowed it to be +lighted in the hall, and it is put out in conformity with the rules +which governed her youthful years. She dresses as her mother dressed. +The house in Saumur, without sun, without warmth, always in shadow, +melancholy, is an image of her life. She carefully accumulates her +income, and might seem parsimonious did she not disarm criticism by a +noble employment of her wealth. Pious and charitable institutions, a +hospital for old age, Christian schools for children, a public library +richly endowed, bear testimony against the charge of avarice which +some persons lay at her door. The churches of Saumur owe much of their +embellishment to her. Madame de Bonfons (sometimes ironically spoken +of as mademoiselle) inspires for the most part reverential respect: +and yet that noble heart, beating only with tenderest emotions, has +been, from first to last, subjected to the calculations of human +selfishness; money has cast its frigid influence upon that hallowed +life and taught distrust of feelings to a woman who is all feeling. + +"I have none but you to love me," she says to Nanon. + +The hand of this woman stanches the secret wounds in many families. +She goes on her way to heaven attended by a train of benefactions. The +grandeur of her soul redeems the narrowness of her education and the +petty habits of her early life. + +Such is the history of Eugenie Grandet, who is in the world but not of +it; who, created to be supremely a wife and mother, has neither +husband nor children nor family. Lately there has been some question +of her marrying again. The Saumur people talk of her and of the +Marquis de Froidfond, whose family are beginning to beset the rich +widow just as, in former days, the Cruchots laid siege to the rich +heiress. Nanon and Cornoiller are, it is said, in the interests of the +marquis. Nothing could be more false. Neither la Grande Nanon nor +Cornoiller has sufficient mind to understand the corruptions of the +world. + + + + +ADDENDUM + +The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. + +Chaulieu, Eleonore, Duchesse de + Letters of Two Brides + +Grandet, Victor-Ange-Guillaume + The Firm of Nucingen + +Grandet, Charles + The Firm of Nucingen + +Keller, Francois + Domestic Peace + Cesar Birotteau + The Government Clerks + The Member for Arcis + +Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des + The Muse of the Department + A Bachelor's Establishment + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + The Government Clerks + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life + Ursule Mirouet + +Nathan, Madame Raoul + The Muse of the Department + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life + The Government Clerks + A Bachelor's Establishment + Ursule Mirouet + The Imaginary Mistress + A Prince of Bohemia + A Daughter of Eve + The Unconscious Humorists + +Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de + Father Goriot + The Thirteen + Cesar Birotteau + Melmoth Reconciled + Lost Illusions + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris + The Commission in Lunacy + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life + Modeste Mignon + The Firm of Nucingen + Another Study of Woman + A Daughter of Eve + The Member for Arcis + +Roguin + Cesar Birotteau + Eugenie Grandet + A Bachelor's Establishment + The Vendetta + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac + diff --git a/old/gngnd10.zip b/old/gngnd10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7523cd1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/gngnd10.zip diff --git a/old/gngnd10h.htm b/old/gngnd10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..50ea57a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/gngnd10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8479 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>Eugenie Grandet</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= +"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +</head> +<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> +<h1>Project Gutenberg Etext of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de +Balzac</h1> + +<h2>#63 in our series by Balzac</h2> + +<pre> +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. 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We need your donations. + + +Eugenie Grandet + +by Honore de Balzac + +Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley + +April, 1999 [Etext #1715] +[Most recently updated October 23, 2002] + +Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz +and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com +</pre> + +<p>EUGENIE GRANDET</p> + +<p>by HONORE DE BALZAC</p> + +<p>Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley</p> + +<p></p> + +<p>DEDICATION</p> + +<p>To Maria.</p> + +<p>May your name, that of one whose portrait is the noblest +ornament of this work, lie on its opening pages like a branch of +sacred box, taken from an unknown tree, but sanctified by +religion, and kept ever fresh and green by pious hands to bless +the house.</p> + +<p>De Balzac.</p> + +<p></p> + +<p></p> + +<h2 align="center">EUGENIE GRANDET</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect +inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre +cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within +these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the +barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are +so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, +were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of +a motionless person, whose half- monastic face peers beyond the +window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.</p> + +<p>Such elements of sadness formed the physiognomy, as it were, +of a dwelling-house in Saumur which stands at the end of the +steep street leading to the chateau in the upper part of the +town. This street--now little frequented, hot in summer, cold in +winter, dark in certain sections--is remarkable for the resonance +of its little pebbly pavement, always clean and dry, for the +narrowness of its tortuous road-way, for the peaceful stillness +of its houses, which belong to the Old town and are over-topped +by the ramparts. Houses three centuries old are still solid, +though built of wood, and their divers aspects add to the +originality which commends this portion of Saumur to the +attention of artists and antiquaries.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to pass these houses without admiring the +enormous oaken beams, their ends carved into fantastic figures, +which crown with a black bas-relief the lower floor of most of +them. In one place these transverse timbers are covered with +slate and mark a bluish line along the frail wall of a dwelling +covered by a roof <i>en</i> <i>colombage</i> which bends beneath +the weight of years, and whose rotting shingles are twisted by +the alternate action of sun and rain. In another place blackened, +worn-out window-sills, with delicate sculptures now scarcely +discernible, seem too weak to bear the brown clay pots from which +springs the heart's-ease or the rose-bush of some poor working- +woman. Farther on are doors studded with enormous nails, where +the genius of our forefathers has traced domestic hieroglyphics, +of which the meaning is now lost forever. Here a Protestant +attested his belief; there a Leaguer cursed Henry IV.; elsewhere +some bourgeois has carved the insignia of his <i>noblesse de +cloches</i>, symbols of his long- forgotten magisterial glory. +The whole history of France is there.</p> + +<p>Next to a tottering house with roughly plastered walls, where +an artisan enshrines his tools, rises the mansion of a country +gentleman, on the stone arch of which above the door vestiges of +armorial bearings may still be seen, battered by the many +revolutions that have shaken France since 1789. In this hilly +street the ground-floors of the merchants are neither shops nor +warehouses; lovers of the Middle Ages will here find the +<i>ouvrouere</i> of our forefathers in all its naive simplicity. +These low rooms, which have no shop-frontage, no show-windows, in +fact no glass at all, are deep and dark and without interior or +exterior decoration. Their doors open in two parts, each roughly +iron-bound; the upper half is fastened back within the room, the +lower half, fitted with a spring-bell, swings continually to and +fro. Air and light reach the damp den within, either through the +upper half of the door, or through an open space between the +ceiling and a low front wall, breast-high, which is closed by +solid shutters that are taken down every morning, put up every +evening, and held in place by heavy iron bars.</p> + +<p>This wall serves as a counter for the merchandise. No delusive +display is there; only samples of the business, whatever it may +chance to be, --such, for instance, as three or four tubs full of +codfish and salt, a few bundles of sail-cloth, cordage, copper +wire hanging from the joists above, iron hoops for casks ranged +along the wall, or a few pieces of cloth upon the shelves. Enter. +A neat girl, glowing with youth, wearing a white kerchief, her +arms red and bare, drops her knitting and calls her father or her +mother, one of whom comes forward and sells you what you want, +phlegmatically, civilly, or arrogantly, according to his or her +individual character, whether it be a matter of two sous' or +twenty thousand francs' worth of merchandise. You may see a +cooper, for instance, sitting in his doorway and twirling his +thumbs as he talks with a neighbor. To all appearance he owns +nothing more than a few miserable boat-ribs and two or three +bundles of laths; but below in the port his teeming wood-yard +supplies all the cooperage trade of Anjou. He knows to a plank +how many casks are needed if the vintage is good. A hot season +makes him rich, a rainy season ruins him; in a single morning +puncheons worth eleven francs have been known to drop to six. In +this country, as in Touraine, atmospheric vicissitudes control +commercial life. Wine-growers, proprietors, wood- merchants, +coopers, inn-keepers, mariners, all keep watch of the sun. They +tremble when they go to bed lest they should hear in the morning +of a frost in the night; they dread rain, wind, drought, and want +water, heat, and clouds to suit their fancy. A perpetual duel +goes on between the heavens and their terrestrial interests. The +barometer smooths, saddens, or makes merry their countenances, +turn and turn about. From end to end of this street, formerly the +Grand'Rue de Saumur, the words: "Here's golden weather," are +passed from door to door; or each man calls to his neighbor: "It +rains louis," knowing well what a sunbeam or the opportune +rainfall is bringing him.</p> + +<p>On Saturdays after midday, in the fine season, not one sou's +worth of merchandise can be bought from these worthy traders. +Each has his vineyard, his enclosure of fields, and all spend two +days in the country. This being foreseen, and purchases, sales, +and profits provided for, the merchants have ten or twelve hours +to spend in parties of pleasure, in making observations, in +criticisms, and in continual spying. A housewife cannot buy a +partridge without the neighbors asking the husband if it were +cooked to a turn. A young girl never puts her head near a window +that she is not seen by idling groups in the street. Consciences +are held in the light; and the houses, dark, silent, impenetrable +as they seem, hide no mysteries. Life is almost wholly in the +open air; every household sits at its own threshold, breakfasts, +dines, and quarrels there. No one can pass along the street +without being examined; in fact formerly, when a stranger entered +a provincial town he was bantered and made game of from door to +door. From this came many good stories, and the nickname +<i>copieux</i>, which was applied to the inhabitants of Angers, +who excelled in such urban sarcasms.</p> + +<p>The ancient mansions of the old town of Saumur are at the top +of this hilly street, and were formerly occupied by the nobility +of the neighborhood. The melancholy dwelling where the events of +the following history took place is one of these +mansions,--venerable relics of a century in which men and things +bore the characteristics of simplicity which French manners and +customs are losing day by day. Follow the windings of the +picturesque thoroughfare, whose irregularities awaken +recollections that plunge the mind mechanically into reverie, and +you will see a somewhat dark recess, in the centre of which is +hidden the door of the house of Monsieur Grandet. It is +impossible to understand the force of this provincial +expression--the house of Monsieur Grandet--without giving the +biography of Monsieur Grandet himself.</p> + +<p>Monsieur Grandet enjoyed a reputation in Saumur whose causes +and effects can never be fully understood by those who have not, +at one time or another, lived in the provinces. In 1789 Monsieur +Grandet-- still called by certain persons le Pere Grandet, though +the number of such old persons has perceptibly diminished--was a +master-cooper, able to read, write, and cipher. At the period +when the French Republic offered for sale the church property in +the arrondissement of Saumur, the cooper, then forty years of +age, had just married the daughter of a rich wood-merchant. +Supplied with the ready money of his own fortune and his wife's +<i>dot</i>, in all about two thousand louis-d'or, Grandet went to +the newly established "district," where, with the help of two +hundred double louis given by his father-in-law to the surly +republican who presided over the sales of the national domain, he +obtained for a song, legally if not legitimately, one of the +finest vineyards in the arrondissement, an old abbey, and several +farms. The inhabitants of Saumur were so little revolutionary +that they thought Pere Grandet a bold man, a republican, and a +patriot with a mind open to all the new ideas; though in point of +fact it was open only to vineyards. He was appointed a member of +the administration of Saumur, and his pacific influence made +itself felt politically and commercially. Politically, he +protected the ci-devant nobles, and prevented, to the extent of +his power, the sale of the lands and property of the +<i>emigres</i>; commercially, he furnished the Republican armies +with two or three thousand puncheons of white wine, and took his +pay in splendid fields belonging to a community of women whose +lands had been reserved for the last lot.</p> + +<p>Under the Consulate Grandet became mayor, governed wisely, and +harvested still better pickings. Under the Empire he was called +Monsieur Grandet. Napoleon, however, did not like republicans, +and superseded Monsieur Grandet (who was supposed to have worn +the Phrygian cap) by a man of his own surroundings, a future +baron of the Empire. Monsieur Grandet quitted office without +regret. He had constructed in the interests of the town certain +fine roads which led to his own property; his house and lands, +very advantageously assessed, paid moderate taxes; and since the +registration of his various estates, the vineyards, thanks to his +constant care, had become the "head of the country,"--a local +term used to denote those that produced the finest quality of +wine. He might have asked for the cross of the Legion of +honor.</p> + +<p>This event occurred in 1806. Monsieur Grandet was then +fifty-seven years of age, his wife thirty-six, and an only +daughter, the fruit of their legitimate love, was ten years old. +Monsieur Grandet, whom Providence no doubt desired to compensate +for the loss of his municipal honors, inherited three fortunes in +the course of this year, --that of Madame de la Gaudiniere, born +de la Bertelliere, the mother of Madame Grandet; that of old +Monsieur de la Bertelliere, her grandfather; and, lastly, that of +Madame Gentillet, her grandmother on the mother's side: three +inheritances, whose amount was not known to any one. The avarice +of the deceased persons was so keen that for a long time they had +hoarded their money for the pleasure of secretly looking at it. +Old Monsieur de la Bertelliere called an investment an +extravagance, and thought he got better interest from the sight +of his gold than from the profits of usury. The inhabitants of +Saumur consequently estimated his savings according to "the +revenues of the sun's wealth," as they said.</p> + +<p>Monsieur Grandet thus obtained that modern title of nobility +which our mania for equality can never rub out. He became the +most imposing personage in the arrondissement. He worked a +hundred acres of vineyard, which in fruitful years yielded seven +or eight hundred hogsheads of wine. He owned thirteen farms, an +old abbey, whose windows and arches he had walled up for the sake +of economy,--a measure which preserved them,--also a hundred and +twenty-seven acres of meadow-land, where three thousand poplars, +planted in 1793, grew and flourished; and finally, the house in +which he lived. Such was his visible estate; as to his other +property, only two persons could give even a vague guess at its +value: one was Monsieur Cruchot, a notary employed in the +usurious investments of Monsieur Grandet; the other was Monsieur +des Grassins, the richest banker in Saumur, in whose profits +Grandet had a certain covenanted and secret share.</p> + +<p>Although old Cruchot and Monsieur des Grassins were both +gifted with the deep discretion which wealth and trust beget in +the provinces, they publicly testified so much respect to +Monsieur Grandet that observers estimated the amount of his +property by the obsequious attention which they bestowed upon +him. In all Saumur there was no one not persuaded that Monsieur +Grandet had a private treasure, some hiding-place full of louis, +where he nightly took ineffable delight in gazing upon great +masses of gold. Avaricious people gathered proof of this when +they looked at the eyes of the good man, to which the yellow +metal seemed to have conveyed its tints. The glance of a man +accustomed to draw enormous interest from his capital acquires, +like that of the libertine, the gambler, or the sycophant, +certain indefinable habits,--furtive, eager, mysterious +movements, which never escape the notice of his co-religionists. +This secret language is in a certain way the freemasonry of the +passions. Monsieur Grandet inspired the respectful esteem due to +one who owed no man anything, who, skilful cooper and experienced +wine-grower that he was, guessed with the precision of an +astronomer whether he ought to manufacture a thousand puncheons +for his vintage, or only five hundred, who never failed in any +speculation, and always had casks for sale when casks were worth +more than the commodity that filled them, who could store his +whole vintage in his cellars and bide his time to put the +puncheons on the market at two hundred francs, when the little +proprietors had been forced to sell theirs for five louis. His +famous vintage of 1811, judiciously stored and slowly disposed +of, brought him in more than two hundred and forty thousand +francs.</p> + +<p>Financially speaking, Monsieur Grandet was something between a +tiger and a boa-constrictor. He could crouch and lie low, watch +his prey a long while, spring upon it, open his jaws, swallow a +mass of louis, and then rest tranquilly like a snake in process +of digestion, impassible, methodical, and cold. No one saw him +pass without a feeling of admiration mingled with respect and +fear; had not every man in Saumur felt the rending of those +polished steel claws? For this one, Maitre Cruchot had procured +the money required for the purchase of a domain, but at eleven +per cent. For that one, Monsieur des Grassins discounted bills of +exchange, but at a frightful deduction of interest. Few days ever +passed that Monsieur Grandet's name was not mentioned either in +the markets or in social conversations at the evening gatherings. +To some the fortune of the old wine-grower was an object of +patriotic pride. More than one merchant, more than one innkeeper, +said to strangers with a certain complacency: "Monsieur, we have +two or three millionaire establishments; but as for Monsieur +Grandet, he does not himself know how much he is worth."</p> + +<p>In 1816 the best reckoners in Saumur estimated the landed +property of the worthy man at nearly four millions; but as, on an +average, he had made yearly, from 1793 to 1817, a hundred +thousand francs out of that property, it was fair to presume that +he possessed in actual money a sum nearly equal to the value of +his estate. So that when, after a game of boston or an evening +discussion on the matter of vines, the talk fell upon Monsieur +Grandet, knowing people said: "Le Pere Grandet? le Pere Grandet +must have at least five or six millions."</p> + +<p>"You are cleverer than I am; I have never been able to find +out the amount," answered Monsieur Cruchot or Monsieur des +Grassins, when either chanced to overhear the remark.</p> + +<p>If some Parisian mentioned Rothschild or Monsieur Lafitte, the +people of Saumur asked if he were as rich as Monsieur Grandet. +When the Parisian, with a smile, tossed them a disdainful +affirmative, they looked at each other and shook their heads with +an incredulous air. So large a fortune covered with a golden +mantle all the actions of this man. If in early days some +peculiarities of his life gave occasion for laughter or ridicule, +laughter and ridicule had long since died away. His least +important actions had the authority of results repeatedly shown. +His speech, his clothing, his gestures, the blinking of his eyes, +were law to the country-side, where every one, after studying him +as a naturalist studies the result of instinct in the lower +animals, had come to understand the deep mute wisdom of his +slightest actions.</p> + +<p>"It will be a hard winter," said one; "Pere Grandet has put on +his fur gloves."</p> + +<p>"Pere Grandet is buying quantities of staves; there will be +plenty of wine this year."</p> + +<p>Monsieur Grandet never bought either bread or meat. His +farmers supplied him weekly with a sufficiency of capons, +chickens, eggs, butter, and his tithe of wheat. He owned a mill; +and the tenant was bound, over and above his rent, to take a +certain quantity of grain and return him the flour and bran. La +Grande Nanon, his only servant, though she was no longer young, +baked the bread of the household herself every Saturday. Monsieur +Grandet arranged with kitchen- gardeners who were his tenants to +supply him with vegetables. As to fruits, he gathered such +quantities that he sold the greater part in the market. His +fire-wood was cut from his own hedgerows or taken from the +half-rotten old sheds which he built at the corners of his +fields, and whose planks the farmers carted into town for him, +all cut up, and obligingly stacked in his wood-house, receiving +in return his thanks. His only known expenditures were for the +consecrated bread, the clothing of his wife and daughter, the +hire of their chairs in church, the wages of la Grand Nanon, the +tinning of the saucepans, lights, taxes, repairs on his +buildings, and the costs of his various industries. He had six +hundred acres of woodland, lately purchased, which he induced a +neighbor's keeper to watch, under the promise of an indemnity. +After the acquisition of this property he ate game for the first +time.</p> + +<p>Monsieur Grandet's manners were very simple. He spoke little. +He usually expressed his meaning by short sententious phrases +uttered in a soft voice. After the Revolution, the epoch at which +he first came into notice, the good man stuttered in a wearisome +way as soon as he was required to speak at length or to maintain +an argument. This stammering, the incoherence of his language, +the flux of words in which he drowned his thought, his apparent +lack of logic, attributed to defects of education, were in +reality assumed, and will be sufficiently explained by certain +events in the following history. Four sentences, precise as +algebraic formulas, sufficed him usually to grasp and solve all +difficulties of life and commerce: "I don't know; I cannot; I +will not; I will see about it." He never said yes, or no, and +never committed himself to writing. If people talked to him he +listened coldly, holding his chin in his right hand and resting +his right elbow in the back of his left hand, forming in his own +mind opinions on all matters, from which he never receded. He +reflected long before making any business agreement. When his +opponent, after careful conversation, avowed the secret of his +own purposes, confident that he had secured his listener's +assent, Grandet answered: "I can decide nothing without +consulting my wife." His wife, whom he had reduced to a state of +helpless slavery, was a useful screen to him in business. He went +nowhere among friends; he neither gave nor accepted dinners; he +made no stir or noise, seeming to economize in everything, even +movement. He never disturbed or disarranged the things of other +people, out of respect for the rights of property. Nevertheless, +in spite of his soft voice, in spite of his circumspect bearing, +the language and habits of a coarse nature came to the surface, +especially in his own home, where he controlled himself less than +elsewhere.</p> + +<p>Physically, Grandet was a man five feet high, thick-set, +square-built, with calves twelve inches in circumference, knotted +knee-joints, and broad shoulders; his face was round, tanned, and +pitted by the small- pox; his chin was straight, his lips had no +curves, his teeth were white; his eyes had that calm, devouring +expression which people attribute to the basilisk; his forehead, +full of transverse wrinkles, was not without certain significant +protuberances; his yellow-grayish hair was said to be silver and +gold by certain young people who did not realize the impropriety +of making a jest about Monsieur Grandet. His nose, thick at the +end, bore a veined wen, which the common people said, not without +reason, was full of malice. The whole countenance showed a +dangerous cunning, an integrity without warmth, the egotism of a +man long used to concentrate every feeling upon the enjoyments of +avarice and upon the only human being who was anything whatever +to him,--his daughter and sole heiress, Eugenie. Attitude, +manners, bearing, everything about him, in short, testified to +that belief in himself which the habit of succeeding in all +enterprises never fails to give to a man.</p> + +<p>Thus, though his manners were unctuous and soft outwardly, +Monsieur Grandet's nature was of iron. His dress never varied; +and those who saw him to-day saw him such as he had been since +1791. His stout shoes were tied with leathern thongs; he wore, in +all weathers, thick woollen stockings, short breeches of coarse +maroon cloth with silver buckles, a velvet waistcoat, in +alternate stripes of yellow and puce, buttoned squarely, a large +maroon coat with wide flaps, a black cravat, and a quaker's hat. +His gloves, thick as those of a gendarme, lasted him twenty +months; to preserve them, he always laid them methodically on the +brim of his hat in one particular spot. Saumur knew nothing +further about this personage.</p> + +<p>Only six individuals had a right of entrance to Monsieur +Grandet's house. The most important of the first three was a +nephew of Monsieur Cruchot. Since his appointment as president of +the Civil courts of Saumur this young man had added the name of +Bonfons to that of Cruchot. He now signed himself C. de Bonfons. +Any litigant so ill- advised as to call him Monsieur Cruchot +would soon be made to feel his folly in court. The magistrate +protected those who called him Monsieur le president, but he +favored with gracious smiles those who addressed him as Monsieur +de Bonfons. Monsieur le president was thirty-three years old, and +possessed the estate of Bonfons (Boni Fontis), worth seven +thousand francs a year; he expected to inherit the property of +his uncle the notary and that of another uncle, the Abbe Cruchot, +a dignitary of the chapter of Saint-Martin de Tours, both of whom +were thought to be very rich. These three Cruchots, backed by a +goodly number of cousins, and allied to twenty families in the +town, formed a party, like the Medici in Florence; like the +Medici, the Cruchots had their Pazzi.</p> + +<p>Madame des Grassins, mother of a son twenty-three years of +age, came assiduously to play cards with Madame Grandet, hoping +to marry her dear Adolphe to Mademoiselle Eugenie. Monsieur des +Grassins, the banker, vigorously promoted the schemes of his wife +by means of secret services constantly rendered to the old miser, +and always arrived in time upon the field of battle. The three +des Grassins likewise had their adherents, their cousins, their +faithful allies. On the Cruchot side the abbe, the Talleyrand of +the family, well backed-up by his brother the notary, sharply +contested every inch of ground with his female adversary, and +tried to obtain the rich heiress for his nephew the +president.</p> + +<p>This secret warfare between the Cruchots and des Grassins, the +prize thereof being the hand in marriage of Eugenie Grandet, kept +the various social circles of Saumur in violent agitation. Would +Mademoiselle Grandet marry Monsieur le president or Monsieur +Adolphe des Grassins? To this problem some replied that Monsieur +Grandet would never give his daughter to the one or to the other. +The old cooper, eaten up with ambition, was looking, they said, +for a peer of France, to whom an income of three hundred thousand +francs would make all the past, present, and future casks of the +Grandets acceptable. Others replied that Monsieur and Madame des +Grassins were nobles, and exceedingly rich; that Adolphe was a +personable young fellow; and that unless the old man had a nephew +of the pope at his beck and call, such a suitable alliance ought +to satisfy a man who came from nothing,--a man whom Saumur +remembered with an adze in his hand, and who had, moreover, worn +the <i>bonnet rouge</i>. Certain wise heads called attention to +the fact that Monsieur Cruchot de Bonfons had the right of entry +to the house at all times, whereas his rival was received only on +Sundays. Others, however, maintained that Madame des Grassins was +more intimate with the women of the house of Grandet than the +Cruchots were, and could put into their minds certain ideas which +would lead, sooner or later, to success. To this the former +retorted that the Abbe Cruchot was the most insinuating man in +the world: pit a woman against a monk, and the struggle was even. +"It is diamond cut diamond," said a Saumur wit.</p> + +<p>The oldest inhabitants, wiser than their fellows, declared +that the Grandets knew better than to let the property go out of +the family, and that Mademoiselle Eugenie Grandet of Saumur would +be married to the son of Monsieur Grandet of Paris, a wealthy +wholesale wine- merchant. To this the Cruchotines and the +Grassinists replied: "In the first place, the two brothers have +seen each other only twice in thirty years; and next, Monsieur +Grandet of Paris has ambitious designs for his son. He is mayor +of an arrondissement, a deputy, colonel of the National Guard, +judge in the commercial courts; he disowns the Grandets of +Saumur, and means to ally himself with some ducal family,--ducal +under favor of Napoleon." In short, was there anything not said +of an heiress who was talked of through a circumference of fifty +miles, and even in the public conveyances from Angers to Blois, +inclusively!</p> + +<p>At the beginning of 1811, the Cruchotines won a signal +advantage over the Grassinists. The estate of Froidfond, +remarkable for its park, its mansion, its farms, streams, ponds, +forests, and worth about three millions, was put up for sale by +the young Marquis de Froidfond, who was obliged to liquidate his +possessions. Maitre Cruchot, the president, and the abbe, aided +by their adherents, were able to prevent the sale of the estate +in little lots. The notary concluded a bargain with the young man +for the whole property, payable in gold, persuading him that +suits without number would have to be brought against the +purchasers of small lots before he could get the money for them; +it was better, therefore, to sell the whole to Monsieur Grandet, +who was solvent and able to pay for the estate in ready money. +The fine marquisate of Froidfond was accordingly conveyed down +the gullet of Monsieur Grandet, who, to the great astonishment of +Saumur, paid for it, under proper discount, with the usual +formalities.</p> + +<p>This affair echoed from Nantes to Orleans. Monsieur Grandet +took advantage of a cart returning by way of Froidfond to go and +see his chateau. Having cast a master's eye over the whole +property, he returned to Saumur, satisfied that he had invested +his money at five per cent, and seized by the stupendous thought +of extending and increasing the marquisate of Froidfond by +concentrating all his property there. Then, to fill up his +coffers, now nearly empty, he resolved to thin out his woods and +his forests, and to sell off the poplars in the meadows.</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>It is now easy to understand the full meaning of the term, +"the house of Monsieur Grandet,"--that cold, silent, pallid +dwelling, standing above the town and sheltered by the ruins of +the ramparts. The two pillars and the arch, which made the +porte-cochere on which the door opened, were built, like the +house itself, of tufa,--a white stone peculiar to the shores of +the Loire, and so soft that it lasts hardly more than two +centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously bored or +eaten out by the inclemency of the weather, gave an appearance of +the vermiculated stonework of French architecture to the arch and +the side walls of this entrance, which bore some resemblance to +the gateway of a jail. Above the arch was a long bas-relief, in +hard stone, representing the four seasons, the faces already +crumbling away and blackened. This bas-relief was surmounted by a +projecting plinth, upon which a variety of chance growths had +sprung up,--yellow pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, +plantain, and even a little cherry-tree, already grown to some +height.</p> + +<p>The door of the archway was made of solid oak, brown, +shrunken, and split in many places; though frail in appearance, +it was firmly held in place by a system of iron bolts arranged in +symmetrical patterns. A small square grating, with close bars red +with rust, filled up the middle panel and made, as it were, a +motive for the knocker, fastened to it by a ring, which struck +upon the grinning head of a huge nail. This knocker, of the +oblong shape and kind which our ancestors called +<i>jaquemart</i>, looked like a huge note of exclamation; an +antiquary who examined it attentively might have found +indications of the figure, essentially burlesque, which it once +represented, and which long usage had now effaced. Through this +little grating--intended in olden times for the recognition of +friends in times of civil war--inquisitive persons could +perceive, at the farther end of the dark and slimy vault, a few +broken steps which led to a garden, picturesquely shut in by +walls that were thick and damp, and through which oozed a +moisture that nourished tufts of sickly herbage. These walls were +the ruins of the ramparts, under which ranged the gardens of +several neighboring houses.</p> + +<p>The most important room on the ground-floor of the house was a +large hall, entered directly from beneath the vault of the +porte-cochere. Few people know the importance of a hall in the +little towns of Anjou, Touraine, and Berry. The hall is at one +and the same time antechamber, salon, office, boudoir, and +dining-room; it is the theatre of domestic life, the common +living-room. There the barber of the neighborhood came, twice a +year, to cut Monsieur Grandet's hair; there the farmers, the +cure, the under-prefect, and the miller's boy came on business. +This room, with two windows looking on the street, was entirely +of wood. Gray panels with ancient mouldings covered the walls +from top to bottom; the ceiling showed all its beams, which were +likewise painted gray, while the space between them had been +washed over in white, now yellow with age. An old brass clock, +inlaid with arabesques, adorned the mantel of the ill-cut white +stone chimney-piece, above which was a greenish mirror, whose +edges, bevelled to show the thickness of the glass, reflected a +thread of light the whole length of a gothic frame in damascened +steel-work. The two copper-gilt candelabra which decorated the +corners of the chimney-piece served a double purpose: by taking +off the side-branches, each of which held a socket, the main +stem--which was fastened to a pedestal of bluish marble tipped +with copper--made a candlestick for one candle, which was +sufficient for ordinary occasions. The chairs, antique in shape, +were covered with tapestry representing the fables of La +Fontaine; it was necessary, however, to know that writer well to +guess at the subjects, for the faded colors and the figures, +blurred by much darning, were difficult to distinguish.</p> + +<p>At the four corners of the hall were closets, or rather +buffets, surmounted by dirty shelves. An old card-table in +marquetry, of which the upper part was a chess-board, stood in +the space between the two windows. Above this table was an oval +barometer with a black border enlivened with gilt bands, on which +the flies had so licentiously disported themselves that the +gilding had become problematical. On the panel opposite to the +chimney-piece were two portraits in pastel, supposed to represent +the grandfather of Madame Grandet, old Monsieur de la +Bertelliere, as a lieutenant in the French guard, and the +deceased Madame Gentillet in the guise of a shepherdess. The +windows were draped with curtains of red <i>gros de Tours</i> +held back by silken cords with ecclesiastical tassels. This +luxurious decoration, little in keeping with the habits of +Monsieur Grandet, had been, together with the steel pier-glass, +the tapestries, and the buffets, which were of rose-wood, +included in the purchase of the house.</p> + +<p>By the window nearest to the door stood a straw chair, whose +legs were raised on castors to lift its occupant, Madame Grandet, +to a height from which she could see the passers-by. A work-table +of stained cherry-wood filled up the embrasure, and the little +armchair of Eugenie Grandet stood beside it. In this spot the +lives had flowed peacefully onward for fifteen years, in a round +of constant work from the month of April to the month of +November. On the first day of the latter month they took their +winter station by the chimney. Not until that day did Grandet +permit a fire to be lighted; and on the thirty- first of March it +was extinguished, without regard either to the chills of the +early spring or to those of a wintry autumn. A foot- warmer, +filled with embers from the kitchen fire, which la Grande Nanon +contrived to save for them, enabled Madame and Mademoiselle +Grandet to bear the chilly mornings and evenings of April and +October. Mother and daughter took charge of the family linen, and +spent their days so conscientiously upon a labor properly that of +working-women, that if Eugenie wished to embroider a collar for +her mother she was forced to take the time from sleep, and +deceive her father to obtain the necessary light. For a long time +the miser had given out the tallow candle to his daughter and la +Grande Nanon just as he gave out every morning the bread and +other necessaries for the daily consumption.</p> + +<p>La Grande Nanon was perhaps the only human being capable of +accepting willingly the despotism of her master. The whole town +envied Monsieur and Madame Grandet the possession of her. La +Grande Nanon, so called on account of her height, which was five +feet eight inches, had lived with Monsieur Grandet for +thirty-five years. Though she received only sixty francs a year +in wages, she was supposed to be one of the richest serving-women +in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating through thirty-five +years, had recently enabled her to invest four thousand francs in +an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her long and +persistent economy seemed gigantic. Every servant in the town, +seeing that the poor sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old +age, was jealous of her, and never thought of the hard slavery +through which it had been won.</p> + +<p>At twenty-two years of age the poor girl had been unable to +find a situation, so repulsive was her face to almost every one. +Yet the feeling was certainly unjust: the face would have been +much admired on the shoulders of a grenadier of the guard; but +all things, so they say, should be in keeping. Forced to leave a +farm where she kept the cows, because the dwelling-house was +burned down, she came to Saumur to find a place, full of the +robust courage that shrinks from no labor. Le Pere Grandet was at +that time thinking of marriage and about to set up his household. +He espied the girl, rejected as she was from door to door. A good +judge of corporeal strength in his trade as a cooper, he guessed +the work that might be got out of a female creature shaped like a +Hercules, as firm on her feet as an oak sixty years old on its +roots, strong in the hips, square in the back, with the hands of +a cartman and an honesty as sound as her unblemished virtue. +Neither the warts which adorned her martial visage, nor the +red-brick tints of her skin, nor the sinewy arms, nor the ragged +garments of la Grande Nanon, dismayed the cooper, who was at that +time still of an age when the heart shudders. He fed, shod, and +clothed the poor girl, gave her wages, and put her to work +without treating her too roughly. Seeing herself thus welcomed, +la Grande Nanon wept secretly tears of joy, and attached herself +in all sincerity to her master, who from that day ruled her and +worked her with feudal authority. Nanon did everything. She +cooked, she made the lye, she washed the linen in the Loire and +brought it home on her shoulders; she got up early, she went to +bed late; she prepared the food of the vine-dressers during the +harvest, kept watch upon the market-people, protected the +property of her master like a faithful dog, and even, full of +blind confidence, obeyed without a murmur his most absurd +exactions.</p> + +<p>In the famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with +unheard-of difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old +watch,-- the first present he had made her during twenty years of +service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted +her), it is impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a +gift, for the shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity +had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to +love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked +collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If +Grandet cut the bread with rather too much parsimony, she made no +complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic benefits derived from +the severe regime of the household, in which no one was ever ill. +Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed when Grandet +laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled as he +did. What pleasant compensations there were in such equality! +Never did the master have occasion to find fault with the servant +for pilfering the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines eaten +under the trees. "Come, fall-to, Nanon!" he would say in years +when the branches bent under the fruit and the farmers were +obliged to give it to the pigs.</p> + +<p>To the poor peasant who in her youth had earned nothing but +harsh treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, +Grandet's ambiguous laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon's +simple heart and narrow head could hold only one feeling and one +idea. For thirty-five years she had never ceased to see herself +standing before the wood- yard of Monsieur Grandet, ragged and +barefooted, and to hear him say: "What do you want, young one?" +Her gratitude was ever new. Sometimes Grandet, reflecting that +the poor creature had never heard a flattering word, that she was +ignorant of all the tender sentiments inspired by women, that she +might some day appear before the throne of God even more chaste +than the Virgin Mary herself,--Grandet, struck with pity, would +say as he looked at her, "Poor Nanon!" The exclamation was always +followed by an undefinable look cast upon him in return by the +old servant. The words, uttered from time to time, formed a chain +of friendship that nothing ever parted, and to which each +exclamation added a link. Such compassion arising in the heart of +the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old spinster, had +something inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel pity, +recalling, as it did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the +old cooper, was for Nanon the sum total of happiness. Who does +not likewise say, "Poor Nanon!" God will recognize his angels by +the inflexions of their voices and by their secret sighs.</p> + +<p>There were very many households in Saumur where the servants +were better treated, but where the masters received far less +satisfaction in return. Thus it was often said: "What have the +Grandets ever done to make their Grande Nanon so attached to +them? She would go through fire and water for their sake!" Her +kitchen, whose barred windows looked into the court, was always +clean, neat, cold,--a true miser's kitchen, where nothing went to +waste. When Nanon had washed her dishes, locked up the remains of +the dinner, and put out her fire, she left the kitchen, which was +separated by a passage from the living- room, and went to spin +hemp beside her masters. One tallow candle sufficed the family +for the evening. The servant slept at the end of the passage in a +species of closet lighted only by a fan-light. Her robust health +enabled her to live in this hole with impunity; there she could +hear the slightest noise through the deep silence which reigned +night and day in that dreary house. Like a watch-dog, she slept +with one ear open, and took her rest with a mind alert.</p> + +<p>A description of the other parts of the dwelling will be found +connected with the events of this history, though the foregoing +sketch of the hall, where the whole luxury of the household +appears, may enable the reader to surmise the nakedness of the +upper floors.</p> + +<p>In 1819, at the beginning of an evening in the middle of +November, la Grande Nanon lighted the fire for the first time. +The autumn had been very fine. This particular day was a fete-day +well known to the Cruchotines and the Grassinists. The six +antagonists, armed at all points, were making ready to meet at +the Grandets and surpass each other in testimonials of +friendship. That morning all Saumur had seen Madame and +Mademoiselle Grandet, accompanied by Nanon, on their way to hear +Mass at the parish church, and every one remembered that the day +was the anniversary of Mademoiselle Eugenie's birth. Calculating +the hour at which the family dinner would be over, Maitre +Cruchot, the Abbe Cruchot, and Monsieur C. de Bonfons hastened to +arrive before the des Grassins, and be the first to pay their +compliments to Mademoiselle Eugenie. All three brought enormous +bouquets, gathered in their little green-houses. The stalks of +the flowers which the president intended to present were +ingeniously wound round with a white satin ribbon adorned with +gold fringe. In the morning Monsieur Grandet, following his usual +custom on the days that commemorated the birth and the fete of +Eugenie, went to her bedside and solemnly presented her with his +paternal gift,--which for the last thirteen years had consisted +regularly of a curious gold-piece. Madame Grandet gave her +daughter a winter dress or a summer dress, as the case might be. +These two dresses and the gold-pieces, of which she received two +others on New Year's day and on her father's fete-day, gave +Eugenie a little revenue of a hundred crowns or thereabouts, +which Grandet loved to see her amass. Was it not putting his +money from one strong-box to another, and, as it were, training +the parsimony of his heiress? from whom he sometimes demanded an +account of her treasure (formerly increased by the gifts of the +Bertellieres), saying: "It is to be your marriage dozen."</p> + +<p>The "marriage dozen" is an old custom sacredly preserved and +still in force in many parts of central France. In Berry and in +Anjou, when a young girl marries, her family, or that of the +husband, must give her a purse, in which they place, according to +their means, twelve pieces, or twelve dozen pieces, or twelve +hundred pieces of gold. The poorest shepherd-girl never marries +without her dozen, be it only a dozen coppers. They still tell in +Issoudun of a certain "dozen" presented to a rich heiress, which +contained a hundred and forty-four <i>portugaises d'or</i>. Pope +Clement VII., uncle of Catherine de' Medici, gave her when he +married her to Henri II. a dozen antique gold medals of priceless +value.</p> + +<p>During dinner the father, delighted to see his Eugenie looking +well in a new gown, exclaimed: "As it is Eugenie's birthday let +us have a fire; it will be a good omen."</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle will be married this year, that's certain," said +la Grande Nanon, carrying away the remains of the goose,--the +pheasant of tradesmen.</p> + +<p>"I don't see any one suitable for her in Saumur," said Madame +Grandet, glancing at her husband with a timid look which, +considering her years, revealed the conjugal slavery under which +the poor woman languished.</p> + +<p>Grandet looked at his daughter and exclaimed gaily,--</p> + +<p>"She is twenty-three years old to-day, the child; we must soon +begin to think of it."</p> + +<p>Eugenie and her mother silently exchanged a glance of +intelligence.</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet was a dry, thin woman, as yellow as a quince, +awkward, slow, one of those women who are born to be +down-trodden. She had big bones, a big nose, a big forehead, big +eyes, and presented at first sight a vague resemblance to those +mealy fruits that have neither savor nor succulence. Her teeth +were black and few in number, her mouth was wrinkled, her chin +long and pointed. She was an excellent woman, a true la +Bertelliere. L'abbe Cruchot found occasional opportunity to tell +her that she had not done ill; and she believed him. Angelic +sweetness, the resignation of an insect tortured by children, a +rare piety, a good heart, an unalterable equanimity of soul, made +her universally pitied and respected. Her husband never gave her +more than six francs at a time for her personal expenses. +Ridiculous as it may seem, this woman, who by her own fortune and +her various inheritances brought Pere Grandet more than three +hundred thousand francs, had always felt so profoundly humiliated +by her dependence and the slavery in which she lived, against +which the gentleness of her spirit prevented her from revolting, +that she had never asked for one penny or made a single remark on +the deeds which Maitre Cruchot brought for her signature. This +foolish secret pride, this nobility of soul perpetually +misunderstood and wounded by Grandet, ruled the whole conduct of +the wife.</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet was attired habitually in a gown of greenish +levantine silk, endeavoring to make it last nearly a year; with +it she wore a large kerchief of white cotton cloth, a bonnet made +of plaited straws sewn together, and almost always a black-silk +apron. As she seldom left the house she wore out very few shoes. +She never asked anything for herself. Grandet, seized with +occasional remorse when he remembered how long a time had elapsed +since he gave her the last six francs, always stipulated for the +"wife's pin-money" when he sold his yearly vintage. The four or +five louis presented by the Belgian or the Dutchman who purchased +the wine were the chief visible signs of Madame Grandet's annual +revenues. But after she had received the five louis, her husband +would often say to her, as though their purse were held in +common: "Can you lend me a few sous?" and the poor woman, glad to +be able to do something for a man whom her confessor held up to +her as her lord and master, returned him in the course of the +winter several crowns out of the "pin-money." When Grandet drew +from his pocket the five-franc piece which he allowed monthly for +the minor expenses,-- thread, needles, and toilet,--of his +daughter, he never failed to say as he buttoned his breeches' +pocket: "And you, mother, do you want anything?"</p> + +<p>"My friend," Madame Grandet would answer, moved by a sense of +maternal dignity, "we will see about that later."</p> + +<p>Wasted dignity! Grandet thought himself very generous to his +wife. Philosophers who meet the like of Nanon, of Madame Grandet, +of Eugenie, have surely a right to say that irony is at the +bottom of the ways of Providence.</p> + +<p>After the dinner at which for the first time allusion had been +made to Eugenie's marriage, Nanon went to fetch a bottle of +black-currant ratafia from Monsieur Grandet's bed-chamber, and +nearly fell as she came down the stairs.</p> + +<p>"You great stupid!" said her master; "are you going to tumble +about like other people, hey?"</p> + +<p>"Monsieur, it was that step on your staircase which has given +way."</p> + +<p>"She is right," said Madame Grandet; "it ought to have been +mended long ago. Yesterday Eugenie nearly twisted her ankle."</p> + +<p>"Here," said Grandet to Nanon, seeing that she looked quite +pale, "as it is Eugenie's birthday, and you came near falling, +take a little glass of ratafia to set you right."</p> + +<p>"Faith! I've earned it," said Nanon; "most people would have +broken the bottle; but I'd sooner have broken my elbow holding it +up high."</p> + +<p>"Poor Nanon!" said Grandet, filling a glass.</p> + +<p>"Did you hurt yourself?" asked Eugenie, looking kindly at +her.</p> + +<p>"No, I didn't fall; I threw myself back on my haunches."</p> + +<p>"Well! as it is Eugenie's birthday," said Grandet, "I'll have +the step mended. You people don't know how to set your foot in +the corner where the wood is still firm."</p> + +<p>Grandet took the candle, leaving his wife, daughter, and +servant without any other light than that from the hearth, where +the flames were lively, and went into the bakehouse to fetch +planks, nails, and tools.</p> + +<p>"Can I help you?" cried Nanon, hearing him hammer on the +stairs.</p> + +<p>"No, no! I'm an old hand at it," answered the former +cooper.</p> + +<p>At the moment when Grandet was mending his worm-eaten +staircase and whistling with all his might, in remembrance of the +days of his youth, the three Cruchots knocked at the door.</p> + +<p>"Is it you, Monsieur Cruchot?" asked Nanon, peeping through +the little grating.</p> + +<p>"Yes," answered the president.</p> + +<p>Nanon opened the door, and the light from the hearth, +reflected on the ceiling, enabled the three Cruchots to find +their way into the room.</p> + +<p>"Ha! you've come a-greeting," said Nanon, smelling the +flowers.</p> + +<p>"Excuse me, messieurs," cried Grandet, recognizing their +voices; "I'll be with you in a moment. I'm not proud; I am +patching up a step on my staircase."</p> + +<p>"Go on, go on, Monsieur Grandet; a man's house is his castle," +said the president sententiously.</p> + +<p>Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet rose. The president, profiting +by the darkness, said to Eugenie:</p> + +<p>"Will you permit me, mademoiselle, to wish you, on this the +day of your birth, a series of happy years and the continuance of +the health which you now enjoy?"</p> + +<p>He offered her a huge bouquet of choice flowers which were +rare in Saumur; then, taking the heiress by the elbows, he kissed +her on each side of her neck with a complacency that made her +blush. The president, who looked like a rusty iron nail, felt +that his courtship was progressing.</p> + +<p>"Don't stand on ceremony," said Grandet, entering. "How well +you do things on fete-days, Monsieur le president!"</p> + +<p>"When it concerns mademoiselle," said the abbe, armed with his +own bouquet, "every day is a fete-day for my nephew."</p> + +<p>The abbe kissed Eugenie's hand. As for Maitre Cruchot, he +boldly kissed her on both cheeks, remarking: "How we sprout up, +to be sure! Every year is twelve months."</p> + +<p>As he replaced the candlestick beside the clock, Grandet, who +never forgot his own jokes, and repeated them to satiety when he +thought them funny, said,--</p> + +<p>"As this is Eugenie's birthday let us illuminate."</p> + +<p>He carefully took off the branches of the candelabra, put a +socket on each pedestal, took from Nanon a new tallow candle with +paper twisted round the end of it, put it into the hollow, made +it firm, lit it, and then sat down beside his wife, looking +alternately at his friends, his daughter, and the two candles. +The Abbe Cruchot, a plump, puffy little man, with a red wig +plastered down and a face like an old female gambler, said as he +stretched out his feet, well shod in stout shoes with silver +buckles: "The des Grassins have not come?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet," said Grandet.</p> + +<p>"But are they coming?" asked the old notary, twisting his +face, which had as many holes as a collander, into a queer +grimace.</p> + +<p>"I think so," answered Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>"Are your vintages all finished?" said Monsieur de Bonfons to +Grandet.</p> + +<p>"Yes, all of them," said the old man, rising to walk up and +down the room, his chest swelling with pride as he said the +words, "all of them." Through the door of the passage which led +to the kitchen he saw la Grande Nanon sitting beside her fire +with a candle and preparing to spin there, so as not to intrude +among the guests.</p> + +<p>"Nanon," he said, going into the passage, "put out that fire +and that candle, and come and sit with us. Pardieu! the hall is +big enough for all."</p> + +<p>"But monsieur, you are to have the great people."</p> + +<p>"Are not you as good as they? They are descended from Adam, +and so are you."</p> + +<p>Grandet came back to the president and said,--</p> + +<p>"Have you sold your vintage?"</p> + +<p>"No, not I; I shall keep it. If the wine is good this year, it +will be better two years hence. The proprietors, you know, have +made an agreement to keep up the price; and this year the +Belgians won't get the better of us. Suppose they are sent off +empty-handed for once, faith! they'll come back."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but let us mind what we are about," said Grandet in a +tone which made the president tremble.</p> + +<p>"Is he driving some bargain?" thought Cruchot.</p> + +<p>At this moment the knocker announced the des Grassins family, +and their arrival interrupted a conversation which had begun +between Madame Grandet and the abbe.</p> + +<p>Madame des Grassins was one of those lively, plump little +women, with pink-and-white skins, who, thanks to the claustral +calm of the provinces and the habits of a virtuous life, keep +their youth until they are past forty. She was like the last rose +of autumn,--pleasant to the eye, though the petals have a certain +frostiness, and their perfume is slight. She dressed well, got +her fashions from Paris, set the tone to Saumur, and gave +parties. Her husband, formerly a quartermaster in the Imperial +guard, who had been desperately wounded at Austerlitz, and had +since retired, still retained, in spite of his respect for +Grandet, the seeming frankness of an old soldier.</p> + +<p>"Good evening, Grandet," he said, holding out his hand and +affecting a sort of superiority, with which he always crushed the +Cruchots. "Mademoiselle," he added, turning to Eugenie, after +bowing to Madame Grandet, "you are always beautiful and good, and +truly I do not know what to wish you." So saying, he offered her +a little box which his servant had brought and which contained a +Cape heather,--a flower lately imported into Europe and very +rare.</p> + +<p>Madame des Grassins kissed Eugenie very affectionately, +pressed her hand, and said: "Adolphe wishes to make you my little +offering."</p> + +<p>A tall, blond young man, pale and slight, with tolerable +manners and seemingly rather shy, although he had just spent +eight or ten thousand francs over his allowance in Paris, where +he had been sent to study law, now came forward and kissed +Eugenie on both cheeks, offering her a workbox with utensils in +silver-gilt,--mere show-case trumpery, in spite of the monogram +E.G. in gothic letters rather well engraved, which belonged +properly to something in better taste. As she opened it, Eugenie +experienced one of those unexpected and perfect delights which +make a young girl blush and quiver and tremble with pleasure. She +turned her eyes to her father as if to ask permission to accept +it, and Monsieur Grandet replied: "Take it, my daughter," in a +tone which would have made an actor illustrious.</p> + +<p>The three Cruchots felt crushed as they saw the joyous, +animated look cast upon Adolphe des Grassins by the heiress, to +whom such riches were unheard-of. Monsieur des Grassins offered +Grandet a pinch of snuff, took one himself, shook off the grains +as they fell on the ribbon of the Legion of honor which was +attached to the button-hole of his blue surtout; then he looked +at the Cruchots with an air that seemed to say, "Parry that +thrust if you can!" Madame des Grassins cast her eyes on the blue +vases which held the Cruchot bouquets, looking at the enemy's +gifts with the pretended interest of a satirical woman. At this +delicate juncture the Abbe Cruchot left the company seated in a +circle round the fire and joined Grandet at the lower end of the +hall. As the two men reached the embrasure of the farthest window +the priest said in the miser's ear: "Those people throw money out +of the windows."</p> + +<p>"What does that matter if it gets into my cellar?" retorted +the old wine-grower.</p> + +<p>"If you want to give gilt scissors to your daughter, you have +the means," said the abbe.</p> + +<p>"I give her something better than scissors," answered +Grandet.</p> + +<p>"My nephew is a blockhead," thought the abbe as he looked at +the president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his +brown countenance. "Couldn't he have found some little trifle +which cost money?"</p> + +<p>"We will join you at cards, Madame Grandet," said Madame des +Grassins.</p> + +<p>"We might have two tables, as we are all here."</p> + +<p>"As it is Eugenie's birthday you had better play loto all +together," said Pere Grandet: "the two young ones can join"; and +the old cooper, who never played any game, motioned to his +daughter and Adolphe. "Come, Nanon, set the tables."</p> + +<p>"We will help you, Mademoiselle Nanon," said Madame des +Grassins gaily, quite joyous at the joy she had given +Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"I have never in my life been so pleased," the heiress said to +her; "I have never seen anything so pretty."</p> + +<p>"Adolphe brought it from Paris, and he chose it," Madame des +Grassins whispered in her ear.</p> + +<p>"Go on! go on! damned intriguing thing!" thought the +president. "If you ever have a suit in court, you or your +husband, it shall go hard with you."</p> + +<p>The notary, sitting in his corner, looked calmly at the abbe, +saying to himself: "The des Grassins may do what they like; my +property and my brother's and that of my nephew amount in all to +eleven hundred thousand francs. The des Grassins, at the most, +have not half that; besides, they have a daughter. They may give +what presents they like; heiress and presents too will be ours +one of these days."</p> + +<p>At half-past eight in the evening the two card-tables were set +out. Madame des Grassins succeeded in putting her son beside +Eugenie. The actors in this scene, so full of interest, +commonplace as it seems, were provided with bits of pasteboard +striped in many colors and numbered, and with counters of blue +glass, and they appeared to be listening to the jokes of the +notary, who never drew a number without making a remark, while in +fact they were all thinking of Monsieur Grandet's millions. The +old cooper, with inward self-conceit, was contemplating the pink +feathers and the fresh toilet of Madame des Grassins, the martial +head of the banker, the faces of Adolphe, the president, the +abbe, and the notary, saying to himself:--</p> + +<p>"They are all after my money. Hey! neither the one nor the +other shall have my daughter; but they are useful--useful as +harpoons to fish with."</p> + +<p>This family gaiety in the old gray room dimly lighted by two +tallow candles; this laughter, accompanied by the whirr of +Nanon's spinning- wheel, sincere only upon the lips of Eugenie or +her mother; this triviality mingled with important interests; +this young girl, who, like certain birds made victims of the +price put upon them, was now lured and trapped by proofs of +friendship of which she was the dupe,-- all these things +contributed to make the scene a melancholy comedy. Is it not, +moreover, a drama of all times and all places, though here +brought down to its simplest expression? The figure of Grandet, +playing his own game with the false friendship of the two +families and getting enormous profits from it, dominates the +scene and throws light upon it. The modern god,--the only god in +whom faith is preserved,-- money, is here, in all its power, +manifested in a single countenance. The tender sentiments of life +hold here but a secondary place; only the three pure, simple +hearts of Nanon, of Eugenie, and of her mother were inspired by +them. And how much of ignorance there was in the simplicity of +these poor women! Eugenie and her mother knew nothing of +Grandet's wealth; they could only estimate the things of life by +the glimmer of their pale ideas, and they neither valued nor +despised money, because they were accustomed to do without it. +Their feelings, bruised, though they did not know it, but +ever-living, were the secret spring of their existence, and made +them curious exceptions in the midst of these other people whose +lives were purely material. Frightful condition of the human +race! there is no one of its joys that does not come from some +species of ignorance.</p> + +<p>At the moment when Madame Grandet had won a loto of sixteen +sous,--the largest ever pooled in that house,--and while la +Grande Nanon was laughing with delight as she watched madame +pocketing her riches, the knocker resounded on the house-door +with such a noise that the women all jumped in their chairs.</p> + +<p>"There is no man in Saumur who would knock like that," said +the notary.</p> + +<p>"How can they bang in that way!" exclaimed Nanon; "do they +want to break in the door?"</p> + +<p>"Who the devil is it?" cried Grandet.</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Nanon took one of the candles and went to open the door, +followed by her master.</p> + +<p>"Grandet! Grandet!" cried his wife, moved by a sudden impulse +of fear, and running to the door of the room.</p> + +<p>All the players looked at each other.</p> + +<p>"Suppose we all go?" said Monsieur des Grassins; "that knock +strikes me as evil-intentioned."</p> + +<p>Hardly was Monsieur des Grassins allowed to see the figure of +a young man, accompanied by a porter from the coach-office +carrying two large trunks and dragging a carpet-bag after him, +than Monsieur Grandet turned roughly on his wife and said,--</p> + +<p>"Madame Grandet, go back to your loto; leave me to speak with +monsieur."</p> + +<p>Then he pulled the door quickly to, and the excited players +returned to their seats, but did not continue the game.</p> + +<p>"Is it any one belonging to Saumur, Monsieur des Grassins?" +asked his wife.</p> + +<p>"No, it is a traveller."</p> + +<p>"He must have come from Paris."</p> + +<p>"Just so," said the notary, pulling out his watch, which was +two inches thick and looked like a Dutch man-of-war; "it's nine +o'clock; the diligence of the Grand Bureau is never late."</p> + +<p>"Is the gentleman young?" inquired the Abbe Cruchot.</p> + +<p>"Yes," answered Monsieur des Grassins, "and he has brought +luggage which must weigh nearly three tons."</p> + +<p>"Nanon does not come back," said Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"It must be one of your relations," remarked the +president.</p> + +<p>"Let us go on with our game," said Madame Grandet gently. "I +know from Monsieur Grandet's tone of voice that he is annoyed; +perhaps he would not like to find us talking of his affairs."</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle," said Adolphe to his neighbor, "it is no doubt +your cousin Grandet,--a very good-looking young man; I met him at +the ball of Monsieur de Nucingen." Adolphe did not go on, for his +mother trod on his toes; and then, asking him aloud for two sous +to put on her stake, she whispered: "Will you hold your tongue, +you great goose!"</p> + +<p>At this moment Grandet returned, without la Grande Nanon, +whose steps, together with those of the porter, echoed up the +staircase; and he was followed by the traveller who had excited +such curiosity and so filled the lively imaginations of those +present that his arrival at this dwelling, and his sudden fall +into the midst of this assembly, can only be likened to that of a +snail into a beehive, or the introduction of a peacock into some +village poultry-yard.</p> + +<p>"Sit down near the fire," said Grandet.</p> + +<p>Before seating himself, the young stranger saluted the +assembled company very gracefully. The men rose to answer by a +courteous inclination, and the women made a ceremonious bow.</p> + +<p>"You are cold, no doubt, monsieur," said Madame Grandet; "you +have, perhaps, travelled from--"</p> + +<p>"Just like all women!" said the old wine-grower, looking up +from a letter he was reading. "Do let monsieur rest himself!"</p> + +<p>"But, father, perhaps monsieur would like to take something," +said Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"He has got a tongue," said the old man sternly.</p> + +<p>The stranger was the only person surprised by this scene; all +the others were well-used to the despotic ways of the master. +However, after the two questions and the two replies had been +exchanged, the newcomer rose, turned his back towards the fire, +lifted one foot so as to warm the sole of its boot, and said to +Eugenie,--</p> + +<p>"Thank you, my cousin, but I dined at Tours. And," he added, +looking at Grandet, "I need nothing; I am not even tired."</p> + +<p>"Monsieur has come from the capital?" asked Madame des +Grassins.</p> + +<p>Monsieur Charles,--such was the name of the son of Monsieur +Grandet of Paris,--hearing himself addressed, took a little +eye-glass, suspended by a chain from his neck, applied it to his +right eye to examine what was on the table, and also the persons +sitting round it. He ogled Madame des Grassins with much +impertinence, and said to her, after he had observed all he +wished,--</p> + +<p>"Yes, madame. You are playing at loto, aunt," he added. "Do +not let me interrupt you, I beg; go on with your game: it is too +amusing to leave."</p> + +<p>"I was certain it was the cousin," thought Madame des +Grassins, casting repeated glances at him.</p> + +<p>"Forty-seven!" cried the old abbe. "Mark it down, Madame des +Grassins. Isn't that your number?"</p> + +<p>Monsieur des Grassins put a counter on his wife's card, who +sat watching first the cousin from Paris and then Eugenie, +without thinking of her loto, a prey to mournful presentiments. +From time to time the young the heiress glanced furtively at her +cousin, and the banker's wife easily detected a <i>crescendo</i> +of surprise and curiosity in her mind.</p> + +<p>Monsieur Charles Grandet, a handsome young man of twenty-two, +presented at this moment a singular contrast to the worthy +provincials, who, considerably disgusted by his aristocratic +manners, were all studying him with sarcastic intent. This needs +an explanation. At twenty-two, young people are still so near +childhood that they often conduct themselves childishly. In all +probability, out of every hundred of them fully ninety-nine would +have behaved precisely as Monsieur Charles Grandet was now +behaving.</p> + +<p>Some days earlier than this his father had told him to go and +spend several months with his uncle at Saumur. Perhaps Monsieur +Grandet was thinking of Eugenie. Charles, sent for the first time +in his life into the provinces, took a fancy to make his +appearance with the superiority of a man of fashion, to reduce +the whole arrondissement to despair by his luxury, and to make +his visit an epoch, importing into those country regions all the +refinements of Parisian life. In short, to explain it in one +word, he mean to pass more time at Saumur in brushing his nails +than he ever thought of doing in Paris, and to assume the extra +nicety and elegance of dress which a young man of fashion often +lays aside for a certain negligence which in itself is not devoid +of grace. Charles therefore brought with him a complete +hunting-costume, the finest gun, the best hunting-knife in the +prettiest sheath to be found in all Paris. He brought his whole +collection of waistcoats. They were of all kinds,--gray, black, +white, scarabaeus-colored: some were shot with gold, some +spangled, some <i>chined</i>; some were double-breasted and +crossed like a shawl, others were straight in the collar; some +had turned-over collars, some buttoned up to the top with gilt +buttons. He brought every variety of collar and cravat in fashion +at that epoch. He brought two of Buisson's coats and all his +finest linen He brought his pretty gold toilet-set,--a present +from his mother. He brought all his dandy knick-knacks, not +forgetting a ravishing little desk presented to him by the most +amiable of women,--amiable for him, at least,--a fine lady whom +he called Annette and who at this moment was travelling, +matrimonially and wearily, in Scotland, a victim to certain +suspicions which required a passing sacrifice of happiness; in +the desk was much pretty note-paper on which to write to her once +a fortnight.</p> + +<p>In short, it was as complete a cargo of Parisian frivolities +as it was possible for him to get together,--a collection of all +the implements of husbandry with which the youth of leisure tills +his life, from the little whip which helps to begin a duel, to +the handsomely chased pistols which end it. His father having +told him to travel alone and modestly, he had taken the coupe of +the diligence all to himself, rather pleased at not having to +damage a delightful travelling- carriage ordered for a journey on +which he was to meet his Annette, the great lady who, etc.,--whom +he intended to rejoin at Baden in the following June. Charles +expected to meet scores of people at his uncle's house, to hunt +in his uncle's forests,--to live, in short, the usual chateau +life; he did not know that his uncle was in Saumur, and had only +inquired about him incidentally when asking the way to Froidfond. +Hearing that he was in town, he supposed that he should find him +in a suitable mansion.</p> + +<p>In order that he might make a becoming first appearance before +his uncle either at Saumur or at Froidfond, he had put on his +most elegant travelling attire, simple yet +exquisite,--"adorable," to use the word which in those days +summed up the special perfections of a man or a thing. At Tours a +hairdresser had re-curled his beautiful chestnut locks; there he +changed his linen and put on a black satin cravat, which, +combined with a round shirt-collar, framed his fair and smiling +countenance agreeably. A travelling great-coat, only half +buttoned up, nipped in his waist and disclosed a cashmere +waistcoat crossed in front, beneath which was another waistcoat +of white material. His watch, negligently slipped into a pocket, +was fastened by a short gold chain to a buttonhole. His gray +trousers, buttoned up at the sides, were set off at the seams +with patterns of black silk embroidery. He gracefully twirled a +cane, whose chased gold knob did not mar the freshness of his +gray gloves. And to complete all, his cap was in excellent taste. +None but a Parisian, and a Parisian of the upper spheres, could +thus array himself without appearing ridiculous; none other could +give the harmony of self-conceit to all these fopperies, which +were carried off, however, with a dashing air,--the air of a +young man who has fine pistols, a sure aim, and Annette.</p> + +<p>Now if you wish to understand the mutual amazement of the +provincial party and the young Parisian; if you would clearly see +the brilliance which the traveller's elegance cast among the gray +shadows of the room and upon the faces of this family +group,--endeavor to picture to your minds the Cruchots. All three +took snuff, and had long ceased to repress the habit of +snivelling or to remove the brown blotches which strewed the +frills of their dingy shirts and the yellowing creases of their +crumpled collars. Their flabby cravats were twisted into ropes as +soon as they wound them about their throats. The enormous +quantity of linen which allowed these people to have their +clothing washed only once in six months, and to keep it during +that time in the depths of their closets, also enabled time to +lay its grimy and decaying stains upon it. There was perfect +unison of ill-grace and senility about them; their faces, as +faded as their threadbare coats, as creased as their trousers, +were worn-out, shrivelled-up, and puckered. As for the others, +the general negligence of their dress, which was incomplete and +wanting in freshness,--like the toilet of all country places, +where insensibly people cease to dress for others and come to +think seriously of the price of a pair of gloves,--was in keeping +with the negligence of the Cruchots. A horror of fashion was the +only point on which the Grassinists and the Cruchotines +agreed.</p> + +<p>When the Parisian took up his eye-glass to examine the strange +accessories of this dwelling,--the joists of the ceiling, the +color of the woodwork, and the specks which the flies had left +there in sufficient number to punctuate the "Moniteur" and the +"Encyclopaedia of Sciences,"--the loto-players lifted their noses +and looked at him with as much curiosity as they might have felt +about a giraffe. Monsieur des Grassins and his son, to whom the +appearance of a man of fashion was not wholly unknown, were +nevertheless as much astonished as their neighbors, whether it +was that they fell under the indefinable influence of the general +feeling, or that they really shared it as with satirical glances +they seemed to say to their compatriots,--</p> + +<p>"That is what you see in Paris!"</p> + +<p>They were able to examine Charles at their leisure without +fearing to displease the master of the house. Grandet was +absorbed in the long letter which he held in his hand; and to +read it he had taken the only candle upon the card-table, paying +no heed to his guests or their pleasure. Eugenie, to whom such a +type of perfection, whether of dress or of person, was absolutely +unknown, thought she beheld in her cousin a being descended from +seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the fragrance wafted +from the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She would have +liked to touch the soft kid of the delicate gloves. She envied +Charles his small hands, his complexion, the freshness and +refinement of his features. In short,--if it is possible to sum +up the effect this elegant being produced upon an ignorant young +girl perpetually employed in darning stockings or in mending her +father's clothes, and whose life flowed on beneath these unclean +rafters, seeing none but occasional passers along the silent +street,--this vision of her cousin roused in her soul an emotion +of delicate desire like that inspired in a young man by the +fanciful pictures of women drawn by Westall for the English +"Keepsakes," and that engraved by the Findens with so clever a +tool that we fear, as we breathe upon the paper, that the +celestial apparitions may be wafted away. Charles drew from his +pocket a handkerchief embroidered by the great lady now +travelling in Scotland. As Eugenie saw this pretty piece of work, +done in the vacant hours which were lost to love, she looked at +her cousin to see if it were possible that he meant to make use +of it. The manners of the young man, his gestures, the way in +which he took up his eye-glass, his affected superciliousness, +his contemptuous glance at the coffer which had just given so +much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he evidently +regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,--all these +things, which shocked the Cruchots and the des Grassins, pleased +Eugenie so deeply that before she slept she dreamed long dreams +of her phoenix cousin.</p> + +<p>The loto-numbers were drawn very slowly, and presently the +game came suddenly to an end. La Grand Nanon entered and said +aloud: "Madame, I want the sheets for monsieur's bed."</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet followed her out. Madame des Grassins said in a +low voice: "Let us keep our sous and stop playing." Each took his +or her two sous from the chipped saucer in which they had been +put; then the party moved in a body toward the fire.</p> + +<p>"Have you finished your game?" said Grandet, without looking +up from his letter.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes!" replied Madame des Grassins, taking a seat near +Charles.</p> + +<p>Eugenie, prompted by a thought often born in the heart of a +young girl when sentiment enters it for the first time, left the +room to go and help her mother and Nanon. Had an able confessor +then questioned her she would, no doubt, have avowed to him that +she thought neither of her mother nor of Nanon, but was pricked +by a poignant desire to look after her cousin's room and concern +herself with her cousin; to supply what might be needed, to +remedy any forgetfulness, to see that all was done to make it, as +far as possible, suitable and elegant; and, in fact, she arrived +in time to prove to her mother and Nanon that everything still +remained to be done. She put into Nanon's head the notion of +passing a warming-pan between the sheets. She herself covered the +old table with a cloth and requested Nanon to change it every +morning; she convinced her mother that it was necessary to light +a good fire, and persuaded Nanon to bring up a great pile of wood +into the corridor without saying anything to her father. She ran +to get, from one of the corner-shelves of the hall, a tray of old +lacquer which was part of the inheritance of the late Monsieur de +la Bertelliere, catching up at the same time a six-sided crystal +goblet, a little tarnished gilt spoon, an antique flask engraved +with cupids, all of which she put triumphantly on the corner of +her cousin's chimney-piece. More ideas surged through her head in +one quarter of an hour than she had ever had since she came into +the world.</p> + +<p>"Mamma," she said, "my cousin will never bear the smell of a +tallow candle; suppose we buy a wax one?" And she darted, swift +as a bird, to get the five-franc piece which she had just +received for her monthly expenses. "Here, Nanon," she cried, +"quick!"</p> + +<p>"What will your father say?" This terrible remonstrance was +uttered by Madame Grandet as she beheld her daughter armed with +an old Sevres sugar-basin which Grandet had brought home from the +chateau of Froidfond. "And where will you get the sugar? Are you +crazy?"</p> + +<p>"Mamma, Nanon can buy some sugar as well as the candle."</p> + +<p>"But your father?"</p> + +<p>"Surely his nephew ought not to go without a glass of <i>eau +sucree</i>? Besides, he will not notice it."</p> + +<p>"Your father sees everything," said Madame Grandet, shaking +her head.</p> + +<p>Nanon hesitated; she knew her master.</p> + +<p>"Come, Nanon, go,--because it is my birthday."</p> + +<p>Nanon gave a loud laugh as she heard the first little jest her +young mistress had ever made, and then obeyed her.</p> + +<p>While Eugenie and her mother were trying to embellish the +bedroom assigned by Monsieur Grandet for his nephew, Charles +himself was the object of Madame des Grassins' attentions; to all +appearances she was setting her cap at him.</p> + +<p>"You are very courageous, monsieur," she said to the young +dandy, "to leave the pleasures of the capital at this season and +take up your abode in Saumur. But if we do not frighten you away, +you will find there are some amusements even here."</p> + +<p>She threw him the ogling glance of the provinces, where women +put so much prudence and reserve into their eyes that they impart +to them the prudish concupiscence peculiar to certain +ecclesiastics to whom all pleasure is either a theft or an error. +Charles was so completely out of his element in this abode, and +so far from the vast chateau and the sumptuous life with which +his fancy had endowed his uncle, that as he looked at Madame des +Grassins he perceived a dim likeness to Parisian faces. He +gracefully responded to the species of invitation addressed to +him, and began very naturally a conversation, in which Madame des +Grassins gradually lowered her voice so as to bring it into +harmony with the nature of the confidences she was making. With +her, as with Charles, there was the need of conference; so after +a few moments spent in coquettish phrases and a little serious +jesting, the clever provincial said, thinking herself unheard by +the others, who were discussing the sale of wines which at that +season filled the heads of every one in Saumur,--</p> + +<p>"Monsieur if you will do us the honor to come and see us, you +will give as much pleasure to my husband as to myself. Our salon +is the only one in Saumur where you will find the higher business +circles mingling with the nobility. We belong to both societies, +who meet at our house simply because they find it amusing. My +husband--I say it with pride--is as much valued by the one class +as by the other. We will try to relieve the monotony of your +visit here. If you stay all the time with Monsieur Grandet, good +heavens! what will become of you? Your uncle is a sordid miser +who thinks of nothing but his vines; your aunt is a pious soul +who can't put two ideas together; and your cousin is a little +fool, without education, perfectly common, no fortune, who will +spend her life in darning towels."</p> + +<p>"She is really very nice, this woman," thought Charles Grandet +as he duly responded to Madame des Grassins' coquetries.</p> + +<p>"It seems to me, wife, that you are taking possession of +monsieur," said the stout banker, laughing.</p> + +<p>On this remark the notary and the president said a few words +that were more or less significant; but the abbe, looking at them +slyly, brought their thoughts to a focus by taking a pinch of +snuff and saying as he handed round his snuff-box: "Who can do +the honors of Saumur for monsieur so well as madame?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! what do you mean by that, monsieur l'abbe?" demanded +Monsieur des Grassins.</p> + +<p>"I mean it in the best possible sense for you, for madame, for +the town of Saumur, and for monsieur," said the wily old man, +turning to Charles.</p> + +<p>The Abbe Cruchot had guessed the conversation between Charles +and Madame des Grassins without seeming to pay attention to +it.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur," said Adolphe to Charles with an air which he tried +to make free and easy, "I don't know whether you remember me, but +I had the honor of dancing as your <i>vis-a-vis</i> at a ball +given by the Baron de Nucingen, and--"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly; I remember perfectly, monsieur," answered Charles, +pleased to find himself the object of general attention.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur is your son?" he said to Madame des Grassins.</p> + +<p>The abbe looked at her maliciously.</p> + +<p>"Yes, monsieur," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Then you were very young when you were in Paris?" said +Charles, addressing Adolphe.</p> + +<p>"You must know, monsieur," said the abbe, "that we send them +to Babylon as soon as they are weaned."</p> + +<p>Madame des Grassins examined the abbe with a glance of extreme +penetration.</p> + +<p>"It is only in the provinces," he continued, "that you will +find women of thirty and more years as fresh as madame, here, +with a son about to take his degree. I almost fancy myself back +in the days when the young men stood on chairs in the ball-room +to see you dance, madame," said the abbe, turning to his female +adversary. "To me, your triumphs are but of yesterday--"</p> + +<p>"The old rogue!" thought Madame Grassins; "can he have guessed +my intentions?"</p> + +<p>"It seems that I shall have a good deal of success in Saumur," +thought Charles as he unbuttoned his great-coat, put a hand into +his waistcoat, and cast a glance into the far distance, to +imitate the attitude which Chantrey has given to Lord Byron.</p> + +<p>The inattention of Pere Grandet, or, to speak more truly, the +preoccupation of mind into which the reading of the letter had +plunged him, did not escape the vigilance of the notary and the +president, who tried to guess the contents of the letter by the +almost imperceptible motions of the miser's face, which was then +under the full light of the candle. He maintained the habitual +calm of his features with evident difficulty; we may, in fact, +picture to ourselves the countenance such a man endeavored to +preserve as he read the fatal letter which here follows:--</p> + +<p>My Brother,--It is almost twenty-three years since we have +seen each other. My marriage was the occasion of our last +interview, after which we parted, and both of us were happy. +Assuredly I could not then foresee that you would one day be the +prop of the family whose prosperity you then predicted.</p> + +<p>When you hold this letter within your hands I shall be no +longer living. In the position I now hold I cannot survive the +disgrace of bankruptcy. I have waited on the edge of the gulf +until the last moment, hoping to save myself. The end has come, I +must sink into it. The double bankruptcies of my broker and of +Roguin, my notary, have carried off my last resources and left me +nothing. I have the bitterness of owing nearly four millions, +with assets not more than twenty-five per cent in value to pay +them. The wines in my warehouses suffer from the fall in prices +caused by the abundance and quality of your vintage. In three +days Paris will cry out: "Monsieur Grandet was a knave!" and I, +an honest man, shall be lying in my winding-sheet of infamy. I +deprive my son of a good name, which I have stained, and the +fortune of his mother, which I have lost. He knows nothing of all +this,--my unfortunate child whom I idolize! We parted tenderly. +He was ignorant, happily, that the last beatings of my heart were +spent in that farewell. Will he not some day curse me? My +brother, my brother! the curses of our children are horrible; +they can appeal against ours, but theirs are irrevocable. +Grandet, you are my elder brother, you owe me your protection; +act for me so that Charles may cast no bitter words upon my +grave! My brother, if I were writing with my blood, with my +tears, no greater anguish could I put into this letter,--nor as +great, for then I should weep, I should bleed, I should die, I +should suffer no more, but now I suffer and look at death with +dry eyes.</p> + +<p>From henceforth you are my son's father; he has no relations, +as you well know, on his mother's side. Why did I not consider +social prejudices? Why did I yield to love? Why did I marry the +natural daughter of a great lord? Charles has no family. Oh, my +unhappy son! my son! Listen, Grandet! I implore nothing for +myself,-- besides, your property may not be large enough to carry +a mortgage of three millions,--but for my son! Brother, my +suppliant hands are clasped as I think of you; behold them! +Grandet, I confide my son to you in dying, and I look at the +means of death with less pain as I think that you will be to him +a father. He loved me well, my Charles; I was good to him, I +never thwarted him; he will not curse me. Ah, you see! he is +gentle, he is like his mother, he will cause you no grief. Poor +boy! accustomed to all the enjoyments of luxury, he knows nothing +of the privations to which you and I were condemned by the +poverty of our youth. And I leave him ruined! alone! Yes, all my +friends will avoid him, and it is I who have brought this +humiliation upon him! Would that I had the force to send him with +one thrust into the heavens to his mother's side! Madness! I come +back to my disaster--to his. I send him to you that you may tell +him in some fitting way of my death, of his future fate. Be a +father to him, but a good father. Do not tear him all at once +from his idle life, it would kill him. I beg him on my knees to +renounce all rights that, as his mother's heir, he may have on my +estate. But the prayer is superfluous; he is honorable, and he +will feel that he must not appear among my creditors. Bring him +to see this at the right time; reveal to him the hard conditions +of the life I have made for him: and if he still has tender +thoughts of me, tell him in my name that all is not lost for him. +Yes, work, labor, which saved us both, may give him back the +fortune of which I have deprived him; and if he listens to his +father's voice as it reaches him from the grave, he will go the +Indies. My brother, Charles is an upright and courageous young +man; give him the wherewithal to make his venture; he will die +sooner than not repay you the funds which you may lend him. +Grandet! if you will not do this, you will lay up for yourself +remorse. Ah, should my child find neither tenderness nor succor +in you, I would call down the vengeance of God upon your +cruelty!</p> + +<p>If I had been able to save something from the wreck, I might +have had the right to leave him at least a portion of his +mother's property; but my last monthly payments have absorbed +everything. I did not wish to die uncertain of my child's fate; I +hoped to feel a sacred promise in a clasp of your hand which +might have warmed my heart: but time fails me. While Charles is +journeying to you I shall be preparing my assignment. I shall +endeavor to show by the order and good faith of my accounts that +my disaster comes neither from a faulty life nor from dishonesty. +It is for my son's sake that I strive to do this.</p> + +<p>Farewell, my brother! May the blessing of God be yours for the +generous guardianship I lay upon you, and which, I doubt not, you +will accept. A voice will henceforth and forever pray for you in +that world where we must all go, and where I am now as you read +these lines.</p> + +<p>Victor-Ange-Guillaume Grandet.</p> + +<p>"So you are talking?" said Pere Grandet as he carefully folded +the letter in its original creases and put it into his +waistcoat-pocket. He looked at his nephew with a humble, timid +air, beneath which he hid his feelings and his calculations. +"Have you warmed yourself?" he said to him.</p> + +<p>"Thoroughly, my dear uncle."</p> + +<p>"Well, where are the women?" said his uncle, already +forgetting that his nephew was to sleep at the house. At this +moment Eugenie and Madame Grandet returned.</p> + +<p>"Is the room all ready?" said Grandet, recovering his +composure.</p> + +<p>"Yes, father."</p> + +<p>"Well then, my nephew, if you are tired, Nanon shall show you +your room. It isn't a dandy's room; but you will excuse a poor +wine-grower who never has a penny to spare. Taxes swallow up +everything."</p> + +<p>"We do not wish to intrude, Grandet," said the banker; "you +may want to talk to your nephew, and therefore we will bid you +good-night."</p> + +<p>At these words the assembly rose, and each made a parting bow +in keeping with his or her own character. The old notary went to +the door to fetch his lantern and came back to light it, offering +to accompany the des Grassins on their way. Madame des Grassins +had not foreseen the incident which brought the evening +prematurely to an end, her servant therefore had not arrived.</p> + +<p>"Will you do me the honor to take my arm, madame?" said the +abbe.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, monsieur l'abbe, but I have my son," she answered +dryly.</p> + +<p>"Ladies cannot compromise themselves with me," said the +abbe.</p> + +<p>"Take Monsieur Cruchot's arm," said her husband.</p> + +<p>The abbe walked off with the pretty lady so quickly that they +were soon some distance in advance of the caravan.</p> + +<p>"That is a good-looking young man, madame," he said, pressing +her arm. "Good-by to the grapes, the vintage is done. It is all +over with us. We may as well say adieu to Mademoiselle Grandet. +Eugenie will belong to the dandy. Unless this cousin is enamoured +of some Parisian woman, your son Adolphe will find another rival +in--"</p> + +<p>"Not at all, monsieur l'abbe. This young man cannot fail to +see that Eugenie is a little fool,--a girl without the least +freshness. Did you notice her to-night? She was as yellow as a +quince."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you made the cousin notice it?"</p> + +<p>"I did not take the trouble--"</p> + +<p>"Place yourself always beside Eugenie, madame, and you need +never take the trouble to say anything to the young man against +his cousin; he will make his own comparisons, which--"</p> + +<p>"Well, he has promised to dine with me the day after +to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Ah! if you only <i>would</i>, madame--" said the abbe.</p> + +<p>"What is it that you wish me to do, monsieur l'abbe? Do you +mean to offer me bad advice? I have not reached the age of +thirty-nine, without a stain upon my reputation, thank God! to +compromise myself now, even for the empire of the Great Mogul. +You and I are of an age when we both know the meaning of words. +For an ecclesiastic, you certainly have ideas that are very +incongruous. Fie! it is worthy of Faublas!"</p> + +<p>"You have read Faublas?"</p> + +<p>"No, monsieur l'abbe; I meant to say the <i>Liaisons +dangereuses</i>."</p> + +<p>"Ah! that book is infinitely more moral," said the abbe, +laughing. "But you make me out as wicked as a young man of the +present day; I only meant--"</p> + +<p>"Do you dare to tell me you were not thinking of putting +wicked things into my head? Isn't it perfectly clear? If this +young man--who I admit is very good-looking--were to make love to +me, he would not think of his cousin. In Paris, I know, good +mothers do devote themselves in this way to the happiness and +welfare of their children; but we live in the provinces, monsieur +l'abbe."</p> + +<p>"Yes, madame."</p> + +<p>"And," she continued, "I do not want, and Adolphe himself +would not want, a hundred millions brought at such a price."</p> + +<p>"Madame, I said nothing about a hundred millions; that +temptation might be too great for either of us to withstand. +Only, I do think that an honest woman may permit herself, in all +honor, certain harmless little coquetries, which are, in fact, +part of her social duty and which--"</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?"</p> + +<p>"Are we not bound, madame, to make ourselves agreeable to each +other? --Permit me to blow my nose.--I assure you, madame," he +resumed, "that the young gentleman ogled you through his glass in +a more flattering manner than he put on when he looked at me; but +I forgive him for doing homage to beauty in preference to old +age--"</p> + +<p>"It is quite apparent," said the president in his loud voice, +"that Monsieur Grandet of Paris has sent his son to Saumur with +extremely matrimonial intentions."</p> + +<p>"But in that case the cousin wouldn't have fallen among us +like a cannon-ball," answered the notary.</p> + +<p>"That doesn't prove anything," said Monsieur des Grassins; +"the old miser is always making mysteries."</p> + +<p>"Des Grassins, my friend, I have invited the young man to +dinner. You must go and ask Monsieur and Madame de Larsonniere +and the du Hautoys, with the beautiful demoiselle du Hautoy, of +course. I hope she will be properly dressed; that jealous mother +of hers does make such a fright of her! Gentlemen, I trust that +you will all do us the honor to come," she added, stopping the +procession to address the two Cruchots.</p> + +<p>"Here you are at home, madame," said the notary.</p> + +<p>After bowing to the three des Grassins, the three Cruchots +returned home, applying their provincial genius for analysis to +studying, under all its aspects, the great event of the evening, +which undoubtedly changed the respective positions of Grassinists +and Cruchotines. The admirable common-sense which guided all the +actions of these great machinators made each side feel the +necessity of a momentary alliance against a common enemy. Must +they not mutually hinder Eugenie from loving her cousin, and the +cousin from thinking of Eugenie? Could the Parisian resist the +influence of treacherous insinuations, soft-spoken calumnies, +slanders full of faint praise and artless denials, which should +be made to circle incessantly about him and deceive him?</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>When the four relations were left alone, Monsieur Grandet said +to his nephew,--</p> + +<p>"We must go to bed. It is too late to talk about the matters +which have brought you here; to-morrow we will take a suitable +moment. We breakfast at eight o'clock; at midday we eat a little +fruit or a bit of bread, and drink a glass of white wine; and we +dine, like the Parisians, at five o'clock. That's the order of +the day. If you like to go and see the town and the environs you +are free to do so. You will excuse me if my occupations do not +permit me to accompany you. You may perhaps hear people say that +I am rich,--Monsieur Grandet this, Monsieur Grandet that. I let +them talk; their gossip does not hurt my credit. But I have not a +penny; I work in my old age like an apprentice whose worldly +goods are a bad plane and two good arms. Perhaps you'll soon know +yourself what a franc costs when you have got to sweat for it. +Nanon, where are the candles?"</p> + +<p>"I trust, my nephew, that you will find all you want," said +Madame Grandet; "but if you should need anything else, you can +call Nanon."</p> + +<p>"My dear aunt, I shall need nothing; I have, I believe, +brought everything with me. Permit me to bid you good-night, and +my young cousin also."</p> + +<p>Charles took a lighted wax candle from Nanon's hand,--an Anjou +candle, very yellow in color, and so shopworn that it looked like +tallow and deceived Monsieur Grandet, who, incapable of +suspecting its presence under his roof, did not perceive this +magnificence.</p> + +<p>"I will show you the way," he said.</p> + +<p>Instead of leaving the hall by the door which opened under the +archway, Grandet ceremoniously went through the passage which +divided the hall from the kitchen. A swing-door, furnished with a +large oval pane of glass, shut this passage from the staircase, +so as to fend off the cold air which rushed through it. But the +north wind whistled none the less keenly in winter, and, in spite +of the sand-bags at the bottom of the doors of the living-room, +the temperature within could scarcely be kept at a proper height. +Nanon went to bolt the outer door; then she closed the hall and +let loose a wolf-dog, whose bark was so strangled that he seemed +to have laryngitis. This animal, noted for his ferocity, +recognized no one but Nanon; the two untutored children of the +fields understood each other.</p> + +<p>When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well +of the staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the +heavy foot-fall of his uncle, his expectations began to sober +more and more. He fancied himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and +cousin, to whom he turned an inquiring look, were so used to the +staircase that they did not guess the cause of his amazement, and +took the glance for an expression of friendliness, which they +answered by a smile that made him desperate.</p> + +<p>"Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?" he said +to himself.</p> + +<p>When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted +in Etruscan red and without casings,--doors sunk in the dusty +walls and provided with iron bars, which in fact were bolts, each +ending with the pattern of a flame, as did both ends of the long +sheath of the lock. The first door at the top of the staircase, +which opened into a room directly above the kitchen, was +evidently walled up. In fact, the only entrance to that room was +through Grandet's bedchamber; the room itself was his office. The +single window which lighted it, on the side of the court, was +protected by a lattice of strong iron bars. No one, not even +Madame Grandet, had permission to enter it. The old man chose to +be alone, like an alchemist in his laboratory. There, no doubt, +some hiding-place had been ingeniously constructed; there the +title- deeds of property were stored; there hung the scales on +which to weigh the louis; there were devised, by night and +secretly, the estimates, the profits, the receipts, so that +business men, finding Grandet prepared at all points, imagined +that he got his cue from fairies or demons; there, no doubt, +while Nanon's loud snoring shook the rafters, while the wolf-dog +watched and yawned in the courtyard, while Madame and +Mademoiselle Grandet were quietly sleeping, came the old cooper +to cuddle, to con over, to caress and clutch and clasp his gold. +The walls were thick, the screens sure. He alone had the key of +this laboratory, where--so people declared--he studied the maps +on which his fruit-trees were marked, and calculated his profits +to a vine, and almost to a twig.</p> + +<p>The door of Eugenie's chamber was opposite to the walled-up +entrance to this room. At the other end of the landing were the +appartements of the married pair, which occupied the whole front +of the house. Madame Grandet had a room next to that of Eugenie, +which was entered through a glass door. The master's chamber was +separated from that of his wife by a partition, and from the +mysterious strong-room by a thick wall. Pere Grandet lodged his +nephew on the second floor, in the high mansarde attic which was +above his own bedroom, so that he might hear him if the young man +took it into his head to go and come. When Eugenie and her mother +reached the middle of the landing they kissed each other for +good-night; then with a few words of adieu to Charles, cold upon +the lips, but certainly very warm in the heart of the young girl, +they withdrew into their own chambers.</p> + +<p>"Here you are in your room, my nephew," said Pere Grandet as +he opened the door. "If you need to go out, call Nanon; without +her, beware! the dog would eat you up without a word. Sleep well. +Good-night. Ha! why, they have made you a fire!" he cried.</p> + +<p>At this moment Nanon appeared with the warming pan.</p> + +<p>"Here's something more!" said Monsieur Grandet. "Do you take +my nephew for a lying-in woman? Carry off your brazier, +Nanon!"</p> + +<p>"But, monsieur, the sheets are damp, and this gentleman is as +delicate as a woman."</p> + +<p>"Well, go on, as you've taken it into your head," said +Grandet, pushing her by the shoulders; "but don't set things on +fire." So saying, the miser went down-stairs, grumbling +indistinct sentences.</p> + +<p>Charles stood aghast in the midst of his trunks. After casting +his eyes on the attic-walls covered with that yellow paper +sprinkled with bouquets so well known in dance-houses, on the +fireplace of ribbed stone whose very look was chilling, on the +chairs of yellow wood with varnished cane seats that seemed to +have more than the usual four angles, on the open night-table +capacious enough to hold a small sergeant-at-arms, on the meagre +bit of rag-carpet beside the bed, on the tester whose cloth +valance shook as if, devoured by moths, it was about to fall, he +turned gravely to la Grande Nanon and said,--</p> + +<p>"Look here! my dear woman, just tell me, am I in the house of +Monsieur Grandet, formerly mayor of Saumur, and brother to +Monsieur Grandet of Paris?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, monsieur; and a very good, a very kind, a very perfect +gentleman. Shall I help you to unpack your trunks?"</p> + +<p>"Faith! yes, if you will, my old trooper. Didn't you serve in +the marines of the Imperial Guard?"</p> + +<p>"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed Nanon. "What's that,--the marines of the +guard? Is it salt? Does it go in the water?"</p> + +<p>"Here, get me my dressing-gown out of that valise; there's the +key."</p> + +<p>Nanon was wonder-struck by the sight of a dressing-gown made +of green silk, brocaded with gold flowers of an antique +design.</p> + +<p>"Are you going to put that on to go to bed with?" she +asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Holy Virgin! what a beautiful altar-cloth it would make for +the parish church! My dear darling monsieur, give it to the +church, and you'll save your soul; if you don't, you'll lose it. +Oh, how nice you look in it! I must call mademoiselle to see +you."</p> + +<p>"Come, Nanon, if Nanon you are, hold your tongue; let me go to +bed. I'll arrange my things to-morrow. If my dressing-gown +pleases you so much, you shall save your soul. I'm too good a +Christian not to give it to you when I go away, and you can do +what you like with it."</p> + +<p>Nanon stood rooted to the ground, gazing at Charles and unable +to put faith into his words.</p> + +<p>"Good night, Nanon."</p> + +<p>"What in the world have I come here for?" thought Charles as +he went to sleep. "My father is not a fool; my journey must have +some object. Pshaw! put off serious thought till the morrow, as +some Greek idiot said."</p> + +<p>"Blessed Virgin! how charming he is, my cousin!" Eugenie was +saying, interrupting her prayers, which that night at least were +never finished.</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet had no thoughts at all as she went to bed. She +heard the miser walking up and down his room through the door of +communication which was in the middle of the partition. Like all +timid women, she had studied the character of her lord. Just as +the petrel foresees the storm, she knew by imperceptible signs +when an inward tempest shook her husband; and at such times, to +use an expression of her own, she "feigned dead."</p> + +<p>Grandet gazed at the door lined with sheet-iron which he +lately put to his sanctum, and said to himself,--</p> + +<p>"What a crazy idea of my brother to bequeath his son to me! A +fine legacy! I have not fifty francs to give him. What are fifty +francs to a dandy who looked at my barometer as if he meant to +make firewood of it!"</p> + +<p>In thinking over the consequences of that legacy of anguish +Grandet was perhaps more agitated than his brother had been at +the moment of writing it.</p> + +<p>"I shall have that golden robe," thought Nanon, who went to +sleep tricked out in her altar-cloth, dreaming for the first time +in her life of flowers, embroidery, and damask, just as Eugenie +was dreaming of love.</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>In the pure and monotonous life of young girls there comes a +delicious hour when the sun sheds its rays into their soul, when +the flowers express their thoughts, when the throbbings of the +heart send upward to the brain their fertilizing warmth and melt +all thoughts into a vague desire,--day of innocent melancholy and +of dulcet joys! When babes begin to see, they smile; when a young +girl first perceives the sentiment of nature, she smiles as she +smiled when an infant. If light is the first love of life, is not +love a light to the heart? The moment to see within the veil of +earthly things had come for Eugenie.</p> + +<p>An early riser, like all provincial girls, she was up betimes +and said her prayers, and then began the business of dressing,--a +business which henceforth was to have a meaning. First she +brushed and smoothed her chestnut hair and twisted its heavy +masses to the top of her head with the utmost care, preventing +the loose tresses from straying, and giving to her head a +symmetry which heightened the timid candor of her face; for the +simplicity of these accessories accorded well with the innocent +sincerity of its lines. As she washed her hands again and again +in the cold water which hardened and reddened the skin, she +looked at her handsome round arms and asked herself what her +cousin did to make his hands so softly white, his nails so +delicately curved. She put on new stockings and her prettiest +shoes. She laced her corset straight, without skipping a single +eyelet. And then, wishing for the first time in her life to +appear to advantage, she felt the joy of having a new gown, well +made, which rendered her attractive.</p> + +<p>As she finished her toilet the clock of the parish church +struck the hour; to her astonishment, it was only seven. The +desire of having plenty of time for dressing carefully had led +her to get up too early. Ignorant of the art of retouching every +curl and studying every effect, Eugenie simply crossed her arms, +sat down by the window, and looked at the court-yard, the narrow +garden, and the high terraced walls that over-topped it: a +dismal, hedged-in prospect, yet not wholly devoid of those +mysterious beauties which belong to solitary or uncultivated +nature. Near the kitchen was a well surrounded by a curb, with a +pulley fastened to a bent iron rod clasped by a vine whose leaves +were withered, reddened, and shrivelled by the season. From +thence the tortuous shoots straggled to the wall, clutched it, +and ran the whole length of the house, ending near the wood-pile, +where the logs were ranged with as much precision as the books in +a library. The pavement of the court-yard showed the black stains +produced in time by lichens, herbage, and the absence of all +movement or friction. The thick walls wore a coating of green +moss streaked with waving brown lines, and the eight stone steps +at the bottom of the court-yard which led up to the gate of the +garden were disjointed and hidden beneath tall plants, like the +tomb of a knight buried by his widow in the days of the Crusades. +Above a foundation of moss-grown, crumbling stones was a trellis +of rotten wood, half fallen from decay; over them clambered and +intertwined at will a mass of clustering creepers. On each side +of the latticed gate stretched the crooked arms of two stunted +apple-trees. Three parallel walks, gravelled and separated from +each other by square beds, where the earth was held in by box- +borders, made the garden, which terminated, beneath a terrace of +the old walls, in a group of lindens. At the farther end were +raspberry- bushes; at the other, near the house, an immense +walnut-tree drooped its branches almost into the window of the +miser's sanctum.</p> + +<p>A clear day and the beautiful autumnal sun common to the banks +of the Loire was beginning to melt the hoar-frost which the night +had laid on these picturesque objects, on the walls, and on the +plants which swathed the court-yard. Eugenie found a novel charm +in the aspect of things lately so insignificant to her. A +thousand confused thoughts came to birth in her mind and grew +there, as the sunbeams grew without along the wall. She felt that +impulse of delight, vague, inexplicable, which wraps the moral +being as a cloud wraps the physical body. Her thoughts were all +in keeping with the details of this strange landscape, and the +harmonies of her heart blended with the harmonies of nature. When +the sun reached an angle of the wall where the "Venus- hair" of +southern climes drooped its thick leaves, lit with the changing +colors of a pigeon's breast, celestial rays of hope illumined the +future to her eyes, and thenceforth she loved to gaze upon that +piece of wall, on its pale flowers, its blue harebells, its +wilting herbage, with which she mingled memories as tender as +those of childhood. The noise made by each leaf as it fell from +its twig in the void of that echoing court gave answer to the +secret questionings of the young girl, who could have stayed +there the livelong day without perceiving the flight of time. +Then came tumultuous heavings of the soul. She rose often, went +to her glass, and looked at herself, as an author in good faith +looks at his work to criticise it and blame it in his own +mind.</p> + +<p>"I am not beautiful enough for him!" Such was Eugenie's +thought,--a humble thought, fertile in suffering. The poor girl +did not do herself justice; but modesty, or rather fear, is among +the first of love's virtues. Eugenie belonged to the type of +children with sturdy constitutions, such as we see among the +lesser bourgeoisie, whose beauties always seem a little vulgar; +and yet, though she resembled the Venus of Milo, the lines of her +figure were ennobled by the softer Christian sentiment which +purifies womanhood and gives it a distinction unknown to the +sculptors of antiquity. She had an enormous head, with the +masculine yet delicate forehead of the Jupiter of Phidias, and +gray eyes, to which her chaste life, penetrating fully into them, +carried a flood of light. The features of her round face, +formerly fresh and rosy, were at one time swollen by the +small-pox, which destroyed the velvet texture of the skin, though +it kindly left no other traces, and her cheek was still so soft +and delicate that her mother's kiss made a momentary red mark +upon it. Her nose was somewhat too thick, but it harmonized well +with the vermilion mouth, whose lips, creased in many lines, were +full of love and kindness. The throat was exquisitely round. The +bust, well curved and carefully covered, attracted the eye and +inspired reverie. It lacked, no doubt, the grace which a fitting +dress can bestow; but to a connoisseur the non-flexibility of her +figure had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had +none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was +beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and none but +artists truly love. A painter seeking here below for a type of +Mary's celestial purity, searching womankind for those proud +modest eyes which Raphael divined, for those virgin lines, often +due to chances of conception, which the modesty of Christian life +alone can bestow or keep unchanged,--such a painter, in love with +his ideal, would have found in the face of Eugenie the innate +nobleness that is ignorant of itself; he would have seen beneath +the calmness of that brow a world of love; he would have felt, in +the shape of the eyes, in the fall of the eyelids, the presence +of the nameless something that we call divine. Her features, the +contour of her head, which no expression of pleasure had ever +altered or wearied, were like the lines of the horizon softly +traced in the far distance across the tranquil lakes. That calm +and rosy countenance, margined with light like a lovely +full-blown flower, rested the mind, held the eye, and imparted +the charm of the conscience that was there reflected. Eugenie was +standing on the shore of life where young illusions flower, where +daisies are gathered with delights ere long to be unknown; and +thus she said, looking at her image in the glass, unconscious as +yet of love: "I am too ugly; he will not notice me."</p> + +<p>Then she opened the door of her chamber which led to the +staircase, and stretched out her neck to listen for the household +noises. "He is not up," she thought, hearing Nanon's morning +cough as the good soul went and came, sweeping out the halls, +lighting her fire, chaining the dog, and speaking to the beasts +in the stable. Eugenie at once went down and ran to Nanon, who +was milking the cow.</p> + +<p>"Nanon, my good Nanon, make a little cream for my cousin's +breakfast."</p> + +<p>"Why, mademoiselle, you should have thought of that +yesterday," said Nanon, bursting into a loud peal of laughter. "I +can't make cream. Your cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that +he is! You should have seen him in his dressing-gown, all silk +and gold! I saw him, I did! He wears linen as fine as the +surplice of monsieur le cure."</p> + +<p>"Nanon, please make us a <i>galette</i>."</p> + +<p>"And who'll give me wood for the oven, and flour and butter +for the cakes?" said Nanon, who in her function of prime-minister +to Grandet assumed at times enormous importance in the eyes of +Eugenie and her mother. "Mustn't rob the master to feast the +cousin. You ask him for butter and flour and wood: he's your +father, perhaps he'll give you some. See! there he is now, coming +to give out the provisions."</p> + +<p>Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard +the staircase shaking under her father's step. Already she felt +the effects of that virgin modesty and that special consciousness +of happiness which lead us to fancy, not perhaps without reason, +that our thoughts are graven on our foreheads and are open to the +eyes of all. Perceiving for the first time the cold nakedness of +her father's house, the poor girl felt a sort of rage that she +could not put it in harmony with her cousin's elegance. She felt +the need of doing something for him,--what, she did not know. +Ingenuous and truthful, she followed her angelic nature without +mistrusting her impressions or her feelings. The mere sight of +her cousin had wakened within her the natural yearnings of a +woman,--yearnings that were the more likely to develop ardently +because, having reached her twenty-third year, she was in the +plenitude of her intelligence and her desires. For the first time +in her life her heart was full of terror at the sight of her +father; in him she saw the master of the fate, and she fancied +herself guilty of wrong-doing in hiding from his knowledge +certain thoughts. She walked with hasty steps, surprised to +breathe a purer air, to feel the sun's rays quickening her +pulses, to absorb from their heat a moral warmth and a new life. +As she turned over in her mind some stratagem by which to get the +cake, a quarrel--an event as rare as the sight of swallows in +winter--broke out between la Grande Nanon and Grandet. Armed with +his keys, the master had come to dole out provisions for the +day's consumption.</p> + +<p>"Is there any bread left from yesterday?" he said to +Nanon.</p> + +<p>"Not a crumb, monsieur."</p> + +<p>Grandet took a large round loaf, well floured and moulded in +one of the flat baskets which they use for baking in Anjou, and +was about to cut it, when Nanon said to him,--</p> + +<p>"We are five, to-day, monsieur."</p> + +<p>"That's true," said Grandet, "but your loaves weigh six +pounds; there'll be some left. Besides, these young fellows from +Paris don't eat bread, you'll see."</p> + +<p>"Then they must eat <i>frippe</i>?" said Nanon.</p> + +<p><i>Frippe</i> is a word of the local lexicon of Anjou, and +means any accompaniment of bread, from butter which is spread +upon it, the commonest kind of <i>frippe</i>, to peach preserve, +the most distinguished of all the <i>frippes</i>; those who in +their childhood have licked the <i>frippe</i> and left the bread, +will comprehend the meaning of Nanon's speech.</p> + +<p>"No," answered Grandet, "they eat neither bread nor +<i>frippe</i>; they are something like marriageable girls."</p> + +<p>After ordering the meals for the day with his usual parsimony, +the goodman, having locked the closets containing the supplies, +was about to go towards the fruit-garden, when Nanon stopped him +to say,--</p> + +<p>"Monsieur, give me a little flour and some butter, and I'll +make a <i>galette</i> for the young ones."</p> + +<p>"Are you going to pillage the house on account of my +nephew?"</p> + +<p>"I wasn't thinking any more of your nephew than I was of your +dog,-- not more than you think yourself; for, look here, you've +only forked out six bits of sugar. I want eight."</p> + +<p>"What's all this, Nanon? I have never seen you like this +before. What have you got in your head? Are you the mistress +here? You sha'n't have more than six pieces of sugar."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, how is your nephew to sweeten his coffee?"</p> + +<p>"With two pieces; I'll go without myself."</p> + +<p>"Go without sugar at your age! I'd rather buy you some out of +my own pocket."</p> + +<p>"Mind your own business."</p> + +<p>In spite of the recent fall in prices, sugar was still in +Grandet's eyes the most valuable of all the colonial products; to +him it was always six francs a pound. The necessity of +economizing it, acquired under the Empire, had grown to be the +most inveterate of his habits. All women, even the greatest +ninnies, know how to dodge and dodge to get their ends; Nanon +abandoned the sugar for the sake of getting the +<i>galette</i>.</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle!" she called through the window, "do you want +some <i>galette</i>?"</p> + +<p>"No, no," answered Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"Come, Nanon," said Grandet, hearing his daughter's voice. +"See here." He opened the cupboard where the flour was kept, gave +her a cupful, and added a few ounces of butter to the piece he +had already cut off.</p> + +<p>"I shall want wood for the oven," said the implacable +Nanon.</p> + +<p>"Well, take what you want," he answered sadly; "but in that +case you must make us a fruit-tart, and you'll cook the whole +dinner in the oven. In that way you won't need two fires."</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" cried Nanon, "you needn't tell me that."</p> + +<p>Grandet cast a look that was well-nigh paternal upon his +faithful deputy.</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle," she cried, when his back was turned, "we shall +have the <i>galette</i>."</p> + +<p>Pere Grandet returned from the garden with the fruit and +arranged a plateful on the kitchen-table.</p> + +<p>"Just see, monsieur," said Nanon, "what pretty boots your +nephew has. What leather! why it smells good! What does he clean +it with, I wonder? Am I to put your egg-polish on it?"</p> + +<p>"Nanon, I think eggs would injure that kind of leather. Tell +him you don't know how to black morocco; yes, that's morocco. He +will get you something himself in Saumur to polish those boots +with. I have heard that they put sugar into the blacking to make +it shine."</p> + +<p>"They look good to eat," said the cook, putting the boots to +her nose. "Bless me! if they don't smell like madame's +eau-de-cologne. Ah! how funny!"</p> + +<p>"Funny!" said her master. "Do you call it funny to put more +money into boots than the man who stands in them is worth?"</p> + +<p>"Monsieur," she said, when Grandet returned the second time, +after locking the fruit-garden, "won't you have the +<i>pot-au-feu</i> put on once or twice a week on account of your +nephew?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Am I to go to the butcher's?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly not. We will make the broth of fowls; the farmers +will bring them. I shall tell Cornoiller to shoot some crows; +they make the best soup in the world."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it true, monsieur, that crows eat the dead?"</p> + +<p>"You are a fool, Nanon. They eat what they can get, like the +rest of the world. Don't we all live on the dead? What are +legacies?"</p> + +<p>Monsieur Grandet, having no further orders to give, drew out +his watch, and seeing that he had half an hour to dispose of +before breakfast, he took his hat, went and kissed his daughter, +and said to her:</p> + +<p>"Do you want to come for a walk in the fields, down by the +Loire? I have something to do there."</p> + +<p>Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; +then the father and daughter went down the winding street to the +shore.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going at this early hour?" said Cruchot, the +notary, meeting them.</p> + +<p>"To see something," answered Grandet, not duped by the +matutinal appearance of his friend.</p> + +<p>When Pere Grandet went to "see something," the notary knew by +experience there was something to be got by going with him; so he +went.</p> + +<p>"Come, Cruchot," said Grandet, "you are one of my friends. +I'll show you what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good +ground."</p> + +<p>"Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for +those that were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?" said +Maitre Cruchot, opening his eyes with amazement. "What luck you +have had! To cut down your trees at the very time they ran short +of white-wood at Nantes, and to sell them at thirty francs!"</p> + +<p>Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most +solemn moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to +bring down upon her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet +had now reached the magnificent fields which he owned on the +banks of the Loire, where thirty workmen were employed in +clearing away, filling up, and levelling the spots formerly +occupied by the poplars.</p> + +<p>"Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! +Jean," he cried to a laborer, "m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, +b-both ways."</p> + +<p>"Four times eight feet," said the man.</p> + +<p>"Thirty-two feet lost," said Grandet to Cruchot. "I had three +hundred poplars in this one line, isn't that so? Well, then, +three h-h-hundred times thir-thirty-two lost m-m-me five hundred +in h-h-hay; add twice as much for the side rows,--fifteen +hundred; the middle rows as much more. So we may c-c-call it a +th-thousand b-b-bales of h-h-hay--"</p> + +<p>"Very good," said Cruchot, to help out his friend; "a thousand +bales are worth about six hundred francs."</p> + +<p>"Say t-t-twelve hundred, be-c-cause there's three or four +hundred francs on the second crop. Well, then, c-c-calculate that +t-twelve thousand francs a year for f-f-forty years with interest +c-c-comes to--"</p> + +<p>"Say sixty thousand francs," said the notary.</p> + +<p>"I am willing; c-c-comes t-t-to sixty th-th-thousand. Very +good," continued Grandet, without stuttering: "two thousand +poplars forty years old will only yield me fifty thousand francs. +There's a loss. I have found that myself," said Grandet, getting +on his high horse. "Jean, fill up all the holes except those at +the bank of the river; there you are to plant the poplars I have +bought. Plant 'em there, and they'll get nourishment from the +government," he said, turning to Cruchot, and giving a slight +motion to the wen on his nose, which expressed more than the most +ironical of smiles.</p> + +<p>"True enough; poplars should only be planted on poor soil," +said Cruchot, amazed at Grandet's calculations.</p> + +<p>"Y-y-yes, monsieur," answered the old man satirically.</p> + +<p>Eugenie, who was gazing at the sublime scenery of the Loire, +and paying no attention to her father's reckonings, presently +turned an ear to the remarks of Cruchot when she heard him +say,--</p> + +<p>"So you have brought a son-in-law from Paris. All Saumur is +talking about your nephew. I shall soon have the +marriage-contract to draw up, hey! Pere Grandet?"</p> + +<p>"You g-g-got up very early to t-t-tell me that," said Grandet, +accompanying the remark with a motion of his wen. "Well, old +c-c-comrade, I'll be frank, and t-t-tell you what you want t-t-to +know. I would rather, do you see, f-f-fling my daughter into the +Loire than g-g-give her to her c-c-cousin. You may t-t-tell that +everywhere, --no, never mind; let the world t-t-talk."</p> + +<p>This answer dazzled and blinded the young girl with sudden +light. The distant hopes upspringing in her heart bloomed +suddenly, became real, tangible, like a cluster of flowers, and +she saw them cut down and wilting on the earth. Since the +previous evening she had attached herself to Charles by those +links of happiness which bind soul to soul; from henceforth +suffering was to rivet them. Is it not the noble destiny of women +to be more moved by the dark solemnities of grief than by the +splendors of fortune? How was it that fatherly feeling had died +out of her father's heart? Of what crime had Charles been guilty? +Mysterious questions! Already her dawning love, a mystery so +profound, was wrapping itself in mystery. She walked back +trembling in all her limbs; and when she reached the gloomy +street, lately so joyous to her, she felt its sadness, she +breathed the melancholy which time and events had printed there. +None of love's lessons lacked. A few steps from their own door +she went on before her father and waited at the threshold. But +Grandet, who saw a newspaper in the notary's hand, stopped short +and asked,--</p> + +<p>"How are the Funds?"</p> + +<p>"You never listen to my advice, Grandet," answered Cruchot. +"Buy soon; you will still make twenty per cent in two years, +besides getting an excellent rate of interest,--five thousand a +year for eighty thousand francs fifty centimes."</p> + +<p>"We'll see about that," answered Grandet, rubbing his +chin.</p> + +<p>"Good God!" exclaimed the notary.</p> + +<p>"Well, what?" cried Grandet; and at the same moment Cruchot +put the newspaper under his eyes and said:</p> + +<p>"Read that!"</p> + +<p>"Monsieur Grandet, one of the most respected merchants in +Paris, blew his brains out yesterday, after making his usual +appearance at the Bourse. He had sent his resignation to the +president of the Chamber of Deputies, and had also resigned his +functions as a judge of the commercial courts. The failures of +Monsieur Roguin and Monsieur Souchet, his broker and his notary, +had ruined him. The esteem felt for Monsieur Grandet and the +credit he enjoyed were nevertheless such that he might have +obtained the necessary assistance from other business houses. It +is much to be regretted that so honorable a man should have +yielded to momentary despair," etc.</p> + +<p>"I knew it," said the old wine-grower to the notary.</p> + +<p>The words sent a chill of horror through Maitre Cruchot, who, +notwithstanding his impassibility as a notary, felt the cold +running down his spine as he thought that Grandet of Paris had +possibly implored in vain the millions of Grandet of Saumur.</p> + +<p>"And his son, so joyous yesterday--"</p> + +<p>"He knows nothing as yet," answered Grandet, with the same +composure.</p> + +<p>"Adieu! Monsieur Grandet," said Cruchot, who now understood +the state of the case, and went off to reassure Monsieur de +Bonfons.</p> + +<p>On entering, Grandet found breakfast ready. Madame Grandet, +round whose neck Eugenie had flung her arms, kissing her with the +quick effusion of feeling often caused by secret grief, was +already seated in her chair on castors, knitting sleeves for the +coming winter.</p> + +<p>"You can begin to eat," said Nanon, coming downstairs four +steps at a time; "the young one is sleeping like a cherub. Isn't +he a darling with his eyes shut? I went in and I called him: no +answer."</p> + +<p>"Let him sleep," said Grandet; "he'll wake soon enough to hear +ill- tidings."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked Eugenie, putting into her coffee the two +little bits of sugar weighing less than half an ounce which the +old miser amused himself by cutting up in his leisure hours. +Madame Grandet, who did not dare to put the question, gazed at +her husband.</p> + +<p>"His father has blown his brains out."</p> + +<p>"My uncle?" said Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"Poor young man!" exclaimed Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>"Poor indeed!" said Grandet; "he isn't worth a sou!"</p> + +<p>"Eh! poor boy, and he's sleeping like the king of the world!" +said Nanon in a gentle voice.</p> + +<p>Eugenie stopped eating. Her heart was wrung, as the young +heart is wrung when pity for the suffering of one she loves +overflows, for the first time, the whole being of a woman. The +poor girl wept.</p> + +<p>"What are you crying about? You didn't know your uncle," said +her father, giving her one of those hungry tigerish looks he +doubtless threw upon his piles of gold.</p> + +<p>"But, monsieur," said Nanon, "who wouldn't feel pity for the +poor young man, sleeping there like a wooden shoe, without +knowing what's coming?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't speak to you, Nanon. Hold your tongue!"</p> + +<p>Eugenie learned at that moment that the woman who loves must +be able to hide her feelings. She did not answer.</p> + +<p>"You will say nothing to him about it, Ma'ame Grandet, till I +return," said the old man. "I have to go and straighten the line +of my hedge along the high-road. I shall be back at noon, in time +for the second breakfast, and then I will talk with my nephew +about his affairs. As for you, Mademoiselle Eugenie, if it is for +that dandy you are crying, that's enough, child. He's going off +like a shot to the Indies. You will never see him again."</p> + +<p>The father took his gloves from the brim of his hat, put them +on with his usual composure, pushed them in place by shoving the +fingers of both hands together, and went out.</p> + +<p>"Mamma, I am suffocating!" cried Eugenie when she was alone +with her mother; "I have never suffered like this."</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet, seeing that she turned pale, opened the window +and let her breathe fresh air.</p> + +<p>"I feel better!" said Eugenie after a moment.</p> + +<p>This nervous excitement in a nature hitherto, to all +appearance, calm and cold, reacted on Madame Grandet; she looked +at her daughter with the sympathetic intuition with which mothers +are gifted for the objects of their tenderness, and guessed all. +In truth the life of the Hungarian sisters, bound together by a +freak of nature, could scarcely have been more intimate than that +of Eugenie and her mother,--always together in the embrasure of +that window, and sleeping together in the same atmosphere.</p> + +<p>"My poor child!" said Madame Grandet, taking Eugenie's head +and laying it upon her bosom.</p> + +<p>At these words the young girl raised her head, questioned her +mother by a look, and seemed to search out her inmost +thought.</p> + +<p>"Why send him to the Indies?" she said. "If he is unhappy, +ought he not to stay with us? Is he not our nearest +relation?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my child, it seems natural; but your father has his +reasons: we must respect them."</p> + +<p>The mother and daughter sat down in silence, the former upon +her raised seat, the latter in her little armchair, and both took +up their work. Swelling with gratitude for the full +heart-understanding her mother had given her, Eugenie kissed the +dear hand, saying,--</p> + +<p>"How good you are, my kind mamma!"</p> + +<p>The words sent a glow of light into the motherly face, worn +and blighted as it was by many sorrows.</p> + +<p>"You like him?" asked Eugenie.</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet only smiled in reply. Then, after a moment's +silence, she said in a low voice: "Do you love him already? That +is wrong."</p> + +<p>"Wrong?" said Eugenie. "Why is it wrong? You are pleased with +him, Nanon is pleased with him; why should he not please me? +Come, mamma, let us set the table for his breakfast."</p> + +<p>She threw down her work, and her mother did the same, saying, +"Foolish child!" But she sanctioned the child's folly by sharing +it. Eugenie called Nanon.</p> + +<p>"What do you want now, mademoiselle?"</p> + +<p>"Nanon, can we have cream by midday?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! midday, to be sure you can," answered the old +servant.</p> + +<p>"Well, let him have his coffee very strong; I heard Monsieur +des Grassins say that they make the coffee very strong in Paris. +Put in a great deal."</p> + +<p>"Where am I to get it?"</p> + +<p>"Buy some."</p> + +<p>"Suppose monsieur meets me?"</p> + +<p>"He has gone to his fields."</p> + +<p>"I'll run, then. But Monsieur Fessard asked me yesterday if +the Magi had come to stay with us when I bought the wax candle. +All the town will know our goings-on."</p> + +<p>"If your father finds it out," said Madame Grandet, "he is +capable of beating us."</p> + +<p>"Well, let him beat us; we will take his blows on our +knees."</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet for all answer raised her eyes to heaven. Nanon +put on her hood and went off. Eugenie got out some clean +table-linen, and went to fetch a few bunches of grapes which she +had amused herself by hanging on a string across the attic; she +walked softly along the corridor, so as not to waken her cousin, +and she could not help listening at the door to his quiet +breathing.</p> + +<p>"Sorrow is watching while he sleeps," she thought.</p> + +<p>She took the freshest vine-leaves and arranged her dish of +grapes as coquettishly as a practised house-keeper might have +done, and placed it triumphantly on the table. She laid hands on +the pears counted out by her father, and piled them in a pyramid +mixed with leaves. She went and came, and skipped and ran. She +would have liked to lay under contribution everything in her +father's house; but the keys were in his pocket. Nanon came back +with two fresh eggs. At sight of them Eugenie almost hugged her +round the neck.</p> + +<p>"The farmer from Lande had them in his basket. I asked him for +them, and he gave them to me, the darling, for nothing, as an +attention!"</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>After two hours' thought and care, during which Eugenie jumped +up twenty times from her work to see if the coffee were boiling, +or to go and listen to the noise her cousin made in dressing, she +succeeded in preparing a simple little breakfast, very +inexpensive, but which, nevertheless, departed alarmingly from +the inveterate customs of the house. The midday breakfast was +always taken standing. Each took a slice of bread, a little fruit +or some butter, and a glass of wine. As Eugenie looked at the +table drawn up near the fire with an arm-chair placed before her +cousin's plate, at the two dishes of fruit, the egg- cup, the +bottle of white wine, the bread, and the sugar heaped up in a +saucer, she trembled in all her limbs at the mere thought of the +look her father would give her if he should come in at that +moment. She glanced often at the clock to see if her cousin could +breakfast before the master's return.</p> + +<p>"Don't be troubled, Eugenie; if your father comes in, I will +take it all upon myself," said Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>Eugenie could not repress a tear.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my good mother!" she cried, "I have never loved you +enough."</p> + +<p>Charles, who had been tramping about his room for some time, +singing to himself, now came down. Happily, it was only eleven +o'clock. The true Parisian! he had put as much dandyism into his +dress as if he were in the chateau of the noble lady then +travelling in Scotland. He came into the room with the smiling, +courteous manner so becoming to youth, which made Eugenie's heart +beat with mournful joy. He had taken the destruction of his +castles in Anjou as a joke, and came up to his aunt gaily.</p> + +<p>"Have you slept well, dear aunt? and you, too, my cousin?"</p> + +<p>"Very well, monsieur; did you?" said Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>"I? perfectly."</p> + +<p>"You must be hungry, cousin," said Eugenie; "will you take +your seat?"</p> + +<p>"I never breakfast before midday; I never get up till then. +However, I fared so badly on the journey that I am glad to eat +something at once. Besides--" here he pulled out the prettiest +watch Breguet ever made. "Dear me! I am early, it is only eleven +o'clock!"</p> + +<p>"Early?" said Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>"Yes; but I wanted to put my things in order. Well, I shall be +glad to have anything to eat,--anything, it doesn't matter what, +a chicken, a partridge."</p> + +<p>"Holy Virgin!" exclaimed Nanon, overhearing the words.</p> + +<p>"A partridge!" whispered Eugenie to herself; she would gladly +have given the whole of her little hoard for a partridge.</p> + +<p>"Come and sit down," said his aunt.</p> + +<p>The young dandy let himself drop into an easy-chair, just as a +pretty woman falls gracefully upon a sofa. Eugenie and her mother +took ordinary chairs and sat beside him, near the fire.</p> + +<p>"Do you always live here?" said Charles, thinking the room +uglier by daylight than it had seemed the night before.</p> + +<p>"Always," answered Eugenie, looking at him, "except during the +vintage. Then we go and help Nanon, and live at the Abbaye des +Noyers."</p> + +<p>"Don't you ever take walks?"</p> + +<p>"Sometimes on Sunday after vespers, when the weather is fine," +said Madame Grandet, "we walk on the bridge, or we go and watch +the haymakers."</p> + +<p>"Have you a theatre?"</p> + +<p>"Go to the theatre!" exclaimed Madame Grandet, "see a play! +Why, monsieur, don't you know it is a mortal sin?"</p> + +<p>"See here, monsieur," said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, "here +are your chickens,--in the shell."</p> + +<p>"Oh! fresh eggs," said Charles, who, like all people +accustomed to luxury, had already forgotten about his partridge, +"that is delicious: now, if you will give me the butter, my good +girl."</p> + +<p>"Butter! then you can't have the <i>galette</i>."</p> + +<p>"Nanon, bring the butter," cried Eugenie.</p> + +<p>The young girl watched her cousin as he cut his sippets, with +as much pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where +innocence and virtue triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming +mother, improved, and trained by a woman of fashion, had the +elegant, dainty, foppish movements of a coxcomb. The +compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a young girl possess a +power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles, finding himself +the object of the attentions of his aunt and cousin, could not +escape the influence of feelings which flowed towards him, as it +were, and inundated him. He gave Eugenie a bright, caressing look +full of kindness,--a look which seemed itself a smile. He +perceived, as his eyes lingered upon her, the exquisite harmony +of features in the pure face, the grace of her innocent attitude, +the magic clearness of the eyes, where young love sparkled and +desire shone unconsciously.</p> + +<p>"Ah! my dear cousin, if you were in full dress at the Opera, I +assure you my aunt's words would come true,--you would make the +men commit the mortal sin of envy, and the women the sin of +jealousy."</p> + +<p>The compliment went to Eugenie's heart and set it beating, +though she did not understand its meaning.</p> + +<p>"Oh! cousin," she said, "you are laughing at a poor little +country girl."</p> + +<p>"If you knew me, my cousin, you would know that I abhor +ridicule; it withers the heart and jars upon all my feelings." +Here he swallowed his buttered sippet very gracefully. "No, I +really have not enough mind to make fun of others; and doubtless +it is a great defect. In Paris, when they want to disparage a +man, they say: 'He has a good heart.' The phrase means: 'The poor +fellow is as stupid as a rhinoceros.' But as I am rich, and known +to hit the bull's-eye at thirty paces with any kind of pistol, +and even in the open fields, ridicule respects me."</p> + +<p>"My dear nephew, that bespeaks a good heart."</p> + +<p>"You have a very pretty ring," said Eugenie; "is there any +harm in asking to see it?"</p> + +<p>Charles held out his hand after loosening the ring, and +Eugenie blushed as she touched the pink nails of her cousin with +the tips of her fingers.</p> + +<p>"See, mamma, what beautiful workmanship."</p> + +<p>"My! there's a lot of gold!" said Nanon, bringing in the +coffee.</p> + +<p>"What is that?" exclaimed Charles, laughing, as he pointed to +an oblong pot of brown earthenware, glazed on the inside, and +edged with a fringe of ashes, from the bottom of which the +coffee-grounds were bubbling up and falling in the boiling +liquid.</p> + +<p>"It is boiled coffee," said Nanon.</p> + +<p>"Ah! my dear aunt, I shall at least leave one beneficent trace +of my visit here. You are indeed behind the age! I must teach you +to make good coffee in a Chaptal coffee-pot."</p> + +<p>He tried to explain the process of a Chaptal coffee-pot.</p> + +<p>"Gracious! if there are so many things as all that to do," +said Nanon, "we may as well give up our lives to it. I shall +never make coffee that way; I know that! Pray, who is to get the +fodder for the cow while I make the coffee?"</p> + +<p>"I will make it," said Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"Child!" said Madame Grandet, looking at her daughter.</p> + +<p>The word recalled to their minds the sorrow that was about to +fall upon the unfortunate young man; the three women were silent, +and looked at him with an air of commiseration that caught his +attention.</p> + +<p>"Is anything the matter, my cousin?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Hush!" said Madame Grandet to Eugenie, who was about to +answer; "you know, my daughter, that your father charged us not +to speak to monsieur--"</p> + +<p>"Say Charles," said young Grandet.</p> + +<p>"Ah! you are called Charles? What a beautiful name!" cried +Eugenie.</p> + +<p>Presentiments of evil are almost always justified. At this +moment Nanon, Madame Grandet, and Eugenie, who had all three been +thinking with a shudder of the old man's return, heard the knock +whose echoes they knew but too well.</p> + +<p>"There's papa!" said Eugenie.</p> + +<p>She removed the saucer filled with sugar, leaving a few pieces +on the table-cloth; Nanon carried off the egg-cup; Madame Grandet +sat up like a frightened hare. It was evidently a panic, which +amazed Charles, who was wholly unable to understand it.</p> + +<p>"Why! what is the matter?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"My father has come," answered Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"Well, what of that?"</p> + +<p>Monsieur Grandet entered the room, threw his keen eye upon the +table, upon Charles, and saw the whole thing.</p> + +<p>"Ha! ha! so you have been making a feast for your nephew; very +good, very good, very good indeed!" he said, without stuttering. +"When the cat's away, the mice will play."</p> + +<p>"Feast!" thought Charles, incapable of suspecting or imagining +the rules and customs of the household.</p> + +<p>"Give me my glass, Nanon," said the master</p> + +<p>Eugenie brought the glass. Grandet drew a horn-handled knife +with a big blade from his breeches' pocket, cut a slice of bread, +took a small bit of butter, spread it carefully on the bread, and +ate it standing. At this moment Charlie was sweetening his +coffee. Pere Grandet saw the bits of sugar, looked at his wife, +who turned pale, and made three steps forward; he leaned down to +the poor woman's ear and said,--</p> + +<p>"Where did you get all that sugar?"</p> + +<p>"Nanon fetched it from Fessard's; there was none."</p> + +<p>It is impossible to picture the profound interest the three +women took in this mute scene. Nanon had left her kitchen and +stood looking into the room to see what would happen. Charles, +having tasted his coffee, found it bitter and glanced about for +the sugar, which Grandet had already put away.</p> + +<p>"What do you want?" said his uncle.</p> + +<p>"The sugar."</p> + +<p>"Put in more milk," answered the master of the house; "your +coffee will taste sweeter."</p> + +<p>Eugenie took the saucer which Grandet had put away and placed +it on the table, looking calmly at her father as she did so. Most +assuredly, the Parisian woman who held a silken ladder with her +feeble arms to facilitate the flight of her lover, showed no +greater courage than Eugenie displayed when she replaced the +sugar upon the table. The lover rewarded his mistress when she +proudly showed him her beautiful bruised arm, and bathed every +swollen vein with tears and kisses till it was cured with +happiness. Charles, on the other hand, never so much as knew the +secret of the cruel agitation that shook and bruised the heart of +his cousin, crushed as it was by the look of the old miser.</p> + +<p>"You are not eating your breakfast, wife."</p> + +<p>The poor helot came forward with a piteous look, cut herself a +piece of bread, and took a pear. Eugenie boldly offered her +father some grapes, saying,--</p> + +<p>"Taste my preserves, papa. My cousin, you will eat some, will +you not? I went to get these pretty grapes expressly for +you."</p> + +<p>"If no one stops them, they will pillage Saumur for you, +nephew. When you have finished, we will go into the garden; I +have something to tell you which can't be sweetened."</p> + +<p>Eugenie and her mother cast a look on Charles whose meaning +the young man could not mistake.</p> + +<p>"What is it you mean, uncle? Since the death of my poor +mother"--at these words his voice softened--"no other sorrow can +touch me."</p> + +<p>"My nephew, who knows by what afflictions God is pleased to +try us?" said his aunt.</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta," said Grandet, "there's your nonsense +beginning. I am sorry to see those white hands of yours, nephew"; +and he showed the shoulder-of-mutton fists which Nature had put +at the end of his own arms. "There's a pair of hands made to pick +up silver pieces. You've been brought up to put your feet in the +kid out of which we make the purses we keep our money in. A bad +look-out! Very bad!"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, uncle? I'll be hanged if I understand a +single word of what you are saying."</p> + +<p>"Come!" said Grandet.</p> + +<p>The miser closed the blade of his knife with a snap, drank the +last of his wine, and opened the door.</p> + +<p>"My cousin, take courage!"</p> + +<p>The tone of the young girl struck terror to Charles's heart, +and he followed his terrible uncle, a prey to disquieting +thoughts. Eugenie, her mother, and Nanon went into the kitchen, +moved by irresistible curiosity to watch the two actors in the +scene which was about to take place in the garden, where at first +the uncle walked silently ahead of the nephew. Grandet was not at +all troubled at having to tell Charles of the death of his +father; but he did feel a sort of compassion in knowing him to be +without a penny, and he sought for some phrase or formula by +which to soften the communication of that cruel truth. "You have +lost your father," seemed to him a mere nothing to say; fathers +die before their children. But "you are absolutely without +means,"-- all the misfortunes of life were summed up in those +words! Grandet walked round the garden three times, the gravel +crunching under his heavy step.</p> + +<p>In the crucial moments of life our minds fasten upon the +locality where joys or sorrows overwhelm us. Charles noticed with +minute attention the box-borders of the little garden, the yellow +leaves as they fluttered down, the dilapidated walls, the gnarled +fruit-trees,-- picturesque details which were destined to remain +forever in his memory, blending eternally, by the mnemonics that +belong exclusively to the passions, with the recollections of +this solemn hour.</p> + +<p>"It is very fine weather, very warm," said Grandet, drawing a +long breath.</p> + +<p>"Yes, uncle; but why--"</p> + +<p>"Well, my lad," answered his uncle, "I have some bad news to +give you. Your father is ill--"</p> + +<p>"Then why am I here?" said Charles. "Nanon," he cried, "order +post- horses! I can get a carriage somewhere?" he added, turning +to his uncle, who stood motionless.</p> + +<p>"Horses and carriages are useless," answered Grandet, looking +at Charles, who remained silent, his eyes growing fixed. "Yes, my +poor boy, you guess the truth,--he is dead. But that's nothing; +there is something worse: he blew out his brains."</p> + +<p>"My father!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but that's not the worst; the newspapers are all talking +about it. Here, read that."</p> + +<p>Grandet, who had borrowed the fatal article from Cruchot, +thrust the paper under his nephew's eyes. The poor young man, +still a child, still at an age when feelings wear no mask, burst +into tears.</p> + +<p>"That's good!" thought Grandet; "his eyes frightened me. He'll +be all right if he weeps,--That is not the worst, my poor +nephew," he said aloud, not noticing whether Charles heard him, +"that is nothing; you will get over it: but--"</p> + +<p>"Never, never! My father! Oh, my father!"</p> + +<p>"He has ruined you, you haven't a penny."</p> + +<p>"What does that matter? My father! Where is my father?"</p> + +<p>His sobs resounded horribly against those dreary walls and +reverberated in the echoes. The three women, filled with pity, +wept also; for tears are often as contagious as laughter. +Charles, without listening further to his uncle, ran through the +court and up the staircase to his chamber, where he threw himself +across the bed and hid his face in the sheets, to weep in peace +for his lost parents.</p> + +<p>"The first burst must have its way," said Grandet, entering +the living-room, where Eugenie and her mother had hastily resumed +their seats and were sewing with trembling hands, after wiping +their eyes. "But that young man is good for nothing; his head is +more taken up with the dead than with his money."</p> + +<p>Eugenie shuddered as she heard her father's comment on the +most sacred of all griefs. From that moment she began to judge +him. Charles's sobs, though muffled, still sounded through the +sepulchral house; and his deep groans, which seemed to come from +the earth beneath, only ceased towards evening, after growing +gradually feebler.</p> + +<p>"Poor young man!" said Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>Fatal exclamation! Pere Grandet looked at his wife, at +Eugenie, and at the sugar-bowl. He recollected the extraordinary +breakfast prepared for the unfortunate youth, and he took a +position in the middle of the room.</p> + +<p>"Listen to me," he said, with his usual composure. "I hope +that you will not continue this extravagance, Madame Grandet. I +don't give you MY money to stuff that young fellow with +sugar."</p> + +<p>"My mother had nothing to do with it," said Eugenie; "it was I +who--"</p> + +<p>"Is it because you are of age," said Grandet, interrupting his +daughter, "that you choose to contradict me? Remember, +Eugenie--"</p> + +<p>"Father, the son of your brother ought to receive from +us--"</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" exclaimed the cooper on four chromatic +tones; "the son of my brother this, my nephew that! Charles is +nothing at all to us; he hasn't a farthing, his father has +failed; and when this dandy has cried his fill, off he goes from +here. I won't have him revolutionize my household."</p> + +<p>"What is 'failing,' father?" asked Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"To fail," answered her father, "is to commit the most +dishonorable action that can disgrace a man."</p> + +<p>"It must be a great sin," said Madame Grandet, "and our +brother may be damned."</p> + +<p>"There, there, don't begin with your litanies!" said Grandet, +shrugging his shoulders. "To fail, Eugenie," he resumed, "is to +commit a theft which the law, unfortunately, takes under its +protection. People have given their property to Guillaume Grandet +trusting to his reputation for honor and integrity; he has made +away with it all, and left them nothing but their eyes to weep +with. A highway robber is better than a bankrupt: the one attacks +you and you can defend yourself, he risks his own life; but the +other--in short, Charles is dishonored."</p> + +<p>The words rang in the poor girl's heart and weighed it down +with their heavy meaning. Upright and delicate as a flower born +in the depths of a forest, she knew nothing of the world's +maxims, of its deceitful arguments and specious sophisms; she +therefore believed the atrocious explanation which her father +gave her designedly, concealing the distinction which exists +between an involuntary failure and an intentional one.</p> + +<p>"Father, could you not have prevented such a misfortune?"</p> + +<p>"My brother did not consult me. Besides, he owes four +millions."</p> + +<p>"What is a 'million,' father?" she asked, with the simplicity +of a child which thinks it can find out at once all that it wants +to know.</p> + +<p>"A million?" said Grandet, "why, it is a million pieces of +twenty sous each, and it takes five twenty sous pieces to make +five francs."</p> + +<p>"Dear me!" cried Eugenie, "how could my uncle possibly have +had four millions? Is there any one else in France who ever had +so many millions?" Pere Grandet stroked his chin, smiled, and his +wen seemed to dilate. "But what will become of my cousin +Charles?"</p> + +<p>"He is going off to the West Indies by his father's request, +and he will try to make his fortune there."</p> + +<p>"Has he got the money to go with?"</p> + +<p>"I shall pay for his journey as far as--yes, as far as +Nantes."</p> + +<p>Eugenie sprang into his arms.</p> + +<p>"Oh, father, how good you are!"</p> + +<p>She kissed him with a warmth that almost made Grandet ashamed +of himself, for his conscience galled him a little.</p> + +<p>"Will it take much time to amass a million?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Look here!" said the old miser, "you know what a napoleon is? +Well, it takes fifty thousand napoleons to make a million."</p> + +<p>"Mamma, we must say a great many <i>neuvaines</i> for +him."</p> + +<p>"I was thinking so," said Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>"That's the way, always spending my money!" cried the father. +"Do you think there are francs on every bush?"</p> + +<p>At this moment a muffled cry, more distressing than all the +others, echoed through the garrets and struck a chill to the +hearts of Eugenie and her mother.</p> + +<p>"Nanon, go upstairs and see that he does not kill himself," +said Grandet. "Now, then," he added, looking at his wife and +daughter, who had turned pale at his words, "no nonsense, you +two! I must leave you; I have got to see about the Dutchmen who +are going away to-day. And then I must find Cruchot, and talk +with him about all this."</p> + +<p>He departed. As soon as he had shut the door Eugenie and her +mother breathed more freely. Until this morning the young girl +had never felt constrained in the presence of her father; but for +the last few hours every moment wrought a change in her feelings +and ideas.</p> + +<p>"Mamma, how many louis are there in a cask of wine?"</p> + +<p>"Your father sells his from a hundred to a hundred and fifty +francs, sometimes two hundred,--at least, so I've heard say."</p> + +<p>"Then papa must be rich?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he is. But Monsieur Cruchot told me he bought +Froidfond two years ago; that may have pinched him."</p> + +<p>Eugenie, not being able to understand the question of her +father's fortune, stopped short in her calculations.</p> + +<p>"He didn't even see me, the darling!" said Nanon, coming back +from her errand. "He's stretched out like a calf on his bed and +crying like the Madeleine, and that's a blessing! What's the +matter with the poor dear young man!"</p> + +<p>"Let us go and console him, mamma; if any one knocks, we can +come down."</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet was helpless against the sweet persuasive tones +of her daughter's voice. Eugenie was sublime: she had become a +woman. The two, with beating hearts, went up to Charles's room. +The door was open. The young man heard and saw nothing; plunged +in grief, he only uttered inarticulate cries.</p> + +<p>"How he loves his father!" said Eugenie in a low voice.</p> + +<p>In the utterance of those words it was impossible to mistake +the hopes of a heart that, unknown to itself, had suddenly become +passionate. Madame Grandet cast a mother's look upon her +daughter, and then whispered in her ear,--</p> + +<p>"Take care, you will love him!"</p> + +<p>"Love him!" answered Eugenie. "Ah! if you did but know what my +father said to Monsieur Cruchot."</p> + +<p>Charles turned over, and saw his aunt and cousin.</p> + +<p>"I have lost my father, my poor father! If he had told me his +secret troubles we might have worked together to repair them. My +God! my poor father! I was so sure I should see him again that I +think I kissed him quite coldly--"</p> + +<p>Sobs cut short the words.</p> + +<p>"We will pray for him," said Madame Grandet. "Resign yourself +to the will of God."</p> + +<p>"Cousin," said Eugenie, "take courage! Your loss is +irreparable; therefore think only of saving your honor."</p> + +<p>With the delicate instinct of a woman who intuitively puts her +mind into all things, even at the moment when she offers +consolation, Eugenie sought to cheat her cousin's grief by +turning his thoughts inward upon himself.</p> + +<p>"My honor?" exclaimed the young man, tossing aside his hair +with an impatient gesture as he sat up on his bed and crossed his +arms. "Ah! that is true. My uncle said my father had failed." He +uttered a heart- rending cry, and hid his face in his hands. +"Leave me, leave me, cousin! My God! my God! forgive my father, +for he must have suffered sorely!"</p> + +<p>There was something terribly attractive in the sight of this +young sorrow, sincere without reasoning or afterthought. It was a +virgin grief which the simple hearts of Eugenie and her mother +were fitted to comprehend, and they obeyed the sign Charles made +them to leave him to himself. They went downstairs in silence and +took their accustomed places by the window and sewed for nearly +an hour without exchanging a word. Eugenie had seen in the +furtive glance that she cast about the young man's room--that +girlish glance which sees all in the twinkling of an eye--the +pretty trifles of his dressing-case, his scissors, his razors +embossed with gold. This gleam of luxury across her cousin's +grief only made him the more interesting to her, possibly by way +of contrast. Never before had so serious an event, so dramatic a +sight, touched the imaginations of these two passive beings, +hitherto sunk in the stillness and calm of solitude.</p> + +<p>"Mamma," said Eugenie, "we must wear mourning for my +uncle."</p> + +<p>"Your father will decide that," answered Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>They relapsed into silence. Eugenie drew her stitches with a +uniform motion which revealed to an observer the teeming thoughts +of her meditation. The first desire of the girl's heart was to +share her cousin's mourning.</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>About four o'clock an abrupt knock at the door struck sharply +on the heart of Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>"What can have happened to your father?" she said to her +daughter.</p> + +<p>Grandet entered joyously. After taking off his gloves, he +rubbed his hands hard enough to take off their skin as well, if +his epidermis had not been tanned and cured like Russia +leather,--saving, of course, the perfume of larch-trees and +incense. Presently his secret escaped him.</p> + +<p>"Wife," he said, without stuttering, "I've trapped them all! +Our wine is sold! The Dutch and the Belgians have gone. I walked +about the market-place in front of their inn, pretending to be +doing nothing. That Belgian fellow--you know who I mean--came up +to me. The owners of all the good vineyards have kept back their +vintages, intending to wait; well, I didn't hinder them. The +Belgian was in despair; I saw that. In a minute the bargain was +made. He takes my vintage at two hundred francs the puncheon, +half down. He paid me in gold; the notes are drawn. Here are six +louis for you. In three months wines will have fallen."</p> + +<p>These words, uttered in a quiet tone of voice, were +nevertheless so bitterly sarcastic that the inhabitants of +Saumur, grouped at this moment in the market-place and +overwhelmed by the news of the sale Grandet had just effected, +would have shuddered had they heard them. Their panic would have +brought the price of wines down fifty per cent at once.</p> + +<p>"Did you have a thousand puncheons this year, father?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, little one."</p> + +<p>That term applied to his daughter was the superlative +expression of the old miser's joy.</p> + +<p>"Then that makes two hundred thousand pieces of twenty sous +each?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Mademoiselle Grandet."</p> + +<p>"Then, father, you can easily help Charles."</p> + +<p>The amazement, the anger, the stupefaction of Belshazzar when +he saw the <i>Mene-Tekel-Upharsin</i> before his eyes is not to +be compared with the cold rage of Grandet, who, having forgotten +his nephew, now found him enshrined in the heart and calculations +of his daughter.</p> + +<p>"What's this? Ever since that dandy put foot in MY house +everything goes wrong! You behave as if you had the right to buy +sugar-plums and make feasts and weddings. I won't have that sort +of thing. I hope I know my duty at my time of life! I certainly +sha'n't take lessons from my daughter, or from anybody else. I +shall do for my nephew what it is proper to do, and you have no +need to poke your nose into it. As for you, Eugenie," he added, +facing her, "don't speak of this again, or I'll send you to the +Abbaye des Noyers with Nanon, see if I don't; and no later than +to-morrow either, if you disobey me! Where is that fellow, has he +come down yet?"</p> + +<p>"No, my friend," answered Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>"What is he doing then?"</p> + +<p>"He is weeping for his father," said Eugenie.</p> + +<p>Grandet looked at his daughter without finding a word to say; +after all, he was a father. He made a couple of turns up and down +the room, and then went hurriedly to his secret den to think over +an investment he was meditating in the public Funds. The thinning +out of his two thousand acres of forest land had yielded him six +hundred thousand francs: putting this sum to that derived from +the sale of his poplars and to his other gains for the last year +and for the current year, he had amassed a total of nine hundred +thousand francs, without counting the two hundred thousand he had +got by the sale just concluded. The twenty per cent which Cruchot +assured him would gain in a short time from the Funds, then +quoted at seventy, tempted him. He figured out his calculation on +the margin of the newspaper which gave the account of his +brother's death, all the while hearing the moans of his nephew, +but without listening to them. Nanon came and knocked on the wall +to summon him to dinner. On the last step of the staircase he was +saying to himself as he came down,--</p> + +<p>"I'll do it; I shall get eight per cent interest. In two years +I shall have fifteen hundred thousand francs, which I will then +draw out in good gold,--Well, where's my nephew?"</p> + +<p>"He says he doesn't want anything to eat," answered Nanon; +"that's not good for him."</p> + +<p>"So much saved," retorted her master.</p> + +<p>"That's so," she said.</p> + +<p>"Bah! he won't cry long. Hunger drives the wolves out of the +woods."</p> + +<p>The dinner was eaten in silence.</p> + +<p>"My good friend," said Madame Grandet, when the cloth was +removed, "we must put on mourning."</p> + +<p>"Upon my word, Madame Grandet! what will you invent next to +spend money on? Mourning is in the heart, and not in the +clothes."</p> + +<p>"But mourning for a brother is indispensable; and the Church +commands us to--"</p> + +<p>"Buy your mourning out of your six louis. Give me a hat-band; +that's enough for me."</p> + +<p>Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven without uttering a word. Her +generous instincts, slumbering and long repressed but now +suddenly and for the first time awakened, were galled at every +turn. The evening passed to all appearance like a thousand other +evenings of their monotonous life, yet it was certainly the most +horrible. Eugenie sewed without raising her head, and did not use +the workbox which Charles had despised the night before. Madame +Grandet knitted her sleeves. Grandet twirled his thumbs for four +hours, absorbed in calculations whose results were on the morrow +to astonish Saumur. No one came to visit the family that day. The +whole town was ringing with the news of the business trick just +played by Grandet, the failure of his brother, and the arrival of +his nephew. Obeying the desire to gossip over their mutual +interests, all the upper and middle-class wine-growers in Saumur +met at Monsieur des Grassins, where terrible imprecations were +being fulminated against the ex-mayor. Nanon was spinning, and +the whirr of her wheel was the only sound heard beneath the gray +rafters of that silent hall.</p> + +<p>"We don't waste our tongues," she said, showing her teeth, as +large and white as peeled almonds.</p> + +<p>"Nothing should be wasted," answered Grandet, rousing himself +from his reverie. He saw a perspective of eight millions in three +years, and he was sailing along that sheet of gold. "Let us go to +bed. I will bid my nephew good-night for the rest of you, and see +if he will take anything."</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet remained on the landing of the first storey to +hear the conversation that was about to take place between the +goodman and his nephew. Eugenie, bolder than her mother, went up +two stairs.</p> + +<p>"Well, nephew, you are in trouble. Yes, weep, that's natural. +A father is a father; but we must bear our troubles patiently. I +am a good uncle to you, remember that. Come, take courage! Will +you have a little glass of wine?" (Wine costs nothing in Saumur, +and they offer it as tea is offered in China.) "Why!" added +Grandet, "you have got no light! That's bad, very bad; you ought +to see what you are about," and he walked to the chimney-piece. +"What's this?" he cried. "A wax candle! How the devil did they +filch a wax candle? The spendthrifts would tear down the ceilings +of my house to boil the fellow's eggs."</p> + +<p>Hearing these words, mother and daughter slipped back into +their rooms and burrowed in their beds, with the celerity of +frightened mice getting back to their holes.</p> + +<p>"Madame Grandet, have you found a mine?" said the man, coming +into the chamber of his wife.</p> + +<p>"My friend, wait; I am saying my prayers," said the poor +mother in a trembling voice.</p> + +<p>"The devil take your good God!" growled Grandet in reply.</p> + +<p>Misers have no belief in a future life; the present is their +all in all. This thought casts a terrible light upon our present +epoch, in which, far more than at any former period, money sways +the laws and politics and morals. Institutions, books, men, and +dogmas, all conspire to undermine belief in a future life,--a +belief upon which the social edifice has rested for eighteen +hundred years. The grave, as a means of transition, is little +feared in our day. The future, which once opened to us beyond the +requiems, has now been imported into the present. To obtain +<i>per fas et nefas</i> a terrestrial paradise of luxury and +earthly enjoyment, to harden the heart and macerate the body for +the sake of fleeting possessions, as the martyrs once suffered +all things to reach eternal joys, this is now the universal +thought--a thought written everywhere, even in the very laws +which ask of the legislator, "What do you pay?" instead of asking +him, "What do you think?" When this doctrine has passed down from +the bourgeoisie to the populace, where will this country be?</p> + +<p>"Madame Grandet, have you done?" asked the old man.</p> + +<p>"My friend, I am praying for you."</p> + +<p>"Very good! Good-night; to-morrow morning we will have a +talk."</p> + +<p>The poor woman went to sleep like a schoolboy who, not having +learned his lessons, knows he will see his master's angry face on +the morrow. At the moment when, filled with fear, she was drawing +the sheet above her head that she might stifle hearing, Eugenie, +in her night-gown and with naked feet, ran to her side and kissed +her brow.</p> + +<p>"Oh! my good mother," she said, "to-morrow I will tell him it +was I."</p> + +<p>"No; he would send you to Noyers. Leave me to manage it; he +cannot eat me."</p> + +<p>"Do you hear, mamma?"</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"<i>He</i> is weeping still."</p> + +<p>"Go to bed, my daughter; you will take cold in your feet: the +floor is damp."</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>Thus passed the solemn day which was destined to weight upon +the whole life of the rich and poor heiress, whose sleep was +never again to be so calm, nor yet so pure, as it had been up to +this moment. It often happens that certain actions of human life +seem, literally speaking, improbable, though actual. Is not this +because we constantly omit to turn the stream of psychological +light upon our impulsive determinations, and fail to explain the +subtile reasons, mysteriously conceived in our minds, which +impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie's deep passion should be analyzed +in its most delicate fibres; for it became, scoffers might say, a +malady which influenced her whole existence. Many people prefer +to deny results rather than estimate the force of ties and links +and bonds, which secretly join one fact to another in the moral +order. Here, therefore, Eugenie's past life will offer to +observers of human nature an explanation of her naive want of +reflection and the suddenness of the emotions which overflowed +her soul. The more tranquil her life had been, the more vivid was +her womanly pity, the more simple-minded were the sentiments now +developed in her soul.</p> + +<p>Made restless by the events of the day, she woke at intervals +to listen to her cousin, thinking she heard the sighs which still +echoed in her heart. Sometimes she saw him dying of his trouble, +sometimes she dreamed that he fainted from hunger. Towards +morning she was certain that she heard a startling cry. She +dressed at once and ran, in the dawning light, with a swift foot +to her cousin's chamber, the door of which he had left open. The +candle had burned down to the socket. Charles, overcome by +nature, was sleeping, dressed and sitting in an armchair beside +the bed, on which his head rested; he dreamed as men dream on an +empty stomach. Eugenie might weep at her ease; she might admire +the young and handsome face blotted with grief, the eyes swollen +with weeping, that seemed, sleeping as they were, to well forth +tears. Charles felt sympathetically the young girl's presence; he +opened his eyes and saw her pitying him.</p> + +<p>"Pardon me, my cousin," he said, evidently not knowing the +hour nor the place in which he found himself.</p> + +<p>"There are hearts who hear you, cousin, and <i>we</i> thought +you might need something. You should go to bed; you tire yourself +by sitting thus."</p> + +<p>"That is true."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, adieu!"</p> + +<p>She escaped, ashamed and happy at having gone there. Innocence +alone can dare to be so bold. Once enlightened, virtue makes her +calculations as well as vice. Eugenie, who had not trembled +beside her cousin, could scarcely stand upon her legs when she +regained her chamber. Her ignorant life had suddenly come to an +end; she reasoned, she rebuked herself with many reproaches.</p> + +<p>"What will he think of me? He will think that I love him!"</p> + +<p>That was what she most wished him to think. An honest love has +its own prescience, and knows that love begets love. What an +event for this poor solitary girl thus to have entered the +chamber of a young man! Are there not thoughts and actions in the +life of love which to certain souls bear the full meaning of the +holiest espousals? An hour later she went to her mother and +dressed her as usual. Then they both came down and sat in their +places before the window waiting for Grandet, with that cruel +anxiety which, according to the individual character, freezes the +heart or warms it, shrivels or dilates it, when a scene is +feared, a punishment expected,--a feeling so natural that even +domestic animals possess it, and whine at the slightest pain of +punishment, though they make no outcry when they inadvertently +hurt themselves. The goodman came down; but he spoke to his wife +with an absent manner, kissed Eugenie, and sat down to table +without appearing to remember his threats of the night +before.</p> + +<p>"What has become of my nephew? The lad gives no trouble."</p> + +<p>"Monsieur, he is asleep," answered Nanon.</p> + +<p>"So much the better; he won't want a wax candle," said Grandet +in a jeering tone.</p> + +<p>This unusual clemency, this bitter gaiety, struck Madame +Grandet with amazement, and she looked at her husband +attentively. The goodman-- here it may be well to explain that in +Touraine, Anjou, Pitou, and Bretagne the word "goodman," already +used to designate Grandet, is bestowed as often upon harsh and +cruel men as upon those of kindly temperament, when either have +reached a certain age; the title means nothing on the score of +individual gentleness--the goodman took his hat and gloves, +saying as he went out,--</p> + +<p>"I am going to loiter about the market-place and find +Cruchot."</p> + +<p>"Eugenie, your father certainly has something on his +mind."</p> + +<p>Grandet, who was a poor sleeper, employed half his nights in +the preliminary calculations which gave such astonishing accuracy +to his views and observations and schemes, and secured to them +the unfailing success at sight of which his townsmen stood +amazed. All human power is a compound of time and patience. +Powerful beings will and wait. The life of a miser is the +constant exercise of human power put to the service of self. It +rests on two sentiments only,--self-love and self- interest; but +self-interest being to a certain extent compact and intelligent +self-love, the visible sign of real superiority, it follows that +self-love and self-interest are two parts of the same +whole,--egotism. From this arises, perhaps, the excessive +curiosity shown in the habits of a miser's life whenever they are +put before the world. Every nature holds by a thread to those +beings who challenge all human sentiments by concentrating all in +one passion. Where is the man without desire? and what social +desire can be satisfied without money?</p> + +<p>Grandet unquestionably "had something on his mind," to use his +wife's expression. There was in him, as in all misers, a +persistent craving to play a commercial game with other men and +win their money legally. To impose upon other people was to him a +sign of power, a perpetual proof that he had won the right to +despise those feeble beings who suffer themselves to be preyed +upon in this world. Oh! who has ever truly understood the lamb +lying peacefully at the feet of God?-- touching emblem of all +terrestrial victims, myth of their future, suffering and weakness +glorified! This lamb it is which the miser fattens, puts in his +fold, slaughters, cooks, eats, and then despises. The pasture of +misers is compounded of money and disdain. During the night +Grandet's ideas had taken another course, which was the reason of +his sudden clemency. He had hatched a plot by which to trick the +Parisians, to decoy and dupe and snare them, to drive them into a +trap, and make them go and come and sweat and hope and turn +pale,--a plot by which to amuse himself, the old provincial +cooper, sitting there beneath his gloomy rafters, or passing up +and down the rotten staircase of his house in Saumur. His nephew +filled his mind. He wished to save the honor of his dead brother +without the cost of a penny to the son or to himself. His own +funds he was about to invest for three years; he had therefore +nothing further to do than to manage his property in Saumur. He +needed some nutriment for his malicious activity, and he found it +suddenly in his brother's failure. Feeling nothing to squeeze +between his own paws, he resolved to crush the Parisians in +behalf of Charles, and to play the part of a good brother on the +cheapest terms. The honor of the family counted for so little in +this scheme that his good intentions might be likened to the +interest a gambler takes in seeing a game well played in which he +has no stake. The Cruchots were a necessary part of his plan; but +he would not seek them,--he resolved to make them come to him, +and to lead up that very evening to a comedy whose plot he had +just conceived, which should make him on the morrow an object of +admiration to the whole town without its costing him a single +penny.</p> + +<p>In her father's absence Eugenie had the happiness of busying +herself openly with her much-loved cousin, of spending upon him +fearlessly the treasures of her pity,--woman's sublime +superiority, the sole she desires to have recognized, the sole +she pardons man for letting her assume. Three or four times the +young girl went to listen to her cousin's breathing, to know if +he were sleeping or awake; then, when he had risen, she turned +her thoughts to the cream, the eggs, the fruits, the plates, the +glasses,--all that was a part of his breakfast became the object +of some special care. At length she ran lightly up the old +staircase to listen to the noise her cousin made. Was he +dressing? Did he still weep? She reached the door.</p> + +<p>"My cousin!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, cousin."</p> + +<p>"Will you breakfast downstairs, or in your room?"</p> + +<p>"Where you like."</p> + +<p>"How do you feel?"</p> + +<p>"Dear cousin, I am ashamed of being hungry."</p> + +<p>This conversation, held through the closed door, was like an +episode in a poem to Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, we will bring your breakfast to your own room, so +as not to annoy my father."</p> + +<p>She ran to the kitchen with the swiftness and lightness of a +bird.</p> + +<p>"Nanon, go and do his room!"</p> + +<p>That staircase, so often traversed, which echoed to the +slightest noise, now lost its decaying aspect in the eyes of +Eugenie. It grew luminous; it had a voice and spoke to her; it +was young like herself, --young like the love it was now serving. +Her mother, her kind, indulgent mother, lent herself to the +caprices of the child's love, and after the room was put in +order, both went to sit with the unhappy youth and keep him +company. Does not Christian charity make consolation a duty? The +two women drew a goodly number of little sophistries from their +religion wherewith to justify their conduct. Charles was made the +object of the tenderest and most loving care. His saddened heart +felt the sweetness of the gentle friendship, the exquisite +sympathy which these two souls, crushed under perpetual +restraint, knew so well how to display when, for an instant, they +were left unfettered in the regions of suffering, their natural +sphere.</p> + +<p>Claiming the right of relationship, Eugenie began to fold the +linen and put in order the toilet articles which Charles had +brought; thus she could marvel at her ease over each luxurious +bauble and the various knick-knacks of silver or chased gold, +which she held long in her hand under a pretext of examining +them. Charles could not see without emotion the generous interest +his aunt and cousin felt in him; he knew society in Paris well +enough to feel assured that, placed as he now was, he would find +all hearts indifferent or cold. Eugenie thus appeared to him in +the splendor of a special beauty, and from thenceforth he admired +the innocence of life and manners which the previous evening he +had been inclined to ridicule. So when Eugenie took from Nanon +the bowl of coffee and cream, and began to pour it out for her +cousin with the simplicity of real feeling, giving him a kindly +glance, the eyes of the Parisian filled with tears; he took her +hand and kissed it.</p> + +<p>"What troubles you?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh! these are tears of gratitude," he answered.</p> + +<p>Eugenie turned abruptly to the chimney-piece to take the +candlesticks.</p> + +<p>"Here, Nanon, carry them away!" she said.</p> + +<p>When she looked again towards her cousin she was still +blushing, but her looks could at least deceive, and did not +betray the excess of joy which innundated her heart; yet the eyes +of both expressed the same sentiment as their souls flowed +together in one thought,--the future was theirs. This soft +emotion was all the more precious to Charles in the midst of his +heavy grief because it was wholly unexpected. The sound of the +knocker recalled the women to their usual station. Happily they +were able to run downstairs with sufficient rapidity to be seated +at their work when Grandet entered; had he met them under the +archway it would have been enough to rouse his suspicions. After +breakfast, which the goodman took standing, the keeper from +Froidfond, to whom the promised indemnity had never yet been +paid, made his appearance, bearing a hare and some partridges +shot in the park, with eels and two pike sent as tribute by the +millers.</p> + +<p>"Ha, ha! poor Cornoiller; here he comes, like fish in Lent. Is +all that fit to eat?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my dear, generous master; it has been killed two +days."</p> + +<p>"Come, Nanon, bestir yourself," said Grandet; "take these +things, they'll do for dinner. I have invited the two +Cruchots."</p> + +<p>Nanon opened her eyes, stupid with amazement, and looked at +everybody in the room.</p> + +<p>"Well!" she said, "and how am I to get the lard and the +spices?"</p> + +<p>"Wife," said Grandet, "give Nanon six francs, and remind me to +get some of the good wine out of the cellar."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, Monsieur Grandet," said the keeper, who had come +prepared with an harangue for the purpose of settling the +question of the indemnity, "Monsieur Grandet--"</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" said Grandet; "I know what you want to say. +You are a good fellow; we will see about it to-morrow, I'm too +busy to-day. Wife, give him five francs," he added to Madame +Grandet as he decamped.</p> + +<p>The poor woman was only too happy to buy peace at the cost of +eleven francs. She knew that Grandet would let her alone for a +fortnight after he had thus taken back, franc by franc, the money +he had given her.</p> + +<p>"Here, Cornoiller," she said, slipping ten francs into the +man's hand, "some day we will reward your services."</p> + +<p>Cornoiller could say nothing, so he went away.</p> + +<p>"Madame," said Nanon, who had put on her black coif and taken +her basket, "I want only three francs. You keep the rest; it'll +go fast enough somehow."</p> + +<p>"Have a good dinner, Nanon; my cousin will come down," said +Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"Something very extraordinary is going on, I am certain of +it," said Madame Grandet. "This is only the third time since our +marriage that your father has given a dinner."</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>About four o'clock, just as Eugenie and her mother had +finished setting the table for six persons, and after the master +of the house had brought up a few bottles of the exquisite wine +which provincials cherish with true affection, Charles came down +into the hall. The young fellow was pale; his gestures, the +expression of his face, his glance, and the tones of his voice, +all had a sadness which was full of grace. He was not pretending +grief, he truly suffered; and the veil of pain cast over his +features gave him an interesting air dear to the heart of women. +Eugenie loved him the more for it. Perhaps she felt that sorrow +drew him nearer to her. Charles was no longer the rich and +distinguished young man placed in a sphere far above her, but a +relation plunged into frightful misery. Misery begets equality. +Women have this in common with the angels,--suffering humanity +belongs to them. Charles and Eugenie understood each other and +spoke only with their eyes; for the poor fallen dandy, orphaned +and impoverished, sat apart in a corner of the room, and was +proudly calm and silent. Yet, from time to time, the gentle and +caressing glance of the young girl shone upon him and constrained +him away from his sad thoughts, drawing him with her into the +fields of hope and of futurity, where she loved to hold him at +her side.</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p>At this moment the town of Saumur was more excited about the +dinner given by Grandet to the Cruchots than it had been the +night before at the sale of his vintage, though that constituted +a crime of high- treason against the whole wine-growing +community. If the politic old miser had given his dinner from the +same idea that cost the dog of Alcibiades his tail, he might +perhaps have been called a great man; but the fact is, +considering himself superior to a community which he could trick +on all occasions, he paid very little heed to what Saumur might +say.</p> + +<p>The des Grassins soon learned the facts of the failure and the +violent death of Guillaume Grandet, and they determined to go to +their client's house that very evening to commiserate his +misfortune and show him some marks of friendship, with a view of +ascertaining the motives which had led him to invite the Cruchots +to dinner. At precisely five o'clock Monsieur C. de Bonfons and +his uncle the notary arrived in their Sunday clothes. The party +sat down to table and began to dine with good appetites. Grandet +was grave, Charles silent, Eugenie dumb, and Madame Grandet did +not say more than usual; so that the dinner was, very properly, a +repast of condolence. When they rose from table Charles said to +his aunt and uncle,--</p> + +<p>"Will you permit me to retire? I am obliged to undertake a +long and painful correspondence."</p> + +<p>"Certainly, nephew."</p> + +<p>As soon as the goodman was certain that Charles could hear +nothing and was probably deep in his letter-writing, he said, +with a dissimulating glance at his wife,--</p> + +<p>"Madame Grandet, what we have to talk about will be Latin to +you; it is half-past seven; you can go and attend to your +household accounts. Good-night, my daughter."</p> + +<p>He kissed Eugenie, and the two women departed. A scene now +took place in which Pere Grandet brought to bear, more than at +any other moment of his life, the shrewd dexterity he had +acquired in his intercourse with men, and which had won him from +those whose flesh he sometimes bit too sharply the nickname of +"the old dog." If the mayor of Saumur had carried his ambition +higher still, if fortunate circumstances, drawing him towards the +higher social spheres, had sent him into congresses where the +affairs of nations were discussed, and had he there employed the +genius with which his personal interests had endowed him, he +would undoubtedly have proved nobly useful to his native land. +Yet it is perhaps equally certain that outside of Saumur the +goodman would have cut a very sorry figure. Possibly there are +minds like certain animals which cease to breed when transplanted +from the climates in which they are born.</p> + +<p>"M-m-mon-sieur le p-p-president, you said t-t-that +b-b-bankruptcy--"</p> + +<p>The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it +suited him, and which, together with the deafness of which he +sometimes complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to +be a natural defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the +two Cruchots that while they listened they unconsciously made +faces and moved their lips, as if pronouncing the words over +which he was hesitating and stuttering at will. Here it may be +well to give the history of this impediment of the speech and +hearing of Monsieur Grandet. No one in Anjou heard better, or +could pronounce more crisply the French language (with an Angevin +accent) than the wily old cooper. Some years earlier, in spite of +his shrewdness, he had been taken in by an Israelite, who in the +course of the discussion held his hand behind his ear to catch +sounds, and mangled his meaning so thoroughly in trying to utter +his words that Grandet fell a victim to his humanity and was +compelled to prompt the wily Jew with the words and ideas he +seemed to seek, to complete himself the arguments of the said +Jew, to say what that cursed Jew ought to have said for himself; +in short, to be the Jew instead of being Grandet. When the cooper +came out of this curious encounter he had concluded the only +bargain of which in the course of a long commercial life he ever +had occasion to complain. But if he lost at the time pecuniarily, +he gained morally a valuable lesson; later, he gathered its +fruits. Indeed, the goodman ended by blessing that Jew for having +taught him the art of irritating his commercial antagonist and +leading him to forget his own thoughts in his impatience to +suggest those over which his tormentor was stuttering. No affair +had ever needed the assistance of deafness, impediments of +speech, and all the incomprehensible circumlocutions with which +Grandet enveloped his ideas, as much as the affair now in hand. +In the first place, he did not mean to shoulder the +responsibility of his own scheme; in the next, he was determined +to remain master of the conversation and to leave his real +intentions in doubt.</p> + +<p>"M-m-monsieur de B-B-Bonfons,"--for the second time in three +years Grandet called the Cruchot nephew Monsieur de Bonfons; the +president felt he might consider himself the artful old fellow's +son-in-law,-- "you-ou said th-th-that b-b-bankruptcy c-c-could, +in some c-c-cases, b-b-be p-p-prevented b-b-by--"</p> + +<p>"By the courts of commerce themselves. It is done constantly," +said Monsieur C. de Bonfons, bestriding Grandet's meaning, or +thinking he guessed it, and kindly wishing to help him out with +it. "Listen."</p> + +<p>"Y-yes," said Grandet humbly, with the mischievous expression +of a boy who is inwardly laughing at his teacher while he pays +him the greatest attention.</p> + +<p>"When a man so respected and important as, for example, your +late brother--"</p> + +<p>"M-my b-b-brother, yes."</p> + +<p>"--is threatened with insolvency--"</p> + +<p>"They c-c-call it in-ins-s-solvency?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; when his failure is imminent, the court of commerce, to +which he is amenable (please follow me attentively), has the +power, by a decree, to appoint a receiver. Liquidation, you +understand, is not the same as failure. When a man fails, he is +dishonored; but when he merely liquidates, he remains an honest +man."</p> + +<p>"T-t-that's very d-d-different, if it d-d-doesn't c-c-cost +m-m-more," said Grandet.</p> + +<p>"But a liquidation can be managed without having recourse to +the courts at all. For," said the president, sniffing a pinch of +snuff, "don't you know how failures are declared?"</p> + +<p>"N-n-no, I n-n-never t-t-thought," answered Grandet.</p> + +<p>"In the first place," resumed the magistrate, "by filing the +schedule in the record office of the court, which the merchant +may do himself, or his representative for him with a power of +attorney duly certified. In the second place, the failure may be +declared under compulsion from the creditors. Now if the merchant +does not file his schedule, and if no creditor appears before the +courts to obtain a decree of insolvency against the merchant, +what happens?"</p> + +<p>"W-w-what h-h-happens?"</p> + +<p>"Why, the family of the deceased, his representatives, his +heirs, or the merchant himself, if he is not dead, or his friends +if he is only hiding, liquidate his business. Perhaps you would +like to liquidate your brother's affairs?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! Grandet," said the notary, "that would be the right thing +to do. There is honor down here in the provinces. If you save +your name--for it is your name--you will be a man--"</p> + +<p>"A noble man!" cried the president, interrupting his +uncle.</p> + +<p>"Certainly," answered the old man, "my b-b-brother's name was +G-G-Grandet, like m-m-mine. Th-that's c-c-certain; I d-d-don't +d-d-deny it. And th-th-this l-l-liquidation might be, in m-m-many +ways, v-v-very advan-t-t-tageous t-t-to the interests of m-m-my +n-n-nephew, whom I l-l-love. But I must consider. I don't +k-k-know the t-t-tricks of P-P-Paris. I b-b-belong to Sau-m-mur, +d-d-don't you see? M-m-my vines, my d-d-drains--in short, I've my +own b-b-business. I never g-g-give n-n-notes. What are n-n-notes? +I t-t-take a good m-m-many, but I have never s-s-signed one. I +d-d-don't understand such things. I have h-h-heard say that +n-n-notes c-c-can be b-b-bought up."</p> + +<p>"Of course," said the president. "Notes can be bought in the +market, less so much per cent. Don't you understand?"</p> + +<p>Grandet made an ear-trumpet of his hand, and the president +repeated his words.</p> + +<p>"Well, then," replied the man, "there's s-s-something to be +g-g-got out of it? I k-know n-nothing at my age about such +th-th-things. I l-l-live here and l-l-look after the v-v-vines. +The vines g-g-grow, and it's the w-w-wine that p-p-pays. L-l-look +after the v-v-vintage, t-t-that's my r-r-rule. My c-c-chief +interests are at Froidfond. I c-c-can't l-l-leave my h-h-house to +m-m-muddle myself with a d-d-devilish b-b-business I kn-know +n-n-nothing about. You say I ought to l-l-liquidate my +b-b-brother's af-f-fairs, to p-p-prevent the f-f-failure. I +c-c-can't be in two p-p-places at once, unless I were a little +b-b-bird, and--"</p> + +<p>"I understand," cried the notary. "Well, my old friend, you +have friends, old friends, capable of devoting themselves to your +interests."</p> + +<p>"All right!" thought Grandet, "make haste and come to the +point!"</p> + +<p>"Suppose one of them went to Paris and saw your brother +Guillaume's chief creditor and said to him--"</p> + +<p>"One m-m-moment," interrupted the goodman, "said wh-wh-what? +Something l-l-like this. Monsieur Gr-Grandet of Saumur this, +Monsieur Grandet of Saumur that. He l-loves his b-b-brother, he +loves his n-nephew. Grandet is a g-g-good uncle; he m-m-means +well. He has sold his v-v-vintage. D-d-don't declare a +f-f-failure; c-c-call a meeting; l-l-liquidate; and then +Gr-Gr-Grandet will see what he c-c-can do. B-b-better liquidate +than l-let the l-l-law st-st-stick its n-n-nose in. Hein? isn't +it so?"</p> + +<p>"Exactly so," said the president.</p> + +<p>"B-because, don't you see, Monsieur de B-Bonfons, a man must +l-l-look b-b-before he l-leaps. If you c-c-can't, you c-c-can't. +M-m-must know all about the m-m-matter, all the resources and the +debts, if you d-d-don't want to be r-r-ruined. Hein? isn't it +so?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly," said the president. "I'm of opinion that in a few +months the debts might be bought up for a certain sum, and then +paid in full by an agreement. Ha! ha! you can coax a dog a long +way if you show him a bit of lard. If there has been no +declaration of failure, and you hold a lien on the debts, you +come out of the business as white as the driven snow."</p> + +<p>"Sn-n-now," said Grandet, putting his hand to his ear, +"wh-wh-what about s-now?"</p> + +<p>"But," cried the president, "do pray attend to what I am +saying."</p> + +<p>"I am at-t-tending."</p> + +<p>"A note is merchandise,--an article of barter which rises and +falls in prices. That is a deduction from Jeremy Bentham's theory +about usury. That writer has proved that the prejudice which +condemned usurers to reprobation was mere folly."</p> + +<p>"Whew!" ejaculated the goodman.</p> + +<p>"Allowing that money, according to Bentham, is an article of +merchandise, and that whatever represents money is equally +merchandise," resumed the president; "allowing also that it is +notorious that the commercial note, bearing this or that +signature, is liable to the fluctuation of all commercial values, +rises or falls in the market, is dear at one moment, and is worth +nothing at another, the courts decide--ah! how stupid I am, I beg +your pardon--I am inclined to think you could buy up your +brother's debts for twenty- five per cent."</p> + +<p>"D-d-did you c-c-call him Je-Je-Jeremy B-Ben?"</p> + +<p>"Bentham, an Englishman.'</p> + +<p>"That's a Jeremy who might save us a lot of lamentations in +business," said the notary, laughing.</p> + +<p>"Those Englishmen s-sometimes t-t-talk sense," said Grandet. +"So, ac-c-cording to Ben-Bentham, if my b-b-brother's n-notes are +worth n-n-nothing; if Je-Je--I'm c-c-correct, am I not? That +seems c-c-clear to my m-m-mind--the c-c-creditors would be--No, +would not be; I understand."</p> + +<p>"Let me explain it all," said the president. "Legally, if you +acquire a title to all the debts of the Maison Grandet, your +brother or his heirs will owe nothing to any one. Very good."</p> + +<p>"Very g-good," repeated Grandet.</p> + +<p>"In equity, if your brother's notes are +negotiated--negotiated, do you clearly understand the +term?--negotiated in the market at a reduction of so much per +cent in value, and if one of your friends happening to be present +should buy them in, the creditors having sold them of their own +free-will without constraint, the estate of the late Grandet is +honorably released."</p> + +<p>"That's t-true; b-b-business is b-business," said the cooper. +"B-b-but, st-still, you know, it is d-d-difficult. I h-have n-no +m-m-money and n-no t-t-time."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but you need not undertake it. I am quite ready to go to +Paris (you may pay my expenses, they will only be a trifle). I +will see the creditors and talk with them and get an extension of +time, and everything can be arranged if you will add something to +the assets so as to buy up all title to the debts."</p> + +<p>"We-we'll see about th-that. I c-c-can't and I w-w-won't bind +myself without--He who c-c-can't, can't; don't you see?"</p> + +<p>"That's very true."</p> + +<p>"I'm all p-p-put ab-b-bout by what you've t-t-told me. This is +the f-first t-t-time in my life I have b-been obliged to +th-th-think--"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you are not a lawyer."</p> + +<p>"I'm only a p-p-poor wine-g-grower, and know n-nothing about +wh-what you have just t-told me; I m-m-must th-think about +it."</p> + +<p>"Very good," said the president, preparing to resume his +argument.</p> + +<p>"Nephew!" said the notary, interrupting him in a warning +tone.</p> + +<p>"Well, what, uncle?" answered the president.</p> + +<p>"Let Monsieur Grandet explain his own intentions. The matter +in question is of the first importance. Our good friend ought to +define his meaning clearly, and--"</p> + +<p>A loud knock, which announced the arrival of the des Grassins +family, succeeded by their entrance and salutations, hindered +Cruchot from concluding his sentence. The notary was glad of the +interruption, for Grandet was beginning to look suspiciously at +him, and the wen gave signs of a brewing storm. In the first +place, the notary did not think it becoming in a president of the +Civil courts to go to Paris and manipulate creditors and lend +himself to an underhand job which clashed with the laws of strict +integrity; moreover, never having known old Grandet to express +the slightest desire to pay anything, no matter what, he +instinctively feared to see his nephew taking part in the affair. +He therefore profited by the entrance of the des Grassins to take +the nephew by the arm and lead him into the embrasure of the +window,--</p> + +<p>"You have said enough, nephew; you've shown enough devotion. +Your desire to win the girl blinds you. The devil! you mustn't go +at it tooth and nail. Let me sail the ship now; you can haul on +the braces. Do you think it right to compromise your dignity as a +magistrate in such a--"</p> + +<p>He stopped, for he heard Monsieur des Grassins saying to the +old cooper as they shook hands,--</p> + +<p>"Grandet, we have heard of the frightful misfortunes which +have just befallen your family,--the failure of the house of +Guillaume Grandet and the death of your brother. We have come to +express our grief at these sad events."</p> + +<p>"There is but one sad event," said the notary, interrupting +the banker,--"the death of Monsieur Grandet, junior; and he would +never have killed himself had he thought in time of applying to +his brother for help. Our old friend, who is honorable to his +finger-nails, intends to liquidate the debts of the Maison +Grandet of Paris. To save him the worry of legal proceedings, my +nephew, the president, has just offered to go to Paris and +negotiate with the creditors for a satisfactory settlement."</p> + +<p>These words, corroborated by Grandet's attitude as he stood +silently nursing his chin, astonished the three des Grassins, who +had been leisurely discussing the old man's avarice as they came +along, very nearly accusing him of fratricide.</p> + +<p>"Ah! I was sure of it," cried the banker, looking at his wife. +"What did I tell you just now, Madame des Grassins? Grandet is +honorable to the backbone, and would never allow his name to +remain under the slightest cloud! Money without honor is a +disease. There is honor in the provinces! Right, very right, +Grandet. I'm an old soldier, and I can't disguise my thoughts; I +speak roughly. Thunder! it is sublime!"</p> + +<p>"Th-then s-s-sublime th-things c-c-cost d-dear," answered the +goodman, as the banker warmly wrung his hand.</p> + +<p>"But this, my dear Grandet,--if the president will excuse +me,--is a purely commercial matter, and needs a consummate +business man. Your agent must be some one fully acquainted with +the markets,--with disbursements, rebates, interest calculations, +and so forth. I am going to Paris on business of my own, and I +can take charge of--"</p> + +<p>"We'll see about t-t-trying to m-m-manage it b-b-between us, +under the p-p-peculiar c-c-circumstances, b-b-but without +b-b-binding m-m-myself to anything th-that I c-c-could not do," +said Grandet, stuttering; "because, you see, monsieur le +president naturally expects me to pay the expenses of his +journey."</p> + +<p>The goodman did not stammer over the last words.</p> + +<p>"Eh!" cried Madame des Grassins, "why it is a pleasure to go +to Paris. I would willingly pay to go myself."</p> + +<p>She made a sign to her husband, as if to encourage him in +cutting the enemy out of the commission, <i>coute que coute</i>; +then she glanced ironically at the two Cruchots, who looked +chap-fallen. Grandet seized the banker by a button and drew him +into a corner of the room.</p> + +<p>"I have a great deal more confidence in you than in the +president," he said; "besides, I've other fish to fry," he added, +wriggling his wen. "I want to buy a few thousand francs in the +Funds while they are at eighty. They fall, I'm told, at the end +of each month. You know all about these things, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Bless me! then, am I to invest enough to give you a few +thousand francs a year?"</p> + +<p>"That's not much to begin with. Hush! I don't want any one to +know I am going to play that game. You can make the investment by +the end of the month. Say nothing to the Cruchots; that'll annoy +them. If you are really going to Paris, we will see if there is +anything to be done for my poor nephew."</p> + +<p>"Well, it's all settled. I'll start to-morrow by the +mail-post," said des Grassins aloud, "and I will come and take +your last directions at --what hour will suit you?"</p> + +<p>"Five o'clock, just before dinner," said Grandet, rubbing his +hands.</p> + +<p>The two parties stayed on for a short time. Des Grassins said, +after a pause, striking Grandet on the shoulder,--</p> + +<p>"It is a good thing to have a relation like him."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; without making a show," said Grandet, "I am a +g-good relation. I loved my brother, and I will prove it, unless +it c-c-costs--"</p> + +<p>"We must leave you, Grandet," said the banker, interrupting +him fortunately before he got to the end of his sentence. "If I +hurry my departure, I must attend to some matters at once."</p> + +<p>"Very good, very good! I myself--in c-consequence of what I +t-told you --I must retire to my own room and 'd-d-deliberate,' +as President Cruchot says."</p> + +<p>"Plague take him! I am no longer Monsieur de Bonfons," thought +the magistrate ruefully, his face assuming the expression of a +judge bored by an argument.</p> + +<p>The heads of the two factions walked off together. Neither +gave any further thought to the treachery Grandet had been guilty +of in the morning against the whole wine-growing community; each +tried to fathom what the other was thinking about the real +intentions of the wily old man in this new affair, but in +vain.</p> + +<p>"Will you go with us to Madame Dorsonval's?" said des Grassins +to the notary.</p> + +<p>"We will go there later," answered the president. "I have +promised to say good-evening to Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt, and +we will go there first, if my uncle is willing."</p> + +<p>"Farewell for the present!" said Madame des Grassins.</p> + +<p>When the Cruchots were a few steps off, Adolphe remarked to +his father,--</p> + +<p>"Are not they fuming, hein?"</p> + +<p>"Hold your tongue, my son!" said his mother; "they might hear +you. Besides, what you say is not in good taste,--law-school +language."</p> + +<p>"Well, uncle," cried the president when he saw the des +Grassins disappearing, "I began by being de Bonfons, and I have +ended as nothing but Cruchot."</p> + +<p>"I saw that that annoyed you; but the wind has set fair for +the des Grassins. What a fool you are, with all your cleverness! +Let them sail off on Grandet's 'We'll see about it,' and keep +yourself quiet, young man. Eugenie will none the less be your +wife."</p> + +<p>In a few moments the news of Grandet's magnanimous resolve was +disseminated in three houses at the same moment, and the whole +town began to talk of his fraternal devotion. Every one forgave +Grandet for the sale made in defiance of the good faith pledged +to the community; they admired his sense of honor, and began to +laud a generosity of which they had never thought him capable. It +is part of the French nature to grow enthusiastic, or angry, or +fervent about some meteor of the moment. Can it be that +collective beings, nationalities, peoples, are devoid of +memory?</p> + +<p>When Pere Grandet had shut the door he called Nanon.</p> + +<p>"Don't let the dog loose, and don't go to bed; we have work to +do together. At eleven o'clock Cornoiller will be at the door +with the chariot from Froidfond. Listen for him and prevent his +knocking; tell him to come in softly. Police regulations don't +allow nocturnal racket. Besides, the whole neighborhood need not +know that I am starting on a journey."</p> + +<p>So saying, Grandet returned to his private room, where Nanon +heard him moving about, rummaging, and walking to and fro, though +with much precaution, for he evidently did not wish to wake his +wife and daughter, and above all not to rouse the attention of +his nephew, whom he had begun to anathematize when he saw a +thread of light under his door. About the middle of the night +Eugenie, intent on her cousin, fancied she heard a cry like that +of a dying person. It must be Charles, she thought; he was so +pale, so full of despair when she had seen him last,--could he +have killed himself? She wrapped herself quickly in a loose +garment,--a sort of pelisse with a hood,--and was about to leave +the room when a bright light coming through the chinks of her +door made her think of fire. But she recovered herself as she +heard Nanon's heavy steps and gruff voice mingling with the +snorting of several horses.</p> + +<p>"Can my father be carrying off my cousin?" she said to +herself, opening her door with great precaution lest it should +creak, and yet enough to let her see into the corridor.</p> + +<p>Suddenly her eye encountered that of her father; and his +glance, vague and unnoticing as it was, terrified her. The +goodman and Nanon were yoked together by a stout stick, each end +of which rested on their shoulders; a stout rope was passed over +it, on which was slung a small barrel or keg like those Pere +Grandet still made in his bakehouse as an amusement for his +leisure hours.</p> + +<p>"Holy Virgin, how heavy it is!" said the voice of Nanon.</p> + +<p>"What a pity that it is only copper sous!" answered Grandet. +"Take care you don't knock over the candlestick."</p> + +<p>The scene was lighted by a single candle placed between two +rails of the staircase.</p> + +<p>"Cornoiller," said Grandet to his keeper <i>in partibus</i>, +"have you brought your pistols?"</p> + +<p>"No, monsieur. Mercy! what's there to fear for your copper +sous?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! nothing," said Pere Grandet.</p> + +<p>"Besides, we shall go fast," added the man; "your farmers have +picked out their best horses."</p> + +<p>"Very good. You did not tell them where I was going?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know where."</p> + +<p>"Very good. Is the carriage strong?"</p> + +<p>"Strong? hear to that, now! Why, it can carry three thousand +weight. How much does that old keg weigh?"</p> + +<p>"Goodness!" exclaimed Nanon. "I ought to know! There's pretty +nigh eighteen hundred--"</p> + +<p>"Will you hold your tongue, Nanon! You are to tell my wife I +have gone into the country. I shall be back to dinner. Drive +fast, Cornoiller; I must get to Angers before nine o'clock."</p> + +<p>The carriage drove off. Nanon bolted the great door, let loose +the dog, and went off to bed with a bruised shoulder, no one in +the neighborhood suspecting either the departure of Grandet or +the object of his journey. The precautions of the old miser and +his reticence were never relaxed. No one had ever seen a penny in +that house, filled as it was with gold. Hearing in the morning, +through the gossip of the port, that exchange on gold had doubled +in price in consequence of certain military preparations +undertaken at Nantes, and that speculators had arrived at Angers +to buy coin, the old wine-grower, by the simple process of +borrowing horses from his farmers, seized the chance of selling +his gold and of bringing back in the form of treasury notes the +sum he intended to put into the Funds, having swelled it +considerably by the exchange.</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>VIII</h3> + +<p>"My father has gone," thought Eugenie, who heard all that took +place from the head of the stairs. Silence was restored in the +house, and the distant rumbling of the carriage, ceasing by +degrees, no longer echoed through the sleeping town. At this +moment Eugenie heard in her heart, before the sound caught her +ears, a cry which pierced the partitions and came from her +cousin's chamber. A line of light, thin as the blade of a sabre, +shone through a chink in the door and fell horizontally on the +balusters of the rotten staircase.</p> + +<p>"He suffers!" she said, springing up the stairs. A second moan +brought her to the landing near his room. The door was ajar, she +pushed it open. Charles was sleeping; his head hung over the side +of the old armchair, and his hand, from which the pen had fallen, +nearly touched the floor. The oppressed breathing caused by the +strained posture suddenly frightened Eugenie, who entered the +room hastily.</p> + +<p>"He must be very tired," she said to herself, glancing at a +dozen letters lying sealed upon the table. She read their +addresses: "To Messrs. Farry, Breilmann, & Co., +carriage-makers"; "To Monsieur Buisson, tailor," etc.</p> + +<p>"He has been settling all his affairs, so as to leave France +at once," she thought. Her eyes fell upon two open letters. The +words, "My dear Annette," at the head of one of them, blinded her +for a moment. Her heart beat fast, her feet were nailed to the +floor.</p> + +<p>"His dear Annette! He loves! he is loved! No hope! What does +he say to her?"</p> + +<p>These thoughts rushed through her head and heart. She saw the +words everywhere, even on the bricks of the floor, in letters of +fire.</p> + +<p>"Resign him already? No, no! I will not read the letter. I +ought to go away--What if I do read it?"</p> + +<p>She looked at Charles, then she gently took his head and +placed it against the back of the chair; he let her do so, like a +child which, though asleep, knows its mother's touch and +receives, without awaking, her kisses and watchful care. Like a +mother Eugenie raised the drooping hand, and like a mother she +gently kissed the chestnut hair-- "Dear Annette!" a demon +shrieked the words in her ear.</p> + +<p>"I am doing wrong; but I must read it, that letter," she said. +She turned away her head, for her noble sense of honor reproached +her. For the first time in her life good and evil struggled +together in her heart. Up to that moment she had never had to +blush for any action. Passion and curiosity triumphed. As she +read each sentence her heart swelled more and more, and the keen +glow which filled her being as she did so, only made the joys of +first love still more precious.</p> + +<p>My dear Annette,--Nothing could ever have separated us but the +great misfortune which has now overwhelmed me, and which no human +foresight could have prevented. My father has killed himself; his +fortune and mine are irretrievably lost. I am orphaned at an age +when, through the nature of my education, I am still a child; and +yet I must lift myself as a man out of the abyss into which I am +plunged. I have just spent half the night in facing my position. +If I wish to leave France an honest man,--and there is no doubt +of that,--I have not a hundred francs of my own with which to try +my fate in the Indies or in America. Yes, my poor Anna, I must +seek my fortune in those deadly climates. Under those skies, they +tell me, I am sure to make it. As for remaining in Paris, I +cannot do so. Neither my nature nor my face are made to bear the +affronts, the neglect, the disdain shown to a ruined man, the son +of a bankrupt! Good God! think of owing two millions! I should be +killed in a duel the first week; therefore I shall not return +there. Your love--the most tender and devoted love which ever +ennobled the heart of man--cannot draw me back. Alas! my beloved, +I have no money with which to go to you, to give and receive a +last kiss from which I might derive some strength for my forlorn +enterprise.</p> + +<p>"Poor Charles! I did well to read the letter. I have gold; I +will give it to him," thought Eugenie.</p> + +<p>She wiped her eyes, and went on reading.</p> + +<p>I have never thought of the miseries of poverty. If I have the +hundred louis required for the mere costs of the journey, I have +not a sou for an outfit. But no, I have not the hundred louis, +not even one louis. I don't know that anything will be left after +I have paid my debts in Paris. If I have nothing, I shall go +quietly to Nantes and ship as a common sailor; and I will begin +in the new world like other men who have started young without a +sou and brought back the wealth of the Indies. During this long +day I have faced my future coolly. It seems more horrible for me +than for another, because I have been so petted by a mother who +adored me, so indulged by the kindest of fathers, so blessed by +meeting, on my entrance into life, with the love of an Anna! The +flowers of life are all I have ever known. Such happiness could +not last. Nevertheless, my dear Annette, I feel more courage than +a careless young man is supposed to feel,--above all a young man +used to the caressing ways of the dearest woman in all Paris, +cradled in family joys, on whom all things smiled in his home, +whose wishes were a law to his father--oh, my father! Annette, he +is dead!</p> + +<p>Well, I have thought over my position, and yours as well. I +have grown old in twenty-four hours. Dear Anna, if in order to +keep me with you in Paris you were to sacrifice your luxury, your +dress, your opera-box, we should even then not have enough for +the expenses of my extravagant ways of living. Besides, I would +never accept such sacrifices. No, we must part now and +forever--</p> + +<p>"He gives her up! Blessed Virgin! What happiness!"</p> + +<p>Eugenie quivered with joy. Charles made a movement, and a +chill of terror ran through her. Fortunately, he did not wake, +and she resumed her reading.</p> + +<p>When shall I return? I do not know. The climate of the West +Indies ages a European, so they say; especially a European who +works hard. Let us think what may happen ten years hence. In ten +years your daughter will be eighteen; she will be your companion, +your spy. To you society will be cruel, and your daughter perhaps +more cruel still. We have seen cases of the harsh social judgment +and ingratitude of daughters; let us take warning by them. Keep +in the depths of your soul, as I shall in mine, the memory of +four years of happiness, and be faithful, if you can, to the +memory of your poor friend. I cannot exact such faithfulness, +because, do you see, dear Annette, I must conform to the +exigencies of my new life; I must take a commonplace view of them +and do the best I can. Therefore I must think of marriage, which +becomes one of the necessities of my future existence; and I will +admit to you that I have found, here in Saumur, in my uncle's +house, a cousin whose face, manners, mind, and heart would please +you, and who, besides, seems to me--</p> + +<p>"He must have been very weary to have ceased writing to her," +thought Eugenie, as she gazed at the letter which stopped +abruptly in the middle of the last sentence.</p> + +<p>Already she defended him. How was it possible that an innocent +girl should perceive the cold-heartedness evinced by this letter? +To young girls religiously brought up, whose minds are ignorant +and pure, all is love from the moment they set their feet within +the enchanted regions of that passion. They walk there bathed in +a celestial light shed from their own souls, which reflects its +rays upon their lover; they color all with the flame of their own +emotion and attribute to him their highest thoughts. A woman's +errors come almost always from her belief in good or her +confidence in truth. In Eugenie's simple heart the words, "My +dear Annette, my loved one," echoed like the sweetest language of +love; they caressed her soul as, in childhood, the divine notes +of the <i>Venite adoremus</i>, repeated by the organ, caressed +her ear. Moreover, the tears which still lingered on the young +man's lashes gave signs of that nobility of heart by which young +girls are rightly won. How could she know that Charles, though he +loved his father and mourned him truly, was moved far more by +paternal goodness than by the goodness of his own heart? Monsieur +and Madame Guillaume Grandet, by gratifying every fancy of their +son, and lavishing upon him the pleasures of a large fortune, had +kept him from making the horrible calculations of which so many +sons in Paris become more or less guilty when, face to face with +the enjoyments of the world, they form desires and conceive +schemes which they see with bitterness must be put off or laid +aside during the lifetime of their parents. The liberality of the +father in this instance had shed into the heart of the son a real +love, in which there was no afterthought of self-interest.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the +customs of society and by Annette herself to calculate +everything; already an old man under the mask of youth. He had +gone through the frightful education of social life, of that +world where in one evening more crimes are committed in thought +and speech than justice ever punishes at the assizes; where jests +and clever sayings assassinate the noblest ideas; where no one is +counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and to see clear in +that world is to believe in nothing, neither in feelings, nor in +men, nor even in events,--for events are falsified. There, to +"see clear" we must weigh a friend's purse daily, learn how to +keep ourselves adroitly on the top of the wave, cautiously admire +nothing, neither works of art nor glorious actions, and remember +that self-interest is the mainspring of all things here below. +After committing many follies, the great lady--the beautiful +Annette-- compelled Charles to think seriously; with her perfumed +hand among his curls, she talked to him of his future position; +as she rearranged his locks, she taught him lessons of worldly +prudence; she made him effeminate and materialized him,--a double +corruption, but a delicate and elegant corruption, in the best +taste.</p> + +<p>"You are very foolish, Charles," she would say to him. "I +shall have a great deal of trouble in teaching you to understand +the world. You behaved extremely ill to Monsieur des Lupeaulx. I +know very well he is not an honorable man; but wait till he is no +longer in power, then you may despise him as much as you like. Do +you know what Madame Campan used to tell us?--'My dears, as long +as a man is a minister, adore him; when he falls, help to drag +him in the gutter. Powerful, he is a sort of god; fallen, he is +lower than Marat in the sewer, because he is living, and Marat is +dead. Life is a series of combinations, and you must study them +and understand them if you want to keep yourselves always in good +position.'"</p> + +<p>Charles was too much a man of the world, his parents had made +him too happy, he had received too much adulation in society, to +be possessed of noble sentiments. The grain of gold dropped by +his mother into his heart was beaten thin in the smithy of +Parisian society; he had spread it superficially, and it was worn +away by the friction of life. Charles was only twenty-one years +old. At that age the freshness of youth seems inseparable from +candor and sincerity of soul. The voice, the glance, the face +itself, seem in harmony with the feelings; and thus it happens +that the sternest judge, the most sceptical lawyer, the least +complying of usurers, always hesitate to admit decrepitude of +heart or the corruption of worldly calculation while the eyes are +still bathed in purity and no wrinkles seam the brow. Charles, so +far, had had no occasion to apply the maxims of Parisian +morality; up to this time he was still endowed with the beauty of +inexperience. And yet, unknown to himself, he had been inoculated +with selfishness. The germs of Parisian political economy, latent +in his heart, would assuredly burst forth, sooner or later, +whenever the careless spectator became an actor in the drama of +real life.</p> + +<p>Nearly all young girls succumb to the tender promises such an +outward appearance seems to offer: even if Eugenie had been as +prudent and observing as provincial girls are often found to be, +she was not likely to distrust her cousin when his manners, +words, and actions were still in unison with the aspirations of a +youthful heart. A mere chance--a fatal chance--threw in her way +the last effusions of real feeling which stirred the young man's +soul; she heard as it were the last breathings of his conscience. +She laid down the letter--to her so full of love--and began +smilingly to watch her sleeping cousin; the fresh illusions of +life were still, for her at least, upon his face; she vowed to +herself to love him always. Then she cast her eyes on the other +letter, without attaching much importance to this second +indiscretion; and though she read it, it was only to obtain new +proofs of the noble qualities which, like all women, she +attributed to the man her heart had chosen.</p> + +<p>My dear Alphonse,--When you receive this letter I shall be +without friends; but let me assure you that while I doubt the +friendship of the world, I have never doubted yours. I beg you +therefore to settle all my affairs, and I trust to you to get as +much as you can out of my possessions. By this time you know my +situation. I have nothing left, and I intend to go at once to the +Indies. I have just written to all the people to whom I think I +owe money, and you will find enclosed a list of their names, as +correct as I can make it from memory. My books, my furniture, my +pictures, my horses, etc., ought, I think, to pay my debts. I do +not wish to keep anything, except, perhaps, a few baubles which +might serve as the beginning of an outfit for my enterprise. My +dear Alphonse, I will send you a proper power of attorney under +which you can make these sales. Send me all my weapons. Keep +Briton for yourself; nobody would pay the value of that noble +beast, and I would rather give him to you--like a mourning-ring +bequeathed by a dying man to his executor. Farry, Breilmann, +& Co. built me a very comfortable travelling-carriage, which +they have not yet delivered; persuade them to keep it and not ask +for any payment on it. If they refuse, do what you can in the +matter, and avoid everything that might seem dishonorable in me +under my present circumstances. I owe the British Islander six +louis, which I lost at cards; don't fail to pay him--</p> + +<p>"Dear cousin!" whispered Eugenie, throwing down the letter and +running softly back to her room, carrying one of the lighted +candles. A thrill of pleasure passed over her as she opened the +drawer of an old oak cabinet, a fine specimen of the period +called the Renaissance, on which could still be seen, partly +effaced, the famous royal salamander. She took from the drawer a +large purse of red velvet with gold tassels, edged with a +tarnished fringe of gold wire,--a relic inherited from her +grandmother. She weighed it proudly in her hand, and began with +delight to count over the forgotten items of her little hoard. +First she took out twenty <i>portugaises</i>, still new, struck +in the reign of John V., 1725, worth by exchange, as her father +told her, five <i>lisbonnines</i>, or a hundred and sixty-eight +francs, sixty-four centimes each; their conventional value, +however, was a hundred and eighty francs apiece, on account of +the rarity and beauty of the coins, which shone like little suns. +Item, five <i>genovines</i>, or five hundred-franc pieces of +Genoa; another very rare coin worth eighty- seven francs on +exchange, but a hundred francs to collectors. These had formerly +belonged to old Monsieur de la Bertelliere. Item, three gold +<i>quadruples</i>, Spanish, of Philip V., struck in 1729, given +to her one by one by Madame Gentillet, who never failed to say, +using the same words, when she made the gift, "This dear little +canary, this little yellow-boy, is worth ninety-eight francs! +Keep it, my pretty one, it will be the flower of your treasure." +Item (that which her father valued most of all, the gold of these +coins being twenty-three carats and a fraction), a hundred Dutch +ducats, made in the year 1756, and worth thirteen francs apiece. +Item, a great curiosity, a species of medal precious to the soul +of misers,--three rupees with the sign of the Scales, and five +rupees with the sign of the Virgin, all in pure gold of +twenty-four carats; the magnificent money of the Great Mogul, +each of which was worth by mere weight thirty-seven francs, forty +centimes, but at least fifty francs to those connoisseurs who +love to handle gold. Item, the napoleon of forty francs received +the day before, which she had forgotten to put away in the velvet +purse. This treasure was all in virgin coins, true works of art, +which Grandet from time to time inquired after and asked to see, +pointing out to his daughter their intrinsic merits,--such as the +beauty of the milled edge, the clearness of the flat surface, the +richness of the lettering, whose angles were not yet rubbed +off.</p> + +<p>Eugenie gave no thought to these rarities, nor to her father's +mania for them, nor to the danger she incurred in depriving +herself of a treasure so dear to him; no, she thought only of her +cousin, and soon made out, after a few mistakes of calculation, +that she possessed about five thousand eight hundred francs in +actual value, which might be sold for their additional value to +collectors for nearly six thousand. She looked at her wealth and +clapped her hands like a happy child forced to spend its +overflowing joy in artless movements of the body. Father and +daughter had each counted up their fortune this night,--he, to +sell his gold; Eugenie to fling hers into the ocean of affection. +She put the pieces back into the old purse, took it in her hand, +and ran upstairs without hesitation. The secret misery of her +cousin made her forget the hour and conventional propriety; she +was strong in her conscience, in her devotion, in her +happiness.</p> + +<p>As she stood upon the threshold of the door, holding the +candle in one hand and the purse in the other, Charles woke, +caught sight of her, and remained speechless with surprise. +Eugenie came forward, put the candle on the table, and said in a +quivering voice:</p> + +<p>"My cousin, I must beg pardon for a wrong I have done you; but +God will pardon me--if you--will help me to wipe it out."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked Charles, rubbing his eyes.</p> + +<p>"I have read those letters."</p> + +<p>Charles colored.</p> + +<p>"How did it happen?" she continued; "how came I here? Truly, I +do not know. I am tempted not to regret too much that I have read +them; they have made me know your heart, your soul, and--"</p> + +<p>"And what?" asked Charles.</p> + +<p>"Your plans, your need of a sum--"</p> + +<p>"My dear cousin--"</p> + +<p>"Hush, hush! my cousin, not so loud; we must not wake others. +See," she said, opening her purse, "here are the savings of a +poor girl who wants nothing. Charles, accept them! This morning I +was ignorant of the value of money; you have taught it to me. It +is but a means, after all. A cousin is almost a brother; you can +surely borrow the purse of your sister."</p> + +<p>Eugenie, as much a woman as a young girl, never dreamed of +refusal; but her cousin remained silent.</p> + +<p>"Oh! you will not refuse?" cried Eugenie, the beatings of +whose heart could be heard in the deep silence.</p> + +<p>Her cousin's hesitation mortified her; but the sore need of +his position came clearer still to her mind, and she knelt +down.</p> + +<p>"I will never rise till you have taken that gold!" she said. +"My cousin, I implore you, answer me! let me know if you respect +me, if you are generous, if--"</p> + +<p>As he heard this cry of noble distress the young man's tears +fell upon his cousin's hands, which he had caught in his own to +keep her from kneeling. As the warm tears touched her, Eugenie +sprang to the purse and poured its contents upon the table.</p> + +<p>"Ah! yes, yes, you consent?" she said, weeping with joy. "Fear +nothing, my cousin, you will be rich. This gold will bring you +happiness; some day you shall bring it back to me,--are we not +partners? I will obey all conditions. But you should not attach +such value to the gift."</p> + +<p>Charles was at last able to express his feelings.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Eugenie; my soul would be small indeed if I did not +accept. And yet,--gift for gift, confidence for confidence."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" she said, frightened.</p> + +<p>"Listen, dear cousin; I have here--" He interrupted himself to +point out a square box covered with an outer case of leather +which was on the drawers. "There," he continued, "is something as +precious to me as life itself. This box was a present from my +mother. All day I have been thinking that if she could rise from +her grave, she would herself sell the gold which her love for me +lavished on this dressing-case; but were I to do so, the act +would seem to me a sacrilege." Eugenie pressed his hand as she +heard these last words. "No," he added, after a slight pause, +during which a liquid glance of tenderness passed between them, +"no, I will neither sell it nor risk its safety on my journey. +Dear Eugenie, you shall be its guardian. Never did friend commit +anything more sacred to another. Let me show it to you."</p> + +<p>He went to the box, took it from its outer coverings, opened +it, and showed his delighted cousin a dressing-case where the +rich workmanship gave to the gold ornaments a value far above +their weight.</p> + +<p>"What you admire there is nothing," he said, pushing a secret +spring which opened a hidden drawer. "Here is something which to +me is worth the whole world." He drew out two portraits, +masterpieces of Madame Mirbel, richly set with pearls.</p> + +<p>"Oh, how beautiful! Is it the lady to whom you wrote +that--"</p> + +<p>"No," he said, smiling; "this is my mother, and here is my +father, your aunt and uncle. Eugenie, I beg you on my knees, keep +my treasure safely. If I die and your little fortune is lost, +this gold and these pearls will repay you. To you alone could I +leave these portraits; you are worthy to keep them. But destroy +them at last, so that they may pass into no other hands." Eugenie +was silent. "Ah, yes, say yes! You consent?" he added with +winning grace.</p> + +<p>Hearing the very words she had just used to her cousin now +addressed to herself, she turned upon him a look of love, her +first look of loving womanhood,--a glance in which there is +nearly as much of coquetry as of inmost depth. He took her hand +and kissed it.</p> + +<p>"Angel of purity! between us two money is nothing, never can +be anything. Feeling, sentiment, must be all henceforth."</p> + +<p>"You are like your mother,--was her voice as soft as +yours?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! much softer--"</p> + +<p>"Yes, for you," she said, dropping her eyelids. "Come, +Charles, go to bed; I wish it; you must be tired. Good-night." +She gently disengaged her hand from those of her cousin, who +followed her to her room, lighting the way. When they were both +upon the threshold,--</p> + +<p>"Ah!" he said, "why am I ruined?"</p> + +<p>"What matter?--my father is rich; I think so," she +answered.</p> + +<p>"Poor child!" said Charles, making a step into her room and +leaning his back against the wall, "if that were so, he would +never have let my father die; he would not let you live in this +poor way; he would live otherwise himself."</p> + +<p>"But he owns Froidfond."</p> + +<p>"What is Froidfond worth?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know; but he has Noyers."</p> + +<p>"Nothing but a poor farm!"</p> + +<p>"He has vineyards and fields."</p> + +<p>"Mere nothing," said Charles disdainfully. "If your father had +only twenty-four thousand francs a year do you suppose you would +live in this cold, barren room?" he added, making a step in +advance. "Ah! there you will keep my treasures," he said, +glancing at the old cabinet, as if to hide his thoughts.</p> + +<p>"Go and sleep," she said, hindering his entrance into the +disordered room.</p> + +<p>Charles stepped back, and they bid each other good-night with +a mutual smile.</p> + +<p>Both fell asleep in the same dream; and from that moment the +youth began to wear roses with his mourning. The next day, before +breakfast, Madame Grandet found her daughter in the garden in +company with Charles. The young man was still sad, as became a +poor fellow who, plunged in misfortune, measures the depths of +the abyss into which he has fallen, and sees the terrible burden +of his whole future life.</p> + +<p>"My father will not be home till dinner-time," said Eugenie, +perceiving the anxious look on her mother's face.</p> + +<p>It was easy to trace in the face and manners of the young girl +and in the singular sweetness of her voice a unison of thought +between her and her cousin. Their souls had espoused each other, +perhaps before they even felt the force of the feelings which +bound them together. Charles spent the morning in the hall, and +his sadness was respected. Each of the three women had +occupations of her own. Grandet had left all his affairs +unattended to, and a number of persons came on business,--the +plumber, the mason, the slater, the carpenter, the diggers, the +dressers, the farmers; some to drive a bargain about repairs, +others to pay their rent or to be paid themselves for services. +Madame Grandet and Eugenie were obliged to go and come and listen +to the interminable talk of all these workmen and country folk. +Nanon put away in her kitchen the produce which they brought as +tribute. She always waited for her master's orders before she +knew what portion was to be used in the house and what was to be +sold in the market. It was the goodman's custom, like that of a +great many country gentlemen, to drink his bad wine and eat his +spoiled fruit.</p> + +<p>Towards five in the afternoon Grandet returned from Angers, +having made fourteen thousand francs by the exchange on his gold, +bringing home in his wallet good treasury-notes which bore +interest until the day he should invest them in the Funds. He had +left Cornoiller at Angers to look after the horses, which were +well-nigh foundered, with orders to bring them home slowly after +they were rested.</p> + +<p>"I have got back from Angers, wife," he said; "I am +hungry."</p> + +<p>Nanon called out to him from the kitchen: "Haven't you eaten +anything since yesterday?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," answered the old man.</p> + +<p>Nanon brought in the soup. Des Grassins came to take his +client's orders just as the family sat down to dinner. Grandet +had not even observed his nephew.</p> + +<p>"Go on eating, Grandet," said the banker; "we can talk. Do you +know what gold is worth in Angers? They have come from Nantes +after it? I shall send some of ours."</p> + +<p>"Don't send any," said Grandet; "they have got enough. We are +such old friends, I ought to save you from such a loss of +time."</p> + +<p>"But gold is worth thirteen francs fifty centimes."</p> + +<p>"Say <i>was</i> worth--"</p> + +<p>"Where the devil have they got any?"</p> + +<p>"I went to Angers last night," answered Grandet in a low +voice.</p> + +<p>The banker shook with surprise. Then a whispered conversation +began between the two, during which Grandet and des Grassins +frequently looked at Charles. Presently des Grassins gave a start +of astonishment; probably Grandet was then instructing him to +invest the sum which was to give him a hundred thousand francs a +year in the Funds.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur Grandet," said the banker to Charles, "I am starting +for Paris; if you have any commissions--"</p> + +<p>"None, monsieur, I thank you," answered Charles.</p> + +<p>"Thank him better than that, nephew. Monsieur is going to +settle the affairs of the house of Guillaume Grandet."</p> + +<p>"Is there any hope?" said Charles eagerly.</p> + +<p>"What!" exclaimed his uncle, with well-acted pride, "are you +not my nephew? Your honor is ours. Is not your name Grandet?"</p> + +<p>Charles rose, seized Pere Grandet, kissed him, turned pale, +and left the room. Eugenie looked at her father with +admiration.</p> + +<p>"Well, good-by, des Grassins; it is all in your hands. Decoy +those people as best you can; lead 'em by the nose."</p> + +<p>The two diplomatists shook hands. The old cooper accompanied +the banker to the front door. Then, after closing it, he came +back and plunged into his armchair, saying to Nanon,--</p> + +<p>"Get me some black-currant ratafia."</p> + +<p>Too excited, however, to remain long in one place, he got up, +looked at the portrait of Monsieur de la Bertelliere, and began +to sing, doing what Nanon called his dancing steps,--</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>"Dans les gardes francaises</p> + +<p>J'avais un bon papa."</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Nanon, Madame Grandet, and Eugenie looked at each other in +silence. The hilarity of the master always frightened them when +it reached its climax. The evening was soon over. Pere Grandet +chose to go to bed early, and when he went to bed, everybody else +was expected to go too; like as when Augustus drank, Poland was +drunk. On this occasion Nanon, Charles, and Eugenie were not less +tired than the master. As for Madame Grandet, she slept, ate, +drank, and walked according to the will of her husband. However, +during the two hours consecrated to digestion, the cooper, more +facetious than he had ever been in his life, uttered a number of +his own particular apothegms,--a single one of which will give +the measure of his mind. When he had drunk his ratafia, he looked +at his glass and said,--</p> + +<p>"You have no sooner put your lips to a glass than it is empty! +Such is life. You can't have and hold. Gold won't circulate and +stay in your purse. If it were not for that, life would be too +fine."</p> + +<p>He was jovial and benevolent. When Nanon came with her +spinning-wheel, "You must be tired," he said; "put away your +hemp."</p> + +<p>"Ah, bah! then I shall get sleepy," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Poor Nanon! Will you have some ratafia?"</p> + +<p>"I won't refuse a good offer; madame makes it a deal better +than the apothecaries. What they sell is all drugs."</p> + +<p>"They put too much sugar," said the master; "you can't taste +anything else."</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>IX</h3> + +<p>The following day the family, meeting at eight o'clock for the +early breakfast, made a picture of genuine domestic intimacy. +Grief had drawn Madame Grandet, Eugenie, and Charles <i>en +rapport</i>; even Nanon sympathized, without knowing why. The +four now made one family. As to the old man, his satisfied +avarice and the certainty of soon getting rid of the dandy +without having to pay more than his journey to Nantes, made him +nearly indifferent to his presence in the house. He left the two +children, as he called Charles and Eugenie, free to conduct +themselves as they pleased, under the eye of Madame Grandet, in +whom he had implicit confidence as to all that concerned public +and religious morality. He busied himself in straightening the +boundaries of his fields and ditches along the high-road, in his +poplar- plantations beside the Loire, in the winter work of his +vineyards, and at Froidfond. All these things occupied his whole +time.</p> + +<p>For Eugenie the springtime of love had come. Since the scene +at night when she gave her little treasure to her cousin, her +heart had followed the treasure. Confederates in the same secret, +they looked at each other with a mutual intelligence which sank +to the depth of their consciousness, giving a closer communion, a +more intimate relation to their feelings, and putting them, so to +speak, beyond the pale of ordinary life. Did not their near +relationship warrant the gentleness in their tones, the +tenderness in their glances? Eugenie took delight in lulling her +cousin's pain with the pretty childish joys of a new- born love. +Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love and the +birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and +softest glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden +future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above +its head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of +sorrow and its tears of joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry +for the pretty pebbles with which to build its shifting palaces, +for the flowers forgotten as soon as plucked? Is it not eager to +grasp the coming time, to spring forward into life? Love is our +second transformation. Childhood and love were one and the same +thing to Eugenie and to Charles; it was a first passion, with all +its child-like play,--the more caressing to their hearts because +they now were wrapped in sadness. Struggling at birth against the +gloom of mourning, their love was only the more in harmony with +the provincial plainness of that gray and ruined house. As they +exchanged a few words beside the well in the silent court, or +lingered in the garden for the sunset hour, sitting on a mossy +seat saying to each other the infinite nothings of love, or mused +in the silent calm which reigned between the house and the +ramparts like that beneath the arches of a church, Charles +comprehended the sanctity of love; for his great lady, his dear +Annette, had taught him only its stormy troubles. At this moment +he left the worldly passion, coquettish, vain, and showy as it +was, and turned to the true, pure love. He loved even the house, +whose customs no longer seemed to him ridiculous. He got up early +in the mornings that he might talk with Eugenie for a moment +before her father came to dole out the provisions; when the steps +of the old man sounded on the staircase he escaped into the +garden. The small criminality of this morning <i>tete-a-tete</i> +which Nanon pretended not to see, gave to their innocent love the +lively charm of a forbidden joy.</p> + +<p>After breakfast, when Grandet had gone to his fields and his +other occupations, Charles remained with the mother and daughter, +finding an unknown pleasure in holding their skeins, in watching +them at work, in listening to their quiet prattle. The simplicity +of this half-monastic life, which revealed to him the beauty of +these souls, unknown and unknowing of the world, touched him +keenly. He had believed such morals impossible in France, and +admitted their existence nowhere but in Germany; even so, they +seemed to him fabulous, only real in the novels of Auguste +Lafontaine. Soon Eugenie became to him the Margaret of +Goethe--before her fall. Day by day his words, his looks +enraptured the poor girl, who yielded herself up with delicious +non-resistance to the current of love; she caught her happiness +as a swimmer seizes the overhanging branch of a willow to draw +himself from the river and lie at rest upon its shore. Did no +dread of a coming absence sadden the happy hours of those +fleeting days? Daily some little circumstance reminded them of +the parting that was at hand.</p> + +<p>Three days after the departure of des Grassins, Grandet took +his nephew to the Civil courts, with the solemnity which country +people attach to all legal acts, that he might sign a deed +surrendering his rights in his father's estate. Terrible +renunciation! species of domestic apostasy! Charles also went +before Maitre Cruchot to make two powers of attorney,--one for +des Grassins, the other for the friend whom he had charged with +the sale of his belongings. After that he attended to all the +formalities necessary to obtain a passport for foreign countries; +and finally, when he received his simple mourning clothes from +Paris, he sent for the tailor of Saumur and sold to him his +useless wardrobe. This last act pleased Grandet exceedingly.</p> + +<p>"Ah! now you look like a man prepared to embark and make your +fortune," he said, when Charles appeared in a surtout of plain +black cloth. "Good! very good!"</p> + +<p>"I hope you will believe, monsieur," answered his nephew, +"that I shall always try to conform to my situation."</p> + +<p>"What's that?" said his uncle, his eyes lighting up at a +handful of gold which Charles was carrying.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur, I have collected all my buttons and rings and other +superfluities which may have some value; but not knowing any one +in Saumur, I wanted to ask you to--"</p> + +<p>"To buy them?" said Grandet, interrupting him.</p> + +<p>"No, uncle; only to tell me of an honest man who--"</p> + +<p>"Give me those things, I will go upstairs and estimate their +value; I will come back and tell you what it is to a fraction. +Jeweller's gold," examining a long chain, "eighteen or nineteen +carats."</p> + +<p>The goodman held out his huge hand and received the mass of +gold, which he carried away.</p> + +<p>"Cousin," said Grandet, "may I offer you these two buttons? +They can fasten ribbons round your wrists; that sort of bracelet +is much the fashion just now."</p> + +<p>"I accept without hesitation," she answered, giving him an +understanding look.</p> + +<p>"Aunt, here is my mother's thimble; I have always kept it +carefully in my dressing-case," said Charles, presenting a pretty +gold thimble to Madame Grandet, who for many years had longed for +one.</p> + +<p>"I cannot thank you; no words are possible, my nephew," said +the poor mother, whose eyes filled with tears. "Night and morning +in my prayers I shall add one for you, the most earnest of +all--for those who travel. If I die, Eugenie will keep this +treasure for you."</p> + +<p>"They are worth nine hundred and eighty-nine francs, +seventy-five centimes," said Grandet, opening the door. "To save +you the pain of selling them, I will advance the money--in +<i>livres</i>."</p> + +<p>The word <i>livres</i> on the littoral of the Loire signifies +that crown prices of six <i>livres</i> are to be accepted as six +francs without deduction.</p> + +<p>"I dared not propose it to you," answered Charles; "but it was +most repugnant to me to sell my jewels to some second-hand dealer +in your own town. People should wash their dirty linen at home, +as Napoleon said. I thank you for your kindness."</p> + +<p>Grandet scratched his ear, and there was a moment's +silence.</p> + +<p>"My dear uncle," resumed Charles, looking at him with an +uneasy air, as if he feared to wound his feelings, "my aunt and +cousin have been kind enough to accept a trifling remembrance of +me. Will you allow me to give you these sleeve-buttons, which are +useless to me now? They will remind you of a poor fellow who, far +away, will always think of those who are henceforth all his +family."</p> + +<p>"My lad, my lad, you mustn't rob yourself this way! Let me +see, wife, what have you got?" he added, turning eagerly to her. +"Ah! a gold thimble. And you, little girl? What! diamond buttons? +Yes, I'll accept your present, nephew," he answered, shaking +Charles by the hand. "But --you must let me--pay--your--yes, your +passage to the Indies. Yes, I wish to pay your passage +because--d'ye see, my boy?--in valuing your jewels I estimated +only the weight of the gold; very likely the workmanship is worth +something. So let us settle it that I am to give you fifteen +hundred francs--in <i>livres</i>; Cruchot will lend them to me. I +haven't got a copper farthing here,--unless Perrotet, who is +behindhand with his rent, should pay up. By the bye, I'll go and +see him."</p> + +<p>He took his hat, put on his gloves, and went out.</p> + +<p>"Then you are really going?" said Eugenie to her cousin, with +a sad look, mingled with admiration.</p> + +<p>"I must," he said, bowing his head.</p> + +<p>For some days past, Charles's whole bearing, manners, and +speech had become those of a man who, in spite of his profound +affliction, feels the weight of immense obligations and has the +strength to gather courage from misfortune. He no longer repined, +he became a man. Eugenie never augured better of her cousin's +character than when she saw him come down in the plain black +clothes which suited well with his pale face and sombre +countenance. On that day the two women put on their own mourning, +and all three assisted at a Requiem celebrated in the parish +church for the soul of the late Guillaume Grandet.</p> + +<p>At the second breakfast Charles received letters from Paris +and began to read them.</p> + +<p>"Well, cousin, are you satisfied with the management of your +affairs?" said Eugenie in a low voice.</p> + +<p>"Never ask such questions, my daughter," said Grandet. "What +the devil! do I tell you my affairs? Why do you poke your nose +into your cousin's? Let the lad alone!"</p> + +<p>"Oh! I haven't any secrets," said Charles.</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta, nephew; you'll soon find out that you must +hold your tongue in business."</p> + +<p>When the two lovers were alone in the garden, Charles said to +Eugenie, drawing her down on the old bench beneath the +walnut-tree,--</p> + +<p>"I did right to trust Alphonse; he has done famously. He has +managed my affairs with prudence and good faith. I now owe +nothing in Paris. All my things have been sold; and he tells me +that he has taken the advice of an old sea-captain and spent +three thousand francs on a commercial outfit of European +curiosities which will be sure to be in demand in the Indies. He +has sent my trunks to Nantes, where a ship is loading for San +Domingo. In five days, Eugenie, we must bid each other +farewell--perhaps forever, at least for years. My outfit and ten +thousand francs, which two of my friends send me, are a very +small beginning. I cannot look to return for many years. My dear +cousin, do not weight your life in the scales with mine; I may +perish; some good marriage may be offered to you--"</p> + +<p>"Do you love me?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! indeed, yes!" he answered, with a depth of tone that +revealed an equal depth of feeling.</p> + +<p>"I shall wait, Charles--Good heavens! there is my father at +his window," she said, repulsing her cousin, who leaned forward +to kiss her.</p> + +<p>She ran quickly under the archway. Charles followed her. When +she saw him, she retreated to the foot of the staircase and +opened the swing- door; then, scarcely knowing where she was +going, Eugenie reached the corner near Nanon's den, in the +darkest end of the passage. There Charles caught her hand and +drew her to his heart. Passing his arm about her waist, he made +her lean gently upon him. Eugenie no longer resisted; she +received and gave the purest, the sweetest, and yet, withal, the +most unreserved of kisses.</p> + +<p>"Dear Eugenie, a cousin is better than a brother, for he can +marry you," said Charles.</p> + +<p>"So be it!" cried Nanon, opening the door of her lair.</p> + +<p>The two lovers, alarmed, fled into the hall, where Eugenie +took up her work and Charles began to read the litanies of the +Virgin in Madame Grandet's prayer-book.</p> + +<p>"Mercy!" cried Nanon, "now they're saying their prayers."</p> + +<p>As soon as Charles announced his immediate departure, Grandet +bestirred himself to testify much interest in his nephew. He +became very liberal of all that cost him nothing; took pains to +find a packer; declared the man asked too much for his cases; +insisted on making them himself out of old planks; got up early +in the morning to fit and plane and nail together the strips, out +of which he made, to his own satisfaction, some strong cases, in +which he packed all Charles's effects; he also took upon himself +to send them by boat down the Loire, to insure them, and get them +to Nantes in proper time.</p> + +<p>After the kiss taken in the passage, the hours fled for +Eugenie with frightful rapidity. Sometimes she thought of +following her cousin. Those who have known that most endearing of +all passions,--the one whose duration is each day shortened by +time, by age, by mortal illness, by human chances and +fatalities,--they will understand the poor girl's tortures. She +wept as she walked in the garden, now so narrow to her, as indeed +the court, the house, the town all seemed. She launched in +thought upon the wide expanse of the ocean he was about to +traverse. At last the eve of his departure came. That morning, in +the absence of Grandet and of Nanon, the precious case which +contained the two portraits was solemnly installed in the only +drawer of the old cabinet which could be locked, where the now +empty velvet purse was lying. This deposit was not made without a +goodly number of tears and kisses. When Eugenie placed the key +within her bosom she had no courage to forbid the kiss with which +Charles sealed the act.</p> + +<p>"It shall never leave that place, my friend," she said.</p> + +<p>"Then my heart will be always there."</p> + +<p>"Ah! Charles, it is not right," she said, as though she blamed +him.</p> + +<p>"Are we not married?" he said. "I have thy promise,--then take +mine."</p> + +<p>"Thine; I am thine forever!" they each said, repeating the +words twice over.</p> + +<p>No promise made upon this earth was ever purer. The innocent +sincerity of Eugenie had sanctified for a moment the young man's +love.</p> + +<p>On the morrow the breakfast was sad. Nanon herself, in spite +of the gold-embroidered robe and the Jeannette cross bestowed by +Charles, had tears in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"The poor dear monsieur who is going on the seas--oh, may God +guide him!"</p> + +<p>At half-past ten the whole family started to escort Charles to +the diligence for Nantes. Nanon let loose the dog, locked the +door, and insisted on carrying the young man's carpet-bag. All +the tradesmen in the tortuous old street were on the sill of +their shop-doors to watch the procession, which was joined in the +market-place by Maitre Cruchot.</p> + +<p>"Eugenie, be sure you don't cry," said her mother.</p> + +<p>"Nephew," said Grandet, in the doorway of the inn from which +the coach started, kissing Charles on both cheeks, "depart poor, +return rich; you will find the honor of your father safe. I +answer for that myself, I--Grandet; for it will only depend on +you to--"</p> + +<p>"Ah! my uncle, you soften the bitterness of my departure. Is +it not the best gift that you could make me?"</p> + +<p>Not understanding his uncle's words which he had thus +interrupted, Charles shed tears of gratitude upon the tanned +cheeks of the old miser, while Eugenie pressed the hand of her +cousin and that of her father with all her strength. The notary +smiled, admiring the sly speech of the old man, which he alone +had understood. The family stood about the coach until it +started; then as it disappeared upon the bridge, and its rumble +grew fainter in the distance, Grandet said:</p> + +<p>"Good-by to you!"</p> + +<p>Happily no one but Maitre Cruchot heard the exclamation. +Eugenie and her mother had gone to a corner of the quay from +which they could still see the diligence and wave their white +handkerchiefs, to which Charles made answer by displaying +his.</p> + +<p>"Ah! mother, would that I had the power of God for a single +moment," said Eugenie, when she could no longer see her lover's +handkerchief.</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>Not to interrupt the current of events which are about to take +place in the bosom of the Grandet family, it is necessary to cast +a forestalling eye upon the various operations which the goodman +carried on in Paris by means of Monsieur des Grassins. A month +after the latter's departure from Saumur, Grandet, became +possessed of a certificate of a hundred thousand francs a year +from his investment in the Funds, bought at eighty francs net. +The particulars revealed at his death by the inventory of his +property threw no light upon the means which his suspicious +nature took to remit the price of the investment and receive the +certificate thereof. Maitre Cruchot was of opinion that Nanon, +unknown to herself, was the trusty instrument by which the money +was transported; for about this time she was absent five days, +under a pretext of putting things to rights at Froidfond,-- as if +the goodman were capable of leaving anything lying about or out +of order!</p> + +<p>In all that concerned the business of the house of Guillaume +Grandet the old cooper's intentions were fulfilled to the letter. +The Bank of France, as everybody knows, affords exact information +about all the large fortunes in Paris and the provinces. The +names of des Grassins and Felix Grandet of Saumur were well known +there, and they enjoyed the esteem bestowed on financial +celebrities whose wealth comes from immense and unencumbered +territorial possessions. The arrival of the Saumur banker for the +purpose, it was said, of honorably liquidating the affairs of +Grandet of Paris, was enough to avert the shame of protested +notes from the memory of the defunct merchant. The seals on the +property were taken off in presence of the creditors, and the +notary employed by Grandet went to work at once on the inventory +of the assets. Soon after this, des Grassins called a meeting of +the creditors, who unanimously elected him, conjointly with +Francois Keller, the head of a rich banking-house and one of +those principally interested in the affair, as liquidators, with +full power to protect both the honor of the family and the +interests of the claimants. The credit of Grandet of Saumur, the +hopes he diffused by means of des Grassins in the minds of all +concerned, facilitated the transactions. Not a single creditor +proved recalcitrant; no one thought of passing his claim to his +profit-and-loss account; each and all said confidently, "Grandet +of Saumur will pay."</p> + +<p>Six months went by. The Parisians had redeemed the notes in +circulation as they fell due, and held them under lock and key in +their desks. First result aimed at by the old cooper! Nine months +after this preliminary meeting, the two liquidators distributed +forty- seven per cent to each creditor on his claim. This amount +was obtained by the sale of the securities, property, and +possessions of all kinds belonging to the late Guillaume Grandet, +and was paid over with scrupulous fidelity. Unimpeachable +integrity was shown in the transaction. The creditors gratefully +acknowledged the remarkable and incontestable honor displayed by +the Grandets. When these praises had circulated for a certain +length of time, the creditors asked for the rest of their money. +It became necessary to write a collective letter to Grandet of +Saumur.</p> + +<p>"Here it comes!" said the old man as he threw the letter into +the fire. "Patience, my good friends!"</p> + +<p>In answer to the proposals contained in the letter, Grandet of +Saumur demanded that all vouchers for claims against the estate +of his brother should be deposited with a notary, together with +aquittances for the forty-seven per cent already paid; he made +this demand under pretence of sifting the accounts and finding +out the exact condition of the estate. It roused at once a +variety of difficulties. Generally speaking, the creditor is a +species of maniac, ready to agree to anything one day, on the +next breathing fire and slaughter; later on, he grows amicable +and easy-going. To-day his wife is good-humored, his last baby +has cut its first tooth, all is well at home, and he is +determined not to lose a sou; on the morrow it rains, he can't go +out, he is gloomy, he says yes to any proposal that is made to +him, so long as it will put an end to the affair; on the third +day he declares he must have guarantees; by the end of the month +he wants his debtor's head, and becomes at heart an executioner. +The creditor is a good deal like the sparrow on whose tail +confiding children are invited to put salt,--with this +difference, that he applies the image to his claim, the proceeds +of which he is never able to lay hold of. Grandet had studied the +atmospheric variations of creditors, and the creditors of his +brother justified all his calculations. Some were angry, and +flatly refused to give in their vouchers.</p> + +<p>"Very good; so much the better," said Grandet, rubbing his +hands over the letter in which des Grassins announced the +fact.</p> + +<p>Others agreed to the demand, but only on condition that their +rights should be fully guaranteed; they renounced none, and even +reserved the power of ultimately compelling a failure. On this +began a long correspondence, which ended in Grandet of Saumur +agreeing to all conditions. By means of this concession the +placable creditors were able to bring the dissatisfied creditors +to reason. The deposit was then made, but not without sundry +complaints.</p> + +<p>"Your goodman," they said to des Grassins, "is tricking +us."</p> + +<p>Twenty-three months after the death of Guillaume Grandet many +of the creditors, carried away by more pressing business in the +markets of Paris, had forgotten their Grandet claims, or only +thought of them to say:</p> + +<p>"I begin to believe that forty-seven per cent is all I shall +ever get out of that affair."</p> + +<p>The old cooper had calculated on the power of time, which, as +he used to say, is a pretty good devil after all. By the end of +the third year des Grassins wrote to Grandet that he had brought +the creditors to agree to give up their claims for ten per cent +on the two million four hundred thousand francs still due by the +house of Grandet. Grandet answered that the notary and the broker +whose shameful failures had caused the death of his brother were +still living, that they might now have recovered their credit, +and that they ought to be sued, so as to get something out of +them towards lessening the total of the deficit.</p> + +<p>By the end of the fourth year the liabilities were definitely +estimated at a sum of twelve hundred thousand francs. Many +negotiations, lasting over six months, took place between the +creditors and the liquidators, and between the liquidators and +Grandet. To make a long story short, Grandet of Saumur, anxious +by this time to get out of the affair, told the liquidators, +about the ninth month of the fourth year, that his nephew had +made a fortune in the Indies and was disposed to pay his father's +debts in full; he therefore could not take upon himself to make +any settlement without previously consulting him; he had written +to him, and was expecting an answer. The creditors were held in +check until the middle of the fifth year by the words, "payment +in full," which the wily old miser threw out from time to time as +he laughed in his beard, saying with a smile and an oath, "Those +Parisians!"</p> + +<p>But the creditors were reserved for a fate unexampled in the +annals of commerce. When the events of this history bring them +once more into notice, they will be found still in the position +Grandet had resolved to force them into from the first.</p> + +<p>As soon as the Funds reached a hundred and fifteen, Pere +Grandet sold out his interests and withdrew two million four +hundred thousand francs in gold, to which he added, in his +coffers, the six hundred thousand francs compound interest which +he had derived from the capital. Des Grassins now lived in Paris. +In the first place he had been made a deputy; then he became +infatuated (father of a family as he was, though horribly bored +by the provincial life of Saumur) with a pretty actress at the +Theatre de Madame, known as Florine, and he presently relapsed +into the old habits of his army life. It is useless to speak of +his conduct; Saumur considered it profoundly immoral. His wife +was fortunate in the fact of her property being settled upon +herself, and in having sufficient ability to keep up the +banking-house in Saumur, which was managed in her name and +repaired the breach in her fortune caused by the extravagance of +her husband. The Cruchotines made so much talk about the false +position of the quasi-widow that she married her daughter very +badly, and was forced to give up all hope of an alliance between +Eugenie Grandet and her son. Adolphe joined his father in Paris +and became, it was said, a worthless fellow. The Cruchots +triumphed.</p> + +<p>"Your husband hasn't common sense," said Grandet as he lent +Madame des Grassins some money on a note securely endorsed. "I am +very sorry for you, for you are a good little woman."</p> + +<p>"Ah, monsieur," said the poor lady, "who could have believed +that when he left Saumur to go to Paris on your business he was +going to his ruin?"</p> + +<p>"Heaven is my witness, madame, that up to the last moment I +did all I could to prevent him from going. Monsieur le president +was most anxious to take his place; but he was determined to go, +and now we all see why."</p> + +<p>In this way Grandet made it quite plain that he was under no +obligation to des Grassins.</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>In all situations women have more cause for suffering than +men, and they suffer more. Man has strength and the power of +exercising it; he acts, moves, thinks, occupies himself; he looks +ahead, and sees consolation in the future. It was thus with +Charles. But the woman stays at home; she is always face to face +with the grief from which nothing distracts her; she goes down to +the depths of the abyss which yawns before her, measures it, and +often fills it with her tears and prayers. Thus did Eugenie. She +initiated herself into her destiny. To feel, to love, to suffer, +to devote herself,--is not this the sum of woman's life? Eugenie +was to be in all things a woman, except in the one thing that +consoles for all. Her happiness, picked up like nails scattered +on a wall--to use the fine simile of Bossuet--would never so much +as fill even the hollow of her hand. Sorrows are never long in +coming; for her they came soon. The day after Charles's departure +the house of Monsieur Grandet resumed its ordinary aspect in the +eyes of all, except in those of Eugenie, to whom it grew suddenly +empty. She wished, if it could be done unknown to her father, +that Charles's room might be kept as he had left it. Madame +Grandet and Nanon were willing accomplices in this <i>statu +quo</i>.</p> + +<p>"Who knows but he may come back sooner than we think for?" she +said.</p> + +<p>"Ah, don't I wish I could see him back!" answered Nanon. "I +took to him! He was such a dear, sweet young man,--pretty too, +with his curly hair." Eugenie looked at Nanon. "Holy Virgin! +don't look at me that way, mademoiselle; your eyes are like those +of a lost soul."</p> + +<p>From that day the beauty of Mademoiselle Grandet took a new +character. The solemn thoughts of love which slowly filled her +soul, and the dignity of the woman beloved, gave to her features +an illumination such as painters render by a halo. Before the +coming of her cousin, Eugenie might be compared to the Virgin +before the conception; after he had gone, she was like the Virgin +Mother,--she had given birth to love. These two Marys so +different, so well represented by Spanish art, embody one of +those shining symbols with which Christianity abounds.</p> + +<p>Returning from Mass on the morning after Charles's +departure,--having made a vow to hear it daily,--Eugenie bought a +map of the world, which she nailed up beside her looking-glass, +that she might follow her cousin on his westward way, that she +might put herself, were it ever so little, day by day into the +ship that bore him, and see him and ask him a thousand +questions,--"Art thou well? Dost thou suffer? Dost thou think of +me when the star, whose beauty and usefulness thou hast taught me +to know, shines upon thee?" In the mornings she sat pensive +beneath the walnut-tree, on the worm-eaten bench covered with +gray lichens, where they had said to each other so many precious +things, so many trifles, where they had built the pretty castles +of their future home. She thought of the future now as she looked +upward to the bit of sky which was all the high walls suffered +her to see; then she turned her eyes to the angle where the sun +crept on, and to the roof above the room in which he had slept. +Hers was the solitary love, the persistent love, which glides +into every thought and becomes the substance, or, as our fathers +might have said, the tissue of life. When the would-be friends of +Pere Grandet came in the evening for their game at cards, she was +gay and dissimulating; but all the morning she talked of Charles +with her mother and Nanon. Nanon had brought herself to see that +she could pity the sufferings of her young mistress without +failing in her duty to the old master, and she would say to +Eugenie,--</p> + +<p>"If I had a man for myself I'd--I'd follow him to hell, yes, +I'd exterminate myself for him; but I've none. I shall die and +never know what life is. Would you believe, mamz'elle, that old +Cornoiller (a good fellow all the same) is always round my +petticoats for the sake of my money,--just for all the world like +the rats who come smelling after the master's cheese and paying +court to you? I see it all; I've got a shrewd eye, though I am as +big as a steeple. Well, mamz'elle, it pleases me, but it isn't +love."</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>X</h3> + +<p>Two months went by. This domestic life, once so monotonous, +was now quickened with the intense interest of a secret that +bound these women intimately together. For them Charles lived and +moved beneath the grim gray rafters of the hall. Night and +morning Eugenie opened the dressing-case and gazed at the +portrait of her aunt. One Sunday morning her mother surprised her +as she stood absorbed in finding her cousin's features in his +mother's face. Madame Grandet was then for the first time +admitted into the terrible secret of the exchange made by Charles +against her daughter's treasure.</p> + +<p>"You gave him all!" cried the poor mother, terrified. "What +will you say to your father on New Year's Day when he asks to see +your gold?"</p> + +<p>Eugenie's eyes grew fixed, and the two women lived through +mortal terror for more than half the morning. They were so +troubled in mind that they missed high Mass, and only went to the +military service. In three days the year 1819 would come to an +end. In three days a terrible drama would begin, a bourgeois +tragedy, without poison, or dagger, or the spilling of blood; +but--as regards the actors in it-- more cruel than all the fabled +horrors in the family of the Atrides.</p> + +<p>"What will become of us?" said Madame Grandet to her daughter, +letting her knitting fall upon her knees.</p> + +<p>The poor mother had gone through such anxiety for the past two +months that the woollen sleeves which she needed for the coming +winter were not yet finished. This domestic fact, insignificant +as it seems, bore sad results. For want of those sleeves, a chill +seized her in the midst of a sweat caused by a terrible explosion +of anger on the part of her husband.</p> + +<p>"I have been thinking, my poor child, that if you had confided +your secret to me we should have had time to write to Monsieur +des Grassins in Paris. He might have sent us gold pieces like +yours; though Grandet knows them all, perhaps--"</p> + +<p>"Where could we have got the money?"</p> + +<p>"I would have pledged my own property. Besides, Monsieur des +Grassins would have--"</p> + +<p>"It is too late," said Eugenie in a broken, hollow voice. +"To-morrow morning we must go and wish him a happy New Year in +his chamber."</p> + +<p>"But, my daughter, why should I not consult the Cruchots?"</p> + +<p>"No, no; it would be delivering me up to them, and putting +ourselves in their power. Besides, I have chosen my course. I +have done right, I repent of nothing. God will protect me. His +will be done! Ah! mother, if you had read his letter, you, too, +would have thought only of him."</p> + +<p>The next morning, January 1, 1820, the horrible fear to which +mother and daughter were a prey suggested to their minds a +natural excuse by which to escape the solemn entrance into +Grandet's chamber. The winter of 1819-1820 was one of the coldest +of that epoch. The snow encumbered the roofs.</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet called to her husband as soon as she heard him +stirring in his chamber, and said,--</p> + +<p>"Grandet, will you let Nanon light a fire here for me? The +cold is so sharp that I am freezing under the bedclothes. At my +age I need some comforts. Besides," she added, after a slight +pause, "Eugenie shall come and dress here; the poor child might +get an illness from dressing in her cold room in such weather. +Then we will go and wish you a happy New Year beside the fire in +the hall."</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta, what a tongue! a pretty way to begin the new +year, Madame Grandet! You never talked so much before; but you +haven't been sopping your bread in wine, I know that."</p> + +<p>There was a moment's silence.</p> + +<p>"Well," resumed the goodman, who no doubt had some reason of +his own for agreeing to his wife's request, "I'll do what you +ask, Madame Grandet. You are a good woman, and I don't want any +harm to happen to you at your time of life,--though as a general +thing the Bertellieres are as sound as a roach. Hein! isn't that +so?" he added after a pause. "Well, I forgive them; we got their +property in the end." And he coughed.</p> + +<p>"You are very gay this morning, monsieur," said the poor woman +gravely.</p> + +<p>"I'm always gay,--</p> + +<p>"'Gai, gai, gai, le tonnelier, Raccommodez votre cuvier!'"</p> + +<p>he answered, entering his wife's room fully dressed. "Yes, on +my word, it is cold enough to freeze you solid. We shall have a +fine breakfast, wife. Des Grassins has sent me a +pate-de-foie-gras truffled! I am going now to get it at the +coach-office. There'll be a double napoleon for Eugenie in the +package," he whispered in Madame Grandet's ear. "I have no gold +left, wife. I had a few stray pieces--I don't mind telling you +that--but I had to let them go in business."</p> + +<p>Then, by way of celebrating the new year, he kissed her on the +forehead.</p> + +<p>"Eugenie," cried the mother, when Grandet was fairly gone, "I +don't know which side of the bed your father got out of, but he +is good- tempered this morning. Perhaps we shall come out safe +after all?"</p> + +<p>"What's happened to the master?" said Nanon, entering her +mistress's room to light the fire. "First place, he said, +'Good-morning; happy New Year, you big fool! Go and light my +wife's fire, she's cold'; and then, didn't I feel silly when he +held out his hand and gave me a six- franc piece, which isn't +worn one bit? Just look at it, madame! Oh, the kind man! He is a +good man, that's a fact. There are some people who the older they +get the harder they grow; but he,--why he's getting soft and +improving with time, like your ratafia! He is a good, good +man--"</p> + +<p>The secret of Grandet's joy lay in the complete success of his +speculation. Monsieur des Grassins, after deducting the amount +which the old cooper owed him for the discount on a hundred and +fifty thousand francs in Dutch notes, and for the surplus which +he had advanced to make up the sum required for the investment in +the Funds which was to produce a hundred thousand francs a year, +had now sent him, by the diligence, thirty thousand francs in +silver coin, the remainder of his first half-year's interest, +informing him at the same time that the Funds had already gone up +in value. They were then quoted at eighty-nine; the shrewdest +capitalists bought in, towards the last of January, at +ninety-three. Grandet had thus gained in two months twelve per +cent on his capital; he had simplified his accounts, and would in +future receive fifty thousand francs interest every six months, +without incurring any taxes or costs for repairs. He understood +at last what it was to invest money in the public securities,--a +system for which provincials have always shown a marked +repugnance,--and at the end of five years he found himself master +of a capital of six millions, which increased without much effort +of his own, and which, joined to the value and proceeds of his +territorial possessions, gave him a fortune that was absolutely +colossal. The six francs bestowed on Nanon were perhaps the +reward of some great service which the poor servant had rendered +to her master unawares.</p> + +<p>"Oh! oh! where's Pere Grandet going? He has been scurrying +about since sunrise as if to a fire," said the tradespeople to +each other as they opened their shops for the day.</p> + +<p>When they saw him coming back from the wharf, followed by a +porter from the coach-office wheeling a barrow which was laden +with sacks, they all had their comments to make:--</p> + +<p>"Water flows to the river; the old fellow was running after +his gold," said one.</p> + +<p>"He gets it from Paris and Froidfond and Holland," said +another.</p> + +<p>"He'll end by buying up Saumur," cried a third.</p> + +<p>"He doesn't mind the cold, he's so wrapped up in his gains," +said a wife to her husband.</p> + +<p>"Hey! hey! Monsieur Grandet, if that's too heavy for you," +said a cloth-dealer, his nearest neighbor, "I'll take it off your +hands."</p> + +<p>"Heavy?" said the cooper, "I should think so; it's all +sous!"</p> + +<p>"Silver sous," said the porter in a low voice.</p> + +<p>"If you want me to take care of you, keep your tongue between +your teeth," said the goodman to the porter as they reached the +door.</p> + +<p>"The old fox! I thought he was deaf; seems he can hear fast +enough in frosty weather."</p> + +<p>"Here's twenty sous for your New Year, and <i>mum</i>!" said +Grandet. "Be off with you! Nanon shall take back your barrow. +Nanon, are the linnets at church?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, monsieur."</p> + +<p>"Then lend a hand! go to work!" he cried, piling the sacks +upon her. In a few moments all were carried up to his inner room, +where he shut himself in with them. "When breakfast is ready, +knock on the wall," he said as he disappeared. "Take the barrow +back to the coach-office."</p> + +<p>The family did not breakfast that day until ten o'clock.</p> + +<p>"Your father will not ask to see your gold downstairs," said +Madame Grandet as they got back from Mass. "You must pretend to +be very chilly. We may have time to replace the treasure before +your fete- day."</p> + +<p>Grandet came down the staircase thinking of his splendid +speculation in government securities, and wondering how he could +metamorphose his Parisian silver into solid gold; he was making +up his mind to invest in this way everything he could lay hands +on until the Funds should reach a par value. Fatal reverie for +Eugenie! As soon as he came in, the two women wished him a happy +New Year,--his daughter by putting her arms round his neck and +caressing him; Madame Grandet gravely and with dignity.</p> + +<p>"Ha! ha! my child," he said, kissing his daughter on both +cheeks. "I work for you, don't you see? I think of your +happiness. Must have money to be happy. Without money there's not +a particle of happiness. Here! there's a new napoleon for you. I +sent to Paris for it. On my word of honor, it's all the gold I +have; you are the only one that has got any gold. I want to see +your gold, little one."</p> + +<p>"Oh! it is too cold; let us have breakfast," answered +Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"Well, after breakfast, then; it will help the digestion. That +fat des Grassins sent me the pate. Eat as much as you like, my +children, it costs nothing. Des Grassins is getting along very +well. I am satisfied with him. The old fish is doing Charles a +good service, and gratis too. He is making a very good settlement +of that poor deceased Grandet's business. Hoo! hoo!" he muttered, +with his mouth full, after a pause, "how good it is! Eat some, +wife; that will feed you for at least two days."</p> + +<p>"I am not hungry. I am very poorly; you know that."</p> + +<p>"Ah, bah! you can stuff yourself as full as you please without +danger, you're a Bertelliere; they are all hearty. You are a bit +yellow, that's true; but I like yellow, myself."</p> + +<p>The expectation of ignominious and public death is perhaps +less horrible to a condemned criminal than the anticipation of +what was coming after breakfast to Madame Grandet and Eugenie. +The more gleefully the old man talked and ate, the more their +hearts shrank within them. The daughter, however, had an inward +prop at this crisis, --she gathered strength through love.</p> + +<p>"For him! for him!" she cried within her, "I would die a +thousand deaths."</p> + +<p>At this thought, she shot a glance at her mother which flamed +with courage.</p> + +<p>"Clear away," said Grandet to Nanon when, about eleven +o'clock, breakfast was over, "but leave the table. We can spread +your little treasure upon it," he said, looking at Eugenie. +"Little? Faith! no; it isn't little. You possess, in actual +value, five thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine francs and the +forty I gave you just now. That makes six thousand francs, less +one. Well, now see here, little one! I'll give you that one franc +to make up the round number. Hey! what are you listening for, +Nanon? Mind your own business; go and do your work."</p> + +<p>Nanon disappeared.</p> + +<p>"Now listen, Eugenie; you must give me back your gold. You +won't refuse your father, my little girl, hein?"</p> + +<p>The two women were dumb.</p> + +<p>"I have no gold myself. I had some, but it is all gone. I'll +give you in return six thousand francs in <i>livres</i>, and you +are to put them just where I tell you. You mustn't think anything +more about your 'dozen.' When I marry you (which will be soon) I +shall get you a husband who can give you the finest 'dozen' ever +seen in the provinces. Now attend to me, little girl. There's a +fine chance for you; you can put your six thousand francs into +government funds, and you will receive every six months nearly +two hundred francs interest, without taxes, or repairs, or frost, +or hail, or floods, or anything else to swallow up the money. +Perhaps you don't like to part with your gold, hey, my girl? +Never mind, bring it to me all the same. I'll get you some more +like it,--like those Dutch coins and the <i>portugaises</i>, the +rupees of Mogul, and the <i>genovines</i>,--I'll give you some +more on your fete-days, and in three years you'll have got back +half your little treasure. What's that you say? Look up, now. +Come, go and get it, the precious metal. You ought to kiss me on +the eyelids for telling you the secrets and the mysteries of the +life and death of money. Yes, silver and gold live and swarm like +men; they come, and go, and sweat, and multiply--"</p> + +<p>Eugenie rose; but after making a few steps towards the door +she turned abruptly, looked her father in the face, and +said,--</p> + +<p>"I have not got <i>my</i> gold."</p> + +<p>"You have not got your gold!" cried Grandet, starting up +erect, like a horse that hears a cannon fired beside him.</p> + +<p>"No, I have not got it."</p> + +<p>"You are mistaken, Eugenie."</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"By the shears of my father!"</p> + +<p>Whenever the old man swore that oath the rafters trembled.</p> + +<p>"Holy Virgin! Madame is turning pale," cried Nanon.</p> + +<p>"Grandet, your anger will kill me," said the poor mother.</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta! nonsense; you never die in your family! +Eugenie, what have you done with your gold?" he cried, rushing +upon her.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur," said the daughter, falling at Madame Grandet's +knees, "my mother is ill. Look at her; do not kill her."</p> + +<p>Grandet was frightened by the pallor which overspread his +wife's face, usually so yellow.</p> + +<p>"Nanon, help me to bed," said the poor woman in a feeble +voice; "I am dying--"</p> + +<p>Nanon gave her mistress an arm, Eugenie gave her another; but +it was only with infinite difficulty that they could get her +upstairs, she fell with exhaustion at every step. Grandet +remained alone. However, in a few moments he went up six or eight +stairs and called out,--</p> + +<p>"Eugenie, when your mother is in bed, come down."</p> + +<p>"Yes, father."</p> + +<p>She soon came, after reassuring her mother.</p> + +<p>"My daughter," said Grandet, "you will now tell me what you +have done with your gold."</p> + +<p>"My father, if you make me presents of which I am not the sole +mistress, take them back," she answered coldly, picking up the +napoleon from the chimney-piece and offering it to him.</p> + +<p>Grandet seized the coin and slipped it into his breeches' +pocket.</p> + +<p>"I shall certainly never give you anything again. Not so much +as that!" he said, clicking his thumb-nail against a front tooth. +"Do you dare to despise your father? have you no confidence in +him? Don't you know what a father is? If he is nothing for you, +he is nothing at all. Where is your gold?"</p> + +<p>"Father, I love and respect you, in spite of your anger; but I +humbly ask you to remember that I am twenty-three years old. You +have told me often that I have attained my majority, and I do not +forget it. I have used my money as I chose to use it, and you may +be sure that it was put to a good use--"</p> + +<p>"What use?"</p> + +<p>"That is an inviolable secret," she answered. "Have you no +secrets?"</p> + +<p>"I am the head of the family; I have my own affairs."</p> + +<p>"And this is mine."</p> + +<p>"It must be something bad if you can't tell it to your father, +Mademoiselle Grandet."</p> + +<p>"It is good, and I cannot tell it to my father."</p> + +<p>"At least you can tell me when you parted with your gold?"</p> + +<p>Eugenie made a negative motion with her head.</p> + +<p>"You had it on your birthday, hein?"</p> + +<p>She grew as crafty through love as her father was through +avarice, and reiterated the negative sign.</p> + +<p>"Was there ever such obstinacy! It's a theft," cried Grandet, +his voice going up in a crescendo which gradually echoed through +the house. "What! here, in my own home, under my very eyes, +somebody has taken your gold!--the only gold we have!--and I'm +not to know who has got it! Gold is a precious thing. Virtuous +girls go wrong sometimes, and give--I don't know what; they do it +among the great people, and even among the bourgeoisie. But give +their gold!--for you have given it to some one, hein?--"</p> + +<p>Eugenie was silent and impassive.</p> + +<p>"Was there ever such a daughter? Is it possible that I am your +father? If you have invested it anywhere, you must have a +receipt--"</p> + +<p>"Was I free--yes or no--to do what I would with my own? Was it +not mine?"</p> + +<p>"You are a child."</p> + +<p>"Of age."</p> + +<p>Dumbfounded by his daughter's logic, Grandet turned pale and +stamped and swore. When at last he found words, he cried: +"Serpent! Cursed girl! Ah, deceitful creature! You know I love +you, and you take advantage of it. She'd cut her father's throat! +Good God! you've given our fortune to that ne'er-do-well,--that +dandy with morocco boots! By the shears of my father! I can't +disinherit you, but I curse you,--you and your cousin and your +children! Nothing good will come of it! Do you hear? If it was to +Charles--but, no; it's impossible. What! has that wretched fellow +robbed me?--"</p> + +<p>He looked at his daughter, who continued cold and silent.</p> + +<p>"She won't stir; she won't flinch! She's more Grandet than I'm +Grandet! Ha! you have not given your gold for nothing? Come, +speak the truth!"</p> + +<p>Eugenie looked at her father with a sarcastic expression that +stung him.</p> + +<p>"Eugenie, you are here, in my house,--in your father's house. +If you wish to stay here, you must submit yourself to me. The +priests tell you to obey me." Eugenie bowed her head. "You +affront me in all I hold most dear. I will not see you again +until you submit. Go to your chamber. You will stay there till I +give you permission to leave it. Nanon will bring you bread and +water. You hear me--go!"</p> + +<p>Eugenie burst into tears and fled up to her mother. Grandet, +after marching two or three times round the garden in the snow +without heeding the cold, suddenly suspected that his daughter +had gone to her mother; only too happy to find her disobedient to +his orders, he climbed the stairs with the agility of a cat and +appeared in Madame Grandet's room just as she was stroking +Eugenie's hair, while the girl's face was hidden in her motherly +bosom.</p> + +<p>"Be comforted, my poor child," she was saying; "your father +will get over it."</p> + +<p>"She has no father!" said the old man. "Can it be you and I, +Madame Grandet, who have given birth to such a disobedient child? +A fine education,--religious, too! Well! why are you not in your +chamber? Come, to prison, to prison, mademoiselle!"</p> + +<p>"Would you deprive me of my daughter, monsieur?" said Madame +Grandet, turning towards him a face that was now red with +fever.</p> + +<p>"If you want to keep her, carry her off! Clear out--out of my +house, both of you! Thunder! where is the gold? what's become of +the gold?"</p> + +<p>Eugenie rose, looked proudly at her father, and withdrew to +her room. Grandet turned the key of the door.</p> + +<p>"Nanon," he cried, "put out the fire in the hall."</p> + +<p>Then he sat down in an armchair beside his wife's fire and +said to her,--</p> + +<p>"Undoubtedly she has given the gold to that miserable seducer, +Charles, who only wanted our money."</p> + +<p>"I knew nothing about it," she answered, turning to the other +side of the bed, that she might escape the savage glances of her +husband. "I suffer so much from your violence that I shall never +leave this room, if I trust my own presentiments, till I am +carried out of it in my coffin. You ought to have spared me this +suffering, monsieur,--you, to whom I have caused no pain; that +is, I think so. Your daughter loves you. I believe her to be as +innocent as the babe unborn. Do not make her wretched. Revoke +your sentence. The cold is very severe; you may give her some +serious illness."</p> + +<p>"I will not see her, neither will I speak to her. She shall +stay in her room, on bread and water, until she submits to her +father. What the devil! shouldn't a father know where the gold in +his house has gone to? She owned the only rupees in France, +perhaps, and the Dutch ducats and the <i>genovines</i>--"</p> + +<p>"Monsieur, Eugenie is our only child; and even if she had +thrown them into the water--"</p> + +<p>"Into the water!" cried her husband; "into the water! You are +crazy, Madame Grandet! What I have said is said; you know that +well enough. If you want peace in this household, make your +daughter confess, pump it out of her. Women understand how to do +that better than we do. Whatever she has done, I sha'n't eat her. +Is she afraid of me? Even if she has plastered Charles with gold +from head to foot, he is on the high seas, and nobody can get at +him, hein!"</p> + +<p>"But, monsieur--" Excited by the nervous crisis through which +she had passed, and by the fate of her daughter, which brought +forth all her tenderness and all her powers of mind, Madame +Grandet suddenly observed a frightful movement of her husband's +wen, and, in the very act of replying, she changed her speech +without changing the tones of her voice,--"But, monsieur, I have +not more influence over her than you have. She has said nothing +to me; she takes after you."</p> + +<p>"Tut, tut! Your tongue is hung in the middle this morning. Ta, +ta, ta, ta! You are setting me at defiance, I do believe. I +daresay you are in league with her."</p> + +<p>He looked fixedly at his wife.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur Grandet, if you wish to kill me, you have only to go +on like this. I tell you, monsieur,--and if it were to cost me my +life, I would say it,--you do wrong by your daughter; she is more +in the right than you are. That money belonged to her; she is +incapable of making any but a good use of it, and God alone has +the right to know our good deeds. Monsieur, I implore you, take +Eugenie back into favor; forgive her. If you will do this you +will lessen the injury your anger has done me; perhaps you will +save my life. My daughter! oh, monsieur, give me back my +daughter!"</p> + +<p>"I shall decamp," he said; "the house is not habitable. A +mother and daughter talking and arguing like that! Broooouh! +Pouah! A fine New Year's present you've made me, Eugenie," he +called out. "Yes, yes, cry away! What you've done will bring you +remorse, do you hear? What's the good of taking the sacrament six +times every three months, if you give away your father's gold +secretly to an idle fellow who'll eat your heart out when you've +nothing else to give him? You'll find out some day what your +Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and supercilious airs. +He has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to carry off a +young girl's treasure without the consent of her parents."</p> + +<p>When the street-door was shut, Eugenie came out of her room +and went to her mother.</p> + +<p>"What courage you have had for your daughter's sake!" she +said.</p> + +<p>"Ah! my child, see where forbidden things may lead us. You +forced me to tell a lie."</p> + +<p>"I will ask God to punish only me."</p> + +<p>"Is it true," cried Nanon, rushing in alarmed, "that +mademoiselle is to be kept on bread and water for the rest of her +life?"</p> + +<p>"What does that signify, Nanon?" said Eugenie tranquilly.</p> + +<p>"Goodness! do you suppose I'll eat <i>frippe</i> when the +daughter of the house is eating dry bread? No, no!"</p> + +<p>"Don't say a word about all this, Nanon," said Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"I'll be as mute as a fish; but you'll see!"</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>Grandet dined alone for the first time in twenty-four +years.</p> + +<p>"So you're a widower, monsieur," said Nanon; "it must be +disagreeable to be a widower with two women in the house."</p> + +<p>"I did not speak to you. Hold your jaw, or I'll turn you off! +What is that I hear boiling in your saucepan on the stove?"</p> + +<p>"It is grease I'm trying out."</p> + +<p>"There will be some company to-night. Light the fire."</p> + +<p>The Cruchots, Madame des Grassins, and her son arrived at the +usual hour of eight, and were surprised to see neither Madame +Grandet nor her daughter.</p> + +<p>"My wife is not very well, and Eugenie is with her," said the +old wine-grower, whose face betrayed no emotion.</p> + +<p>At the end of an hour spent in idle conversation, Madame des +Grassins, who had gone up to see Madame Grandet, came down, and +every one inquired,--</p> + +<p>"How is Madame Grandet?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all well," she answered; "her condition seems to me +really alarming. At her age you ought to take every precaution, +Papa Grandet."</p> + +<p>"We'll see about it," said the old man in an absent way.</p> + +<p>They all wished him good-night. When the Cruchots got into the +street Madame des Grassins said to them,--</p> + +<p>"There is something going on at the Grandets. The mother is +very ill without her knowing it. The girl's eyes are red, as if +she had been crying all day. Can they be trying to marry her +against her will?"</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>When Grandet had gone to bed Nanon came softly to Eugenie's +room in her stockinged feet and showed her a pate baked in a +saucepan.</p> + +<p>"See, mademoiselle," said the good soul, "Cornoiller gave me a +hare. You eat so little that this pate will last you full a week; +in such frosty weather it won't spoil. You sha'n't live on dry +bread, I'm determined; it isn't wholesome."</p> + +<p>"Poor Nanon!" said Eugenie, pressing her hand.</p> + +<p>"I've made it downright good and dainty, and <i>he</i> never +found it out. I bought the lard and the spices out of my six +francs: I'm the mistress of my own money"; and she disappeared +rapidly, fancying she</p> + +<p>heard Grandet.</p> + +<h3>XI</h3> + +<p>For several months the old wine-grower came constantly to his +wife's room at all hours of the day, without ever uttering his +daughter's name, or seeing her, or making the smallest allusion +to her. Madame Grandet did not leave her chamber, and daily grew +worse. Nothing softened the old man; he remained unmoved, harsh, +and cold as a granite rock. He continued to go and come about his +business as usual; but ceased to stutter, talked less, and was +more obdurate in business transactions than ever before. Often he +made mistakes in adding up his figures.</p> + +<p>"Something is going on at the Grandets," said the Grassinists +and the Cruchotines.</p> + +<p>"What has happened in the Grandet family?" became a fixed +question which everybody asked everybody else at the little +evening-parties of Saumur. Eugenie went to Mass escorted by +Nanon. If Madame des Grassins said a few words to her on coming +out of church, she answered in an evasive manner, without +satisfying any curiosity. However, at the end of two months, it +became impossible to hide, either from the three Cruchots or from +Madame des Grassins, the fact that Eugenie was in confinement. +There came a moment when all pretexts failed to explain her +perpetual absence. Then, though it was impossible to discover by +whom the secret had been betrayed, all the town became aware that +ever since New Year's day Mademoiselle Grandet had been kept in +her room without fire, on bread and water, by her father's +orders, and that Nanon cooked little dainties and took them to +her secretly at night. It was even known that the young woman was +not able to see or take care of her mother, except at certain +times when her father was out of the house.</p> + +<p>Grandet's conduct was severely condemned. The whole town +outlawed him, so to speak; they remembered his treachery, his +hard-heartedness, and they excommunicated him. When he passed +along the streets, people pointed him out and muttered at him. +When his daughter came down the winding street, accompanied by +Nanon, on her way to Mass or Vespers, the inhabitants ran to the +windows and examined with intense curiosity the bearing of the +rich heiress and her countenance, which bore the impress of +angelic gentleness and melancholy. Her imprisonment and the +condemnation of her father were as nothing to her. Had she not a +map of the world, the little bench, the garden, the angle of the +wall? Did she not taste upon her lips the honey that love's +kisses left there? She was ignorant for a time that the town +talked about her, just as Grandet himself was ignorant of it. +Pious and pure in heart before God, her conscience and her love +helped her to suffer patiently the wrath and vengeance of her +father.</p> + +<p>One deep grief silenced all others. Her mother, that gentle, +tender creature, made beautiful by the light which shone from the +inner to the outer as she approached the tomb,--her mother was +perishing from day to day. Eugenie often reproached herself as +the innocent cause of the slow, cruel malady that was wasting her +away. This remorse, though her mother soothed it, bound her still +closer to her love. Every morning, as soon as her father left the +house, she went to the bedside of her mother, and there Nanon +brought her breakfast. The poor girl, sad, and suffering through +the sufferings of her mother, would turn her face to the old +servant with a mute gesture, weeping, and yet not daring to speak +of her cousin. It was Madame Grandet who first found courage to +say,--</p> + +<p>"Where is <i>he</i>? Why does <i>he</i> not write?"</p> + +<p>"Let us think about him, mother, but not speak of him. You are +ill-- you, before all."</p> + +<p>"All" meant "him."</p> + +<p>"My child," said Madame Grandet, "I do not wish to live. God +protects me and enables me to look with joy to the end of my +misery."</p> + +<p>Every utterance of this woman was unfalteringly pious and +Christian. Sometimes, during the first months of the year, when +her husband came to breakfast with her and tramped up and down +the room, she would say to him a few religious words, always +spoken with angelic sweetness, yet with the firmness of a woman +to whom approaching death lends a courage she had lacked in +life.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur, I thank you for the interest you take in my +health," she would answer when he made some commonplace inquiry; +"but if you really desire to render my last moments less bitter +and to ease my grief, take back your daughter: be a Christian, a +husband, and a father."</p> + +<p>When he heard these words, Grandet would sit down by the bed +with the air of a man who sees the rain coming and quietly gets +under the shelter of a gateway till it is over. When these +touching, tender, and religious supplications had all been made, +he would say,--</p> + +<p>"You are rather pale to-day, my poor wife."</p> + +<p>Absolute forgetfulness of his daughter seemed graven on his +stony brow, on his closed lips. He was unmoved by the tears which +flowed down the white cheeks of his unhappy wife as she listened +to his meaningless answers.</p> + +<p>"May God pardon you," she said, "even as I pardon you! You +will some day stand in need of mercy."</p> + +<p>Since Madame Grandet's illness he had not dared to make use of +his terrible "Ta, ta, ta, ta!" Yet, for all that, his despotic +nature was not disarmed by this angel of gentleness, whose +ugliness day by day decreased, driven out by the ineffable +expression of moral qualities which shone upon her face. She was +all soul. The spirit of prayer seemed to purify her and refine +those homely features and make them luminous. Who has not seen +the phenomenon of a like transfiguration on sacred faces where +the habits of the soul have triumphed over the plainest features, +giving them that spiritual illumination whose light comes from +the purity and nobility of the inward thought? The spectacle of +this transformation wrought by the struggle which consumed the +last shreds of the human life of this woman, did somewhat affect +the old cooper, though feebly, for his nature was of iron; if his +language ceased to be contemptuous, an imperturbable silence, +which saved his dignity as master of the household, took its +place and ruled his conduct.</p> + +<p>When the faithful Nanon appeared in the market, many quips and +quirks and complaints about the master whistled in her ears; but +however loudly public opinion condemned Monsieur Grandet, the old +servant defended him, for the honor of the family.</p> + +<p>"Well!" she would say to his detractors, "don't we all get +hard as we grow old? Why shouldn't he get horny too? Stop telling +lies. Mademoiselle lives like a queen. She's alone, that's true; +but she likes it. Besides, my masters have good reasons."</p> + +<p>At last, towards the end of spring, Madame Grandet, worn out +by grief even more than by illness, having failed, in spite of +her prayers, to reconcile the father and daughter, confided her +secret troubles to the Cruchots.</p> + +<p>"Keep a girl of twenty-three on bread and water!" cried +Monsieur de Bonfons; "without any reason, too! Why, that +constitutes wrongful cruelty; she can contest, as much in as +upon--"</p> + +<p>"Come, nephew, spare us your legal jargon," said the notary. +"Set your mind at ease, madame; I will put a stop to such +treatment to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Eugenie, hearing herself mentioned, came out of her room.</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen," she said, coming forward with a proud step, "I +beg you not to interfere in this matter. My father is master in +his own house. As long as I live under his roof I am bound to +obey him. His conduct is not subject to the approbation or the +disapprobation of the world; he is accountable to God only. I +appeal to your friendship to keep total silence in this affair. +To blame my father is to attack our family honor. I am much +obliged to you for the interest you have shown in me; you will do +me an additional service if you will put a stop to the offensive +rumors which are current in the town, of which I am accidentally +informed."</p> + +<p>"She is right," said Madame Grandet.</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle, the best way to stop such rumors is to procure +your liberty," answered the old notary respectfully, struck with +the beauty which seclusion, melancholy, and love had stamped upon +her face.</p> + +<p>"Well, my daughter, let Monsieur Cruchot manage the matter if +he is so sure of success. He understands your father, and how to +manage him. If you wish to see me happy for my few remaining +days, you must, at any cost, be reconciled to your father."</p> + +<p>On the morrow Grandet, in pursuance of a custom he had begun +since Eugenie's imprisonment, took a certain number of turns up +and down the little garden; he had chosen the hour when Eugenie +brushed and arranged her hair. When the old man reached the +walnut-tree he hid behind its trunk and remained for a few +moments watching his daughter's movements, hesitating, perhaps, +between the course to which the obstinacy of his character +impelled him and his natural desire to embrace his child. +Sometimes he sat down on the rotten old bench where Charles and +Eugenie had vowed eternal love; and then she, too, looked at her +father secretly in the mirror before which she stood. If he rose +and continued his walk, she sat down obligingly at the window and +looked at the angle of the wall where the pale flowers hung, +where the Venus-hair grew from the crevices with the bindweed and +the sedum,--a white or yellow stone-crop very abundant in the +vineyards of Saumur and at Tours. Maitre Cruchot came early, and +found the old wine-grower sitting in the fine June weather on the +little bench, his back against the division wall of the garden, +engaged in watching his daughter.</p> + +<p>"What may you want, Maitre Cruchot?" he said, perceiving the +notary.</p> + +<p>"I came to speak to you on business."</p> + +<p>"Ah! ah! have you brought some gold in exchange for my +silver?"</p> + +<p>"No, no, I have not come about money; it is about your +daughter Eugenie. All the town is talking of her and you."</p> + +<p>"What does the town meddle for? A man's house is his +castle."</p> + +<p>"Very true; and a man may kill himself if he likes, or, what +is worse, he may fling his money into the gutter."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Why, your wife is very ill, my friend. You ought to consult +Monsieur Bergerin; she is likely to die. If she does die without +receiving proper care, you will not be very easy in mind, I take +it."</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta! you know a deal about my wife! These doctors, +if they once get their foot in your house, will come five and six +times a day."</p> + +<p>"Of course you will do as you think best. We are old friends; +there is no one in all Saumur who takes more interest than I in +what concerns you. Therefore, I was bound to tell you this. +However, happen what may, you have the right to do as you please; +you can choose your own course. Besides, that is not what brings +me here. There is another thing which may have serious results +for you. After all, you can't wish to kill your wife; her life is +too important to you. Think of your situation in connection with +your daughter if Madame Grandet dies. You must render an account +to Eugenie, because you enjoy your wife's estate only during her +lifetime. At her death your daughter can claim a division of +property, and she may force you to sell Froidfond. In short, she +is her mother's heir, and you are not."</p> + +<p>These words fell like a thunderbolt on the old man, who was +not as wise about law as he was about business. He had never +thought of a legal division of the estate.</p> + +<p>"Therefore I advise you to treat her kindly," added Cruchot, +in conclusion.</p> + +<p>"But do you know what she has done, Cruchot?"</p> + +<p>"What?" asked the notary, curious to hear the truth and find +out the cause of the quarrel.</p> + +<p>"She has given away her gold!"</p> + +<p>"Well, wasn't it hers?" said the notary.</p> + +<p>"They all tell me that!" exclaimed the old man, letting his +arms fall to his sides with a movement that was truly tragic.</p> + +<p>"Are you going--for a mere nothing,"--resumed Cruchot, "to put +obstacles in the way of the concessions which you will be obliged +to ask from your daughter as soon as her mother dies?"</p> + +<p>"Do you call six thousand francs a mere nothing?"</p> + +<p>"Hey! my old friend, do you know what the inventory of your +wife's property will cost, if Eugenie demands the division?"</p> + +<p>"How much?"</p> + +<p>"Two, three, four thousand francs, perhaps! The property would +have to be put up at auction and sold, to get at its actual +value. Instead of that, if you are on good terms with--"</p> + +<p>"By the shears of my father!" cried Grandet, turning pale as +he suddenly sat down, "we will see about it, Cruchot."</p> + +<p>After a moment's silence, full of anguish perhaps, the old man +looked at the notary and said,--</p> + +<p>"Life is very hard! It has many griefs! Cruchot," he continued +solemnly, "you would not deceive me? Swear to me upon your honor +that all you've told me is legally true. Show me the law; I must +see the law!"</p> + +<p>"My poor friend," said the notary, "don't I know my own +business?"</p> + +<p>"Then it is true! I am robbed, betrayed, killed, destroyed by +my own daughter!"</p> + +<p>"It is true that your daughter is her mother's heir."</p> + +<p>"Why do we have children? Ah! my wife, I love her! Luckily +she's sound and healthy; she's a Bertelliere."</p> + +<p>"She has not a month to live."</p> + +<p>Grandet struck his forehead, went a few steps, came back, cast +a dreadful look on Cruchot, and said,--</p> + +<p>"What can be done?"</p> + +<p>"Eugenie can relinquish her claim to her mother's property. +Should she do this you would not disinherit her, I presume?--but +if you want to come to such a settlement, you must not treat her +harshly. What I am telling you, old man, is against my own +interests. What do I live by, if it isn't liquidations, +inventories, conveyances, divisions of property?--"</p> + +<p>"We'll see, we'll see! Don't let's talk any more about it, +Cruchot; it wrings my vitals. Have you received any gold?"</p> + +<p>"No; but I have a few old louis, a dozen or so, which you may +have. My good friend, make it up with Eugenie. Don't you know all +Saumur is pelting you with stones?"</p> + +<p>"The scoundrels!"</p> + +<p>"Come, the Funds are at ninety-nine. Do be satisfied for once +in your life."</p> + +<p>"At ninety-nine! Are they, Cruchot?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Hey, hey! Ninety-nine!" repeated the old man, accompanying +the notary to the street-door. Then, too agitated by what he had +just heard to stay in the house, he went up to his wife's room +and said,--</p> + +<p>"Come, mother, you may have your daughter to spend the day +with you. I'm going to Froidfond. Enjoy yourselves, both of you. +This is our wedding-day, wife. See! here are sixty francs for +your altar at the Fete-Dieu; you've wanted one for a long time. +Come, cheer up, enjoy yourself, and get well! Hurrah for +happiness!"</p> + +<p>He threw ten silver pieces of six francs each upon the bed, +and took his wife's head between his hands and kissed her +forehead.</p> + +<p>"My good wife, you are getting well, are not you?"</p> + +<p>"How can you think of receiving the God of mercy in your house +when you refuse to forgive your daughter?" she said with +emotion.</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" said Grandet in a coaxing voice. "We'll see +about that."</p> + +<p>"Merciful heaven! Eugenie," cried the mother, flushing with +joy, "come and kiss your father; he forgives you!"</p> + +<p>But the old man had disappeared. He was going as fast as his +legs could carry him towards his vineyards, trying to get his +confused ideas into order. Grandet had entered his seventy-sixth +year. During the last two years his avarice had increased upon +him, as all the persistent passions of men increase at a certain +age. As if to illustrate an observation which applies equally to +misers, ambitious men, and others whose lives are controlled by +any dominant idea, his affections had fastened upon one special +symbol of his passion. The sight of gold, the possession of gold, +had become a monomania. His despotic spirit had grown in +proportion to his avarice, and to part with the control of the +smallest fraction of his property at the death of his wife seemed +to him a thing "against nature." To declare his fortune to his +daughter, to give an inventory of his property, landed and +personal, for the purposes of division--</p> + +<p>"Why," he cried aloud in the midst of a field where he was +pretending to examine a vine, "it would be cutting my +throat!"</p> + +<p>He came at last to a decision, and returned to Saumur in time +for dinner, resolved to unbend to Eugenie, and pet and coax her, +that he might die regally, holding the reins of his millions in +his own hands so long as the breath was in his body. At the +moment when the old man, who chanced to have his pass-key in his +pocket, opened the door and climbed with a stealthy step up the +stairway to go into his wife's room, Eugenie had brought the +beautiful dressing-case from the oak cabinet and placed it on her +mother's bed. Mother and daughter, in Grandet's absence, allowed +themselves the pleasure of looking for a likeness to Charles in +the portrait of his mother.</p> + +<p>"It is exactly his forehead and his mouth," Eugenie was saying +as the old man opened the door. At the look which her husband +cast upon the gold, Madame Grandet cried out,--</p> + +<p>"O God, have pity upon us!"</p> + +<p>The old man sprang upon the box as a famished tiger might +spring upon a sleeping child.</p> + +<p>"What's this?" he said, snatching the treasure and carrying it +to the window. "Gold, good gold!" he cried. "All gold,--it weighs +two pounds! Ha, ha! Charles gave you that for your money, did he? +Hein! Why didn't you tell me so? It was a good bargain, little +one! Yes, you are my daughter, I see that--" Eugenie trembled in +every limb. "This came from Charles, of course, didn't it?" +continued the old man.</p> + +<p>"Yes, father; it is not mine. It is a sacred trust."</p> + +<p>"Ta, ta, ta, ta! He took your fortune, and now you can get it +back."</p> + +<p>"Father!"</p> + +<p>Grandet took his knife to pry out some of the gold; to do +this, he placed the dressing-case on a chair. Eugenie sprang +forward to recover it; but her father, who had his eye on her and +on the treasure too, pushed her back so violently with a thrust +of his arm that she fell upon her mother's bed.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur, monsieur!" cried the mother, lifting herself +up.</p> + +<p>Grandet had opened his knife, and was about to apply it to the +gold.</p> + +<p>"Father!" cried Eugenie, falling on her knees and dragging +herself close to him with clasped hands, "father, in the name of +all the saints and the Virgin! in the name of Christ who died +upon the cross! in the name of your eternal salvation, father! +for my life's sake, father!--do not touch that! It is neither +yours nor mine. It is a trust placed in my hands by an unhappy +relation: I must give it back to him uninjured!"</p> + +<p>"If it is a trust, why were you looking at it? To look at it +is as bad as touching it."</p> + +<p>"Father, don't destroy it, or you will disgrace me! Father, do +you hear?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, have pity!" said the mother.</p> + +<p>"Father!" cried Eugenie in so startling a voice that Nanon ran +upstairs terrified. Eugenie sprang upon a knife that was close at +hand.</p> + +<p>"Well, what now?" said Grandet coldly, with a callous +smile.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you are killing me!" said the mother.</p> + +<p>"Father, if your knife so much as cuts a fragment of that +gold, I will stab myself with this one! You have already driven +my mother to her death; you will now kill your child! Do as you +choose! Wound for wound!"</p> + +<p>Grandet held his knife over the dressing-case and hesitated as +he looked at his daughter.</p> + +<p>"Are you capable of doing it, Eugenie?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes!" said the mother.</p> + +<p>"She'll do it if she says so!" cried Nanon. "Be reasonable, +monsieur, for once in your life."</p> + +<p>The old man looked at the gold and then at his daughter +alternately for an instant. Madame Grandet fainted.</p> + +<p>"There! don't you see, monsieur, that madame is dying?" cried +Nanon.</p> + +<p>"Come, come, my daughter, we won't quarrel for a box! Here, +take it!" he cried hastily, flinging the case upon the bed. +"Nanon, go and fetch Monsieur Bergerin! Come, mother," said he, +kissing his wife's hand, "it's all over! There! we've made +up--haven't we, little one? No more dry bread; you shall have all +you want--Ah, she opens her eyes! Well, mother, little mother, +come! See, I'm kissing Eugenie! She loves her cousin, and she may +marry him if she wants to; she may keep his case. But don't die, +mother; live a long time yet, my poor wife! Come, try to move! +Listen! you shall have the finest altar that ever was made in +Saumur."</p> + +<p>"Oh, how can you treat your wife and daughter so!" said Madame +Grandet in a feeble voice.</p> + +<p>"I won't do so again, never again," cried her husband; "you +shall see, my poor wife!" He went to his inner room and returned +with a handful of louis, which he scattered on the bed. "Here, +Eugenie! see, wife! all these are for you," he said, fingering +the coins. "Come, be happy, wife! feel better, get well; you +sha'n't want for anything, nor Eugenie either. Here's a hundred +<i>louis d'or</i> for her. You won't give these away, will you, +Eugenie, hein?"</p> + +<p>Madame Grandet and her daughter looked at each other in +astonishment.</p> + +<p>"Take back your money, father; we ask for nothing but your +affection."</p> + +<p>"Well, well, that's right!" he said, pocketing the coins; +"let's be good friends! We will all go down to dinner to-day, and +we'll play loto every evening for two sous. You shall both be +happy. Hey, wife?"</p> + +<p>"Alas! I wish I could, if it would give you pleasure," said +the dying woman; "but I cannot rise from my bed."</p> + +<p>"Poor mother," said Grandet, "you don't know how I love you! +and you too, my daughter!" He took her in his arms and kissed +her. "Oh, how good it is to kiss a daughter when we have been +angry with her! There, mother, don't you see it's all over now? +Go and put that away, Eugenie," he added, pointing to the case. +"Go, don't be afraid! I shall never speak of it again, +never!"</p> + +<p>Monsieur Bergerin, the celebrated doctor of Saumur, presently +arrived. After an examination, he told Grandet positively that +his wife was very ill; but that perfect peace of mind, a generous +diet, and great care might prolong her life until the autumn.</p> + +<p>"Will all that cost much?" said the old man. "Will she need +medicines?"</p> + +<p>"Not much medicine, but a great deal of care," answered the +doctor, who could scarcely restrain a smile.</p> + +<p>"Now, Monsieur Bergerin," said Grandet, "you are a man of +honor, are not you? I trust to you! Come and see my wife how and +when you think necessary. Save my good wife! I love her,--don't +you see?--though I never talk about it; I keep things to myself. +I'm full of trouble. Troubles began when my brother died; I have +to spend enormous sums on his affairs in Paris. Why, I'm paying +through my nose; there's no end to it. Adieu, monsieur! If you +can save my wife, save her. I'll spare no expense, not even if it +costs me a hundred or two hundred francs."</p> + +<p>In spite of Grandet's fervent wishes for the health of his +wife, whose death threatened more than death to him; in spite of +the consideration he now showed on all occasions for the least +wish of his astonished wife and daughter; in spite of the tender +care which Eugenie lavished upon her mother,--Madame Grandet +rapidly approached her end. Every day she grew weaker and wasted +visibly, as women of her age when attacked by serious illness are +wont to do. She was fragile as the foliage in autumn; the +radiance of heaven shone through her as the sun strikes athwart +the withering leaves and gilds them. It was a death worthy of her +life,--a Christian death; and is not that sublime? In the month +of October, 1822, her virtues, her angelic patience, her love for +her daughter, seemed to find special expression; and then she +passed away without a murmur. Lamb without spot, she went to +heaven, regretting only the sweet companion of her cold and +dreary life, for whom her last glance seemed to prophesy a +destiny of sorrows. She shrank from leaving her ewe-lamb, white +as herself, alone in the midst of a selfish world that sought to +strip her of her fleece and grasp her treasures.</p> + +<p>"My child," she said as she expired, "there is no happiness +except in heaven; you will know it some day."</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>XII</h3> + +<p>On the morrow of this death Eugenie felt a new motive for +attachment to the house in which she was born, where she had +suffered so much, where her mother had just died. She could not +see the window and the chair on its castors without weeping. She +thought she had mistaken the heart of her old father when she +found herself the object of his tenderest cares. He came in the +morning and gave her his arm to take her to breakfast; he looked +at her for hours together with an eye that was almost kind; he +brooded over her as though she had been gold. The old man was so +unlike himself, he trembled so often before his daughter, that +Nanon and the Cruchotines, who witnessed his weakness, attributed +it to his great age, and feared that his faculties were giving +away. But the day on which the family put on their mourning, and +after dinner, to which meal Maitre Cruchot (the only person who +knew his secret) had been invited, the conduct of the old miser +was explained.</p> + +<p>"My dear child," he said to Eugenie when the table had been +cleared and the doors carefully shut, "you are now your mother's +heiress, and we have a few little matters to settle between us. +Isn't that so, Cruchot?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Is it necessary to talk of them to-day, father?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, little one; I can't bear the uncertainty in which +I'm placed. I think you don't want to give me pain?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! father--"</p> + +<p>"Well, then! let us settle it all to-night."</p> + +<p>"What is it you wish me to do?"</p> + +<p>"My little girl, it is not for me to say. Tell her, +Cruchot."</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle, your father does not wish to divide the +property, nor sell the estate, nor pay enormous taxes on the +ready money which he may possess. Therefore, to avoid all this, +he must be released from making the inventory of his whole +fortune, part of which you inherit from your mother, and which is +now undivided between you and your father--"</p> + +<p>"Cruchot, are you quite sure of what you are saying before you +tell it to a mere child?"</p> + +<p>"Let me tell it my own way, Grandet."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, my friend. Neither you nor my daughter wish to rob +me,--do you, little one?"</p> + +<p>"But, Monsieur Cruchot, what am I to do?" said Eugenie +impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Well," said the notary, "it is necessary to sign this deed, +by which you renounce your rights to your mother's estate and +leave your father the use and disposition, during his lifetime, +of all the property undivided between you, of which he guarantees +you the capital."</p> + +<p>"I do not understand a word of what you are saying," returned +Eugenie; "give me the deed, and show me where I am to sign +it."</p> + +<p>Pere Grandet looked alternately at the deed and at his +daughter, at his daughter and at the deed, undergoing as he did +so such violent emotion that he wiped the sweat from his +brow.</p> + +<p>"My little girl," he said, "if, instead of signing this deed, +which will cost a great deal to record, you would simply agree to +renounce your rights as heir to your poor dear, deceased mother's +property, and would trust to me for the future, I should like it +better. In that case I will pay you monthly the good round sum of +a hundred francs. See, now, you could pay for as many masses as +you want for anybody-- Hein! a hundred francs a month--in +<i>livres</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I will do all you wish, father."</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle," said the notary, "it is my duty to point out +to you that you are despoiling yourself without guarantee--"</p> + +<p>"Good heavens! what is all that to me?"</p> + +<p>"Hold your tongue, Cruchot! It's settled, all settled," cried +Grandet, taking his daughter's hand and striking it with his own. +"Eugenie, you won't go back on your word?--you are an honest +girl, hein?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! father!--"</p> + +<p>He kissed her effusively, and pressed her in his arms till he +almost choked her.</p> + +<p>"Go, my good child, you restore your father's life; but you +only return to him that which he gave you: we are quits. This is +how business should be done. Life is a business. I bless you! you +are a virtuous girl, and you love your father. Do just what you +like in future. To-morrow, Cruchot," he added, looking at the +horrified notary, "you will see about preparing the deed of +relinquishment, and then enter it on the records of the +court."</p> + +<p>The next morning Eugenie signed the papers by which she +herself completed her spoliation. At the end of the first year, +however, in spite of his bargain, the old man had not given his +daughter one sou of the hundred francs he had so solemnly pledged +to her. When Eugenie pleasantly reminded him of this, he could +not help coloring, and went hastily to his secret hiding-place, +from whence he brought down about a third of the jewels he had +taken from his nephew, and gave them to her.</p> + +<p>"There, little one," he said in a sarcastic tone, "do you want +those for your twelve hundred francs?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! father, truly? will you really give them to me?"</p> + +<p>"I'll give you as many more next year," he said, throwing them +into her apron. "So before long you'll get all his gewgaws," he +added, rubbing his hands, delighted to be able to speculate on +his daughter's feelings.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the old man, though still robust, felt the +importance of initiating his daughter into the secrets of his +thrift and its management. For two consecutive years he made her +order the household meals in his presence and receive the rents, +and he taught her slowly and successively the names and +remunerative capacity of his vineyards and his farms. About the +third year he had so thoroughly accustomed her to his avaricious +methods that they had turned into the settled habits of her own +life, and he was able to leave the household keys in her charge +without anxiety, and to install her as mistress of the house.</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>Five years passed away without a single event to relieve the +monotonous existence of Eugenie and her father. The same actions +were performed daily with the automatic regularity of clockwork. +The deep sadness of Mademoiselle Grandet was known to every one; +but if others surmised the cause, she herself never uttered a +word that justified the suspicions which all Saumur entertained +about the state of the rich heiress's heart. Her only society was +made up of the three Cruchots and a few of their particular +friends whom they had, little by little, introduced into the +Grandet household. They had taught her to play whist, and they +came every night for their game. During the year 1827 her father, +feeling the weight of his infirmities, was obliged to initiate +her still further into the secrets of his landed property, and +told her that in case of difficulty she was to have recourse to +Maitre Cruchot, whose integrity was well known to him.</p> + +<p>Towards the end of this year the old man, then eighty-two, was +seized by paralysis, which made rapid progress. Dr. Bergerin gave +him up. Eugenie, feeling that she was about to be left alone in +the world, came, as it were, nearer to her father, and clasped +more tightly this last living link of affection. To her mind, as +in that of all loving women, love was the whole of life. Charles +was not there, and she devoted all her care and attention to the +old father, whose faculties had begun to weaken, though his +avarice remained instinctively acute. The death of this man +offered no contrast to his life. In the morning he made them roll +him to a spot between the chimney of his chamber and the door of +the secret room, which was filled, no doubt, with gold. He asked +for an explanation of every noise he heard, even the slightest; +to the great astonishment of the notary, he even heard the +watch-dog yawning in the court-yard. He woke up from his apparent +stupor at the day and hour when the rents were due, or when +accounts had to be settled with his vine-dressers, and receipts +given. At such times he worked his chair forward on its castors +until he faced the door of the inner room. He made his daughter +open it, and watched while she placed the bags of money one upon +another in his secret receptacles and relocked the door. Then she +returned silently to her seat, after giving him the key, which he +replaced in his waistcoat pocket and fingered from time to time. +His old friend the notary, feeling sure that the rich heiress +would inevitably marry his nephew the president, if Charles +Grandet did not return, redoubled all his attentions; he came +every day to take Grandet's orders, went on his errands to +Froidfond, to the farms and the fields and the vineyards, sold +the vintages, and turned everything into gold and silver, which +found their way in sacks to the secret hiding-place.</p> + +<p>At length the last struggle came, in which the strong frame of +the old man slowly yielded to destruction. He was determined to +sit at the chimney-corner facing the door of the secret room. He +drew off and rolled up all the coverings which were laid over +him, saying to Nanon, "Put them away, lock them up, for fear they +should be stolen."</p> + +<p>So long as he could open his eyes, in which his whole being +had now taken refuge, he turned them to the door behind which lay +his treasures, saying to his daughter, "Are they there? are they +there?" in a tone of voice which revealed a sort of panic +fear.</p> + +<p>"Yes, my father," she would answer.</p> + +<p>"Take care of the gold--put gold before me."</p> + +<p>Eugenie would then spread coins on a table before him, and he +would sit for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like +a child who, at the moment it first begins to see, gazes in +stupid contemplation at the same object, and like the child, a +distressful smile would flicker upon his face.</p> + +<p>"It warms me!" he would sometimes say, as an expression of +beatitude stole across his features.</p> + +<p>When the cure of the parish came to administer the last +sacraments, the old man's eyes, sightless, apparently, for some +hours, kindled at the sight of the cross, the candlesticks, and +the holy-water vessel of silver; he gazed at them fixedly, and +his wen moved for the last time. When the priest put the crucifix +of silver-gilt to his lips, that he might kiss the Christ, he +made a frightful gesture, as if to seize it; and that last effort +cost him his life. He called Eugenie, whom he did not see, though +she was kneeling beside him bathing with tears his stiffening +hand, which was already cold.</p> + +<p>"My father, bless me!" she entreated.</p> + +<p>"Take care of it all. You will render me an account yonder!" +he said, proving by these last words that Christianity must +always be the religion of misers.</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>Eugenie Grandet was now alone in the world in that gray house, +with none but Nanon to whom she could turn with the certainty of +being heard and understood,--Nanon the sole being who loved her +for herself and with whom she could speak of her sorrows. La +Grande Nanon was a providence for Eugenie. She was not a servant, +but a humble friend. After her father's death Eugenie learned +from Maitre Cruchot that she possessed an income of three hundred +thousand francs from landed and personal property in the +arrondissement of Saumur; also six millions invested at three per +cent in the Funds (bought at sixty, and now worth seventy-six +francs); also two millions in gold coin, and a hundred thousand +francs in silver crown-pieces, besides all the interest which was +still to be collected. The sum total of her property reached +seventeen millions.</p> + +<p>"Where is my cousin?" was her one thought.</p> + +<p>The day on which Maitre Cruchot handed in to his client a +clear and exact schedule of the whole inheritance, Eugenie +remained alone with Nanon, sitting beside the fireplace in the +vacant hall, where all was now a memory, from the chair on +castors which her mother had sat in, to the glass from which her +cousin drank.</p> + +<p>"Nanon, we are alone--"</p> + +<p>"Yes, mademoiselle; and if I knew where he was, the darling, +I'd go on foot to find him."</p> + +<p>"The ocean is between us," she said.</p> + +<p>While the poor heiress wept in company of an old servant, in +that cold dark house, which was to her the universe, the whole +province rang, from Nantes to Orleans, with the seventeen +millions of Mademoiselle Grandet. Among her first acts she had +settled an annuity of twelve hundred francs on Nanon, who, +already possessed of six hundred more, became a rich and enviable +match. In less than a month that good soul passed from single to +wedded life under the protection of Antoine Cornoiller, who was +appointed keeper of all Mademoiselle Grandet's estates. Madame +Cornoiller possessed one striking advantage over her +contemporaries. Although she was fifty-nine years of age, she did +not look more than forty. Her strong features had resisted the +ravages of time. Thanks to the healthy customs of her +semi-conventual life, she laughed at old age from the +vantage-ground of a rosy skin and an iron constitution. Perhaps +she never looked as well in her life as she did on her +marriage-day. She had all the benefits of her ugliness, and was +big and fat and strong, with a look of happiness on her +indestructible features which made a good many people envy +Cornoiller.</p> + +<p>"Fast colors!" said the draper.</p> + +<p>"Quite likely to have children," said the salt merchant. +"She's pickled in brine, saving your presence."</p> + +<p>"She is rich, and that fellow Cornoiller has done a good thing +for himself," said a third man.</p> + +<p>When she came forth from the old house on her way to the +parish church, Nanon, who was loved by all the neighborhood, +received many compliments as she walked down the tortuous street. +Eugenie had given her three dozen silver forks and spoons as a +wedding present. Cornoiller, amazed at such magnificence, spoke +of his mistress with tears in his eyes; he would willingly have +been hacked in pieces in her behalf. Madame Cornoiller, appointed +housekeeper to Mademoiselle Grandet, got as much happiness out of +her new position as she did from the possession of a husband. She +took charge of the weekly accounts; she locked up the provisions +and gave them out daily, after the manner of her defunct master; +she ruled over two servants,--a cook, and a maid whose business +it was to mend the house-linen and make mademoiselle's dresses. +Cornoiller combined the functions of keeper and bailiff. It is +unnecessary to say that the women-servants selected by Nanon were +"perfect treasures." Mademoiselle Grandet thus had four servants, +whose devotion was unbounded. The farmers perceived no change +after Monsieur Grandet's death; the usages and customs he had +sternly established were scrupulously carried out by Monsieur and +Madame Cornoiller.</p> + +<p>At thirty years of age Eugenie knew none of the joys of life. +Her pale, sad childhood had glided on beside a mother whose +heart, always misunderstood and wounded, had known only +suffering. Leaving this life joyfully, the mother pitied the +daughter because she still must live; and she left in her child's +soul some fugitive remorse and many lasting regrets. Eugenie's +first and only love was a wellspring of sadness within her. +Meeting her lover for a few brief days, she had given him her +heart between two kisses furtively exchanged; then he had left +her, and a whole world lay between them. This love, cursed by her +father, had cost the life of her mother and brought her only +sorrow, mingled with a few frail hopes. Thus her upward spring +towards happiness had wasted her strength and given her nothing +in exchange for it. In the life of the soul, as in the physical +life, there is an inspiration and a respiration; the soul needs +to absorb the sentiments of another soul and assimilate them, +that it may render them back enriched. Were it not for this +glorious human phenomenon, there would be no life for the heart; +air would be wanting; it would suffer, and then perish. Eugenie +had begun to suffer. For her, wealth was neither a power nor a +consolation; she could not live except through love, through +religion, through faith in the future. Love explained to her the +mysteries of eternity. Her heart and the Gospel taught her to +know two worlds; she bathed, night and day, in the depths of two +infinite thoughts, which for her may have had but one meaning. +She drew back within herself, loving, and believing herself +beloved. For seven years her passion had invaded everything. Her +treasuries were not the millions whose revenues were rolling up; +they were Charles's dressing- case, the portraits hanging above +her bed, the jewels recovered from her father and proudly spread +upon a bed of wool in a drawer of the oaken cabinet, the thimble +of her aunt, used for a while by her mother, which she wore +religiously as she worked at a piece of embroidery,--a Penelope's +web, begun for the sole purpose of putting upon her finger that +gold so rich in memories.</p> + +<p>It seemed unlikely that Mademoiselle Grandet would marry +during the period of her mourning. Her genuine piety was well +known. Consequently the Cruchots, whose policy was sagely guided +by the old abbe, contented themselves for the time being with +surrounding the great heiress and paying her the most +affectionate attentions. Every evening the hall was filled with a +party of devoted Cruchotines, who sang the praises of its +mistress in every key. She had her doctor in ordinary, her grand +almoner, her chamberlain, her first lady of honor, her prime +minister; above all, her chancellor, a chancellor who would fain +have said much to her. If the heiress had wished for a +train-bearer, one would instantly have been found. She was a +queen, obsequiously flattered. Flattery never emanates from noble +souls; it is the gift of little minds, who thus still further +belittle themselves to worm their way into the vital being of the +persons around whom they crawl. Flattery means self-interest. So +the people who, night after night, assembled in Mademoiselle +Grandet's house (they called her Mademoiselle de Froidfond) +outdid each other in expressions of admiration. This concert of +praise, never before bestowed upon Eugenie, made her blush under +its novelty; but insensibly her ear became habituated to the +sound, and however coarse the compliments might be, she soon was +so accustomed to hear her beauty lauded that if any new-comer had +seemed to think her plain, she would have felt the reproach far +more than she might have done eight years earlier. She ended at +last by loving the incense, which she secretly laid at the feet +of her idol. By degrees she grew accustomed to be treated as a +sovereign and to see her court pressing around her every +evening.</p> + +<p>Monsieur de Bonfons was the hero of the little circle, where +his wit, his person, his education, his amiability, were +perpetually praised. One or another would remark that in seven +years he had largely increased his fortune, that Bonfons brought +in at least ten thousand francs a year, and was surrounded, like +the other possessions of the Cruchots, by the vast domains of the +heiress.</p> + +<p>"Do you know, mademoiselle," said an habitual visitor, "that +the Cruchots have an income of forty thousand francs among +them!"</p> + +<p>"And then, their savings!" exclaimed an elderly female +Cruchotine, Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt.</p> + +<p>"A gentleman from Paris has lately offered Monsieur Cruchot +two hundred thousand francs for his practice," said another. "He +will sell it if he is appointed <i>juge de paix."</i></p> + +<p>"He wants to succeed Monsieur de Bonfons as president of the +Civil courts, and is taking measures," replied Madame d'Orsonval. +"Monsieur le president will certainly be made councillor."</p> + +<p>"Yes, he is a very distinguished man," said another,--"don't +you think so, mademoiselle?"</p> + +<p>Monsieur de Bonfons endeavored to put himself in keeping with +the role he sought to play. In spite of his forty years, in spite +of his dusky and crabbed features, withered like most judicial +faces, he dressed in youthful fashions, toyed with a bamboo cane, +never took snuff in Mademoiselle de Froidfond's house, and came +in a white cravat and a shirt whose pleated frill gave him a +family resemblance to the race of turkeys. He addressed the +beautiful heiress familiarly, and spoke of her as "Our dear +Eugenie." In short, except for the number of visitors, the change +from loto to whist, and the disappearance of Monsieur and Madame +Grandet, the scene was about the same as the one with which this +history opened. The pack were still pursuing Eugenie and her +millions; but the hounds, more in number, lay better on the +scent, and beset the prey more unitedly. If Charles could have +dropped from the Indian Isles, he would have found the same +people and the same interests. Madame des Grassins, to whom +Eugenie was full of kindness and courtesy, still persisted in +tormenting the Cruchots. Eugenie, as in former days, was the +central figure of the picture; and Charles, as heretofore, would +still have been the sovereign of all. Yet there had been some +progress. The flowers which the president formerly presented to +Eugenie on her birthdays and fete-days had now become a daily +institution. Every evening he brought the rich heiress a huge and +magnificent bouquet, which Madame Cornoiller placed conspicuously +in a vase, and secretly threw into a corner of the court-yard +when the visitors had departed.</p> + +<p>Early in the spring, Madame des Grassins attempted to trouble +the peace of the Cruchotines by talking to Eugenie of the Marquis +de Froidfond, whose ancient and ruined family might be restored +if the heiress would give him back his estates through marriage. +Madame des Grassins rang the changes on the peerage and the title +of marquise, until, mistaking Eugenie's disdainful smile for +acquiescence, she went about proclaiming that the marriage with +"Monsieur Cruchot" was not nearly as certain as people +thought.</p> + +<p>"Though Monsieur de Froidfond is fifty," she said, "he does +not look older than Monsieur Cruchot. He is a widower, and he has +children, that's true. But then he is a marquis; he will be peer +of France; and in times like these where you will find a better +match? I know it for a fact that Pere Grandet, when he put all +his money into Froidfond, intended to graft himself upon that +stock; he often told me so. He was a deep one, that old man!"</p> + +<p>"Ah! Nanon," said Eugenie, one night as she was going to bed, +"how is it that in seven years he has never once written to +me?"</p> + +<p></p> + +<h3>XIII</h3> + +<p>While these events were happening in Saumur, Charles was +making his fortune in the Indies. His commercial outfit had sold +well. He began by realizing a sum of six thousand dollars. +Crossing the line had brushed a good many cobwebs out of his +brain; he perceived that the best means of attaining fortune in +tropical regions, as well as in Europe, was to buy and sell men. +He went to the coast of Africa and bought Negroes, combining his +traffic in human flesh with that of other merchandise equally +advantageous to his interests. He carried into this business an +activity which left him not a moment of leisure. He was governed +by the desire of reappearing in Paris with all the prestige of a +large fortune, and by the hope of regaining a position even more +brilliant than the one from which he had fallen.</p> + +<p>By dint of jostling with men, travelling through many lands, +and studying a variety of conflicting customs, his ideas had been +modified and had become sceptical. He ceased to have fixed +principles of right and wrong, for he saw what was called a crime +in one country lauded as a virtue in another. In the perpetual +struggle of selfish interests his heart grew cold, then +contracted, and then dried up. The blood of the Grandets did not +fail of its destiny; Charles became hard, and eager for prey. He +sold Chinamen, Negroes, birds' nests, children, artists; he +practised usury on a large scale; the habit of defrauding +custom-houses soon made him less scrupulous about the rights of +his fellow men. He went to the Island of St. Thomas and bought, +for a mere song, merchandise that had been captured by pirates, +and took it to ports where he could sell it at a good price. If +the pure and noble face of Eugenie went with him on his first +voyage, like that image of the Virgin which Spanish mariners +fastened to their masts, if he attributed his first success to +the magic influence of the prayers and intercessions of his +gentle love, later on women of other kinds,-- blacks, mulattoes, +whites, and Indian dancing-girls,--orgies and adventures in many +lands, completely effaced all recollection of his cousin, of +Saumur, of the house, the bench, the kiss snatched in the dark +passage. He remembered only the little garden shut in with +crumbling walls, for it was there he learned the fate that had +overtaken him; but he rejected all connection with his family. +His uncle was an old dog who had filched his jewels; Eugenie had +no place in his heart nor in his thoughts, though she did have a +place in his accounts as a creditor for the sum of six thousand +francs.</p> + +<p>Such conduct and such ideas explain Charles Grandet's silence. +In the Indies, at St. Thomas, on the coast of Africa, at Lisbon, +and in the United States the adventurer had taken the pseudonym +of Shepherd, that he might not compromise his own name. Charles +Shepherd could safely be indefatigable, bold, grasping, and +greedy of gain, like a man who resolves to snatch his fortune +<i>quibus cumque viis</i>, and makes haste to have done with +villany, that he may spend the rest of his life as an honest +man.</p> + +<p>With such methods, prosperity was rapid and brilliant; and in +1827 Charles Grandet returned to Bordeaux on the "Marie +Caroline," a fine brig belonging to a royalist house of business. +He brought with him nineteen hundred thousand francs worth of +gold-dust, from which he expected to derive seven or eight per +cent more at the Paris mint. On the brig he met a +gentleman-in-ordinary to His Majesty Charles X., Monsieur +d'Aubrion, a worthy old man who had committed the folly of +marrying a woman of fashion with a fortune derived from the West +India Islands. To meet the costs of Madame d'Aubrion's +extravagance, he had gone out to the Indies to sell the property, +and was now returning with his family to France.</p> + +<p>Monsieur and Madame d'Aubrion, of the house of d'Aubrion de +Buch, a family of southern France, whose last <i>captal</i>, or +chief, died before 1789, were now reduced to an income of about +twenty thousand francs, and they possessed an ugly daughter whom +the mother was resolved to marry without a <i>dot</i>,--the +family fortune being scarcely sufficient for the demands of her +own life in Paris. This was an enterprise whose success might +have seemed problematical to most men of the world, in spite of +the cleverness with which such men credit a fashionable woman; in +fact, Madame d'Aubrion herself, when she looked at her daughter, +almost despaired of getting rid of her to any one, even to a man +craving connection with nobility. Mademoiselle d'Aubrion was a +long, spare, spindling demoiselle, like her namesake the insect; +her mouth was disdainful; over it hung a nose that was too long, +thick at the end, sallow in its normal condition, but very red +after a meal,--a sort of vegetable phenomenon which is +particularly disagreeable when it appears in the middle of a +pale, dull, and uninteresting face. In one sense she was all that +a worldly mother, thirty-eight years of age and still a beauty +with claims to admiration, could have wished. However, to +counterbalance her personal defects, the marquise gave her +daughter a distinguished air, subjected her to hygienic treatment +which provisionally kept her nose at a reasonable flesh-tint, +taught her the art of dressing well, endowed her with charming +manners, showed her the trick of melancholy glances which +interest a man and make him believe that he has found a +long-sought angel, taught her the manoeuvre of the foot,--letting +it peep beneath the petticoat, to show its tiny size, at the +moment when the nose became aggressively red; in short, Madame +d'Aubrion had cleverly made the very best of her offspring. By +means of full sleeves, deceptive pads, puffed dresses amply +trimmed, and high-pressure corsets, she had obtained such curious +feminine developments that she ought, for the instruction of +mothers, to have exhibited them in a museum.</p> + +<p>Charles became very intimate with Madame d'Aubrion precisely +because she was desirous of becoming intimate with him. Persons +who were on board the brig declared that the handsome Madame +d'Aubrion neglected no means of capturing so rich a son-in-law. +On landing at Bordeaux in June, 1827, Monsieur, Madame, +Mademoiselle d'Aubrion, and Charles lodged at the same hotel and +started together for Paris. The hotel d'Aubrion was hampered with +mortgages; Charles was destined to free it. The mother told him +how delighted she would be to give up the ground-floor to a +son-in-law. Not sharing Monsieur d'Aubrion's prejudices on the +score of nobility, she promised Charles Grandet to obtain a royal +ordinance from Charles X. which would authorize him, Grandet, to +take the name and arms of d'Aubrion and to succeed, by purchasing +the entailed estate for thirty-six thousand francs a year, to the +titles of Captal de Buch and Marquis d'Aubrion. By thus uniting +their fortunes, living on good terms, and profiting by sinecures, +the two families might occupy the hotel d'Aubrion with an income +of over a hundred thousand francs.</p> + +<p>"And when a man has a hundred thousand francs a year, a name, +a family, and a position at court,--for I will get you appointed +as gentleman-of-the-bedchamber,--he can do what he likes," she +said to Charles. "You can then become anything you +choose,--master of the rolls in the council of State, prefect, +secretary to an embassy, the ambassador himself, if you like. +Charles X. is fond of d'Aubrion; they have known each other from +childhood."</p> + +<p>Intoxicated with ambition, Charles toyed with the hopes thus +cleverly presented to him in the guise of confidences poured from +heart to heart. Believing his father's affairs to have been +settled by his uncle, he imagined himself suddenly anchored in +the Faubourg Saint- Germain,--that social object of all desire, +where, under shelter of Mademoiselle Mathilde's purple nose, he +was to reappear as the Comte d'Aubrion, very much as the Dreux +reappeared in Breze. Dazzled by the prosperity of the +Restoration, which was tottering when he left France, fascinated +by the splendor of aristocratic ideas, his intoxication, which +began on the brig, increased after he reached Paris, and he +finally determined to take the course and reach the high position +which the selfish hopes of his would-be mother-in-law pointed out +to him. His cousin counted for no more than a speck in this +brilliant perspective; but he went to see Annette. True woman of +the world, Annette advised her old friend to make the marriage, +and promised him her support in all his ambitious projects. In +her heart she was enchanted to fasten an ugly and uninteresting +girl on Charles, whose life in the West Indies had rendered him +very attractive. His complexion had bronzed, his manners had +grown decided and bold, like those of a man accustomed to make +sharp decisions, to rule, and to succeed. Charles breathed more +at his ease in Paris, conscious that he now had a part to +play.</p> + +<p>Des Grassins, hearing of his return, of his approaching +marriage and his large fortune, came to see him, and inquired +about the three hundred thousand francs still required to settle +his father's debts. He found Grandet in conference with a +goldsmith, from whom he had ordered jewels for Mademoiselle +d'Aubrion's <i>corbeille</i>, and who was then submitting the +designs. Charles had brought back magnificent diamonds, and the +value of their setting, together with the plate and jewelry of +the new establishment, amounted to more than two hundred thousand +francs. He received des Grassins, whom he did not recognize, with +the impertinence of a young man of fashion conscious of having +killed four men in as many duels in the Indies. Monsieur des +Grassins had already called several times. Charles listened to +him coldly, and then replied, without fully understanding what +had been said to him,--</p> + +<p>"My father's affairs are not mine. I am much obliged, +monsieur, for the trouble you have been good enough to take,--by +which, however, I really cannot profit. I have not earned two +millions by the sweat of my brow to fling them at the head of my +father's creditors."</p> + +<p>"But suppose that your father's estate were within a few days +to be declared bankrupt?"</p> + +<p>"Monsieur, in a few days I shall be called the Comte +d'Aubrion; you will understand, therefore, that what you threaten +is of no consequence to me. Besides, you know as well as I do +that when a man has an income of a hundred thousand francs his +father has <i>never failed</i>." So saying, he politely edged +Monsieur des Grassins to the door.</p> + +<p>*****</p> + +<p>At the beginning of August in the same year, Eugenie was +sitting on the little wooden bench where her cousin had sworn to +love her eternally, and where she usually breakfasted if the +weather were fine. The poor girl was happy, for the moment, in +the fresh and joyous summer air, letting her memory recall the +great and the little events of her love and the catastrophes +which had followed it. The sun had just reached the angle of the +ruined wall, so full of chinks, which no one, through a caprice +of the mistress, was allowed to touch, though Cornoiller often +remarked to his wife that "it would fall and crush somebody one +of these days." At this moment the postman knocked, and gave a +letter to Madame Cornoiller, who ran into the garden, crying +out:</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle, a letter!" She gave it to her mistress, adding, +"Is it the one you expected?"</p> + +<p>The words rang as loudly in the heart of Eugenie as they +echoed in sound from wall to wall of the court and garden.</p> + +<p>"Paris--from him--he has returned!"</p> + +<p>Eugenie turned pale and held the letter for a moment. She +trembled so violently that she could not break the seal. La +Grande Nanon stood before her, both hands on her hips, her joy +puffing as it were like smoke through the cracks of her brown +face.</p> + +<p>"Read it, mademoiselle!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, Nanon, why did he return to Paris? He went from +Saumur."</p> + +<p>"Read it, and you'll find out."</p> + +<p>Eugenie opened the letter with trembling fingers. A cheque on +the house of "Madame des Grassins and Coret, of Saumur," +fluttered down. Nanon picked it up.</p> + +<p>My dear Cousin,--</p> + +<p>"No longer 'Eugenie,'" she thought, and her heart quailed.</p> + +<p>You--</p> + +<p>"He once said 'thou.'" She folded her arms and dared not read +another word; great tears gathered in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Is he dead?" asked Nanon.</p> + +<p>"If he were, he could not write," said Eugenie.</p> + +<p>She then read the whole letter, which was as follows:</p> + +<p>My dear Cousin,--You will, I am sure, hear with pleasure of +the success of my enterprise. You brought me luck; I have come +back rich, and I have followed the advice of my uncle, whose +death, together with that of my aunt, I have just learned from +Monsieur des Grassins. The death of parents is in the course of +nature, and we must succeed them. I trust you are by this time +consoled. Nothing can resist time, as I am well aware. Yes, my +dear cousin, the day of illusions is, unfortunately, gone for me. +How could it be otherwise? Travelling through many lands, I have +reflected upon life. I was a child when I went away,--I have come +back a man. To-day, I think of many I did not dream of then. You +are free, my dear cousin, and I am free still. Nothing apparently +hinders the realization of our early hopes; but my nature is too +loyal to hide from you the situation in which I find myself. I +have not forgotten our relations; I have always remembered, +throughout my long wanderings, the little wooden seat--</p> + +<p>Eugenie rose as if she were sitting on live coals, and went +away and sat down on the stone steps of the court.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>--the little wooden seat where we vowed to love each other +forever, the passage, the gray hall, my attic chamber, and the +night when, by your delicate kindness, you made my future easier +to me. Yes, these recollections sustained my courage; I said in +my heart that you were thinking of me at the hour we had agreed +upon. Have you always looked at the clouds at nine o'clock? Yes, +I am sure of it. I cannot betray so true a friendship,--no, I +must not deceive you. An alliance has been proposed to me which +satisfies all my ideas of matrimony. Love in marriage is a +delusion. My present experience warns me that in marrying we are +bound to obey all social laws and meet the conventional demands +of the world. Now, between you and me there are differences which +might affect your future, my dear cousin, even more than they +would mine. I will not here speak of your customs and +inclinations, your education, nor yet of your habits, none of +which are in keeping with Parisian life, or with the future which +I have marked out for myself. My intention is to keep my +household on a stately footing, to receive much company,--in +short, to live in the world; and I think I remember that you love +a quiet and tranquil life. I will be frank, and make you the +judge of my situation; you have the right to understand it and to +judge it.</p> + +<p>I possess at the present moment an income of eighty thousand +francs. This fortune enables me to marry into the family of +Aubrion, whose heiress, a young girl nineteen years of age, +brings me a title, a place of gentleman-of-the-bed-chamber to His +Majesty, and a very brilliant position. I will admit to you, my +dear cousin, that I do not love Mademoiselle d'Aubrion; but in +marrying her I secure to my children a social rank whose +advantages will one day be incalculable: monarchical principles +are daily coming more and more into favor. Thus in course of time +my son, when he becomes Marquis d'Aubrion, having, as he then +will have, an entailed estate with a rental of forty thousand +francs a year, can obtain any position in the State which he may +think proper to select. We owe ourselves to our children.</p> + +<p>You see, my cousin, with what good faith I lay the state of my +heart, my hopes, and my fortune before you. Possibly, after seven +years' separation, you have yourself forgotten our youthful +loves; but I have never forgotten either your kindness or my own +words. I remember all, even words that were lightly +uttered,--words by which a man less conscientious than I, with a +heart less youthful and less upright, would scarcely feel himself +bound. In telling you that the marriage I propose to make is +solely one of convenience, that I still remember our childish +love, am I not putting myself entirely in your hands and making +you the mistress of my fate? am I not telling you that if I must +renounce my social ambitions, I shall willingly content myself +with the pure and simple happiness of which you have shown me so +sweet an image?</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>"Tan, ta, ta--tan, ta, ti," sang Charles Grandet to the air of +<i>Non piu andrai,</i> as he signed himself,--</p> + +<p>Your devoted cousin, Charles.</p> + +<p>"Thunder! that's doing it handsomely!" he said, as he looked +about him for the cheque; having found it, he added the +words:--</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>P.S.--I enclose a cheque on the des Grassins bank for eight +thousand francs to your order, payable in gold, which includes +the capital and interest of the sum you were kind enough to lend +me. I am expecting a case from Bordeaux which contains a few +things which you must allow me to offer you as a mark of my +unceasing gratitude. You can send my dressing-case by the +diligence to the hotel d'Aubrion, rue Hillerin-Bertin.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>"By the diligence!" said Eugenie. "A thing for which I would +have laid down my life!"</p> + +<p>Terrible and utter disaster! The ship went down, leaving not a +spar, not a plank, on a vast ocean of hope! Some women when they +see themselves abandoned will try to tear their lover from the +arms of a rival, they will kill her, and rush to the ends of the +earth,--to the scaffold, to their tomb. That, no doubt, is fine; +the motive of the crime is a great passion, which awes even human +justice. Other women bow their heads and suffer in silence; they +go their way dying, resigned, weeping, forgiving, praying, and +recollecting, till they draw their last breath. This is +love,--true love, the love of angels, the proud love which lives +upon its anguish and dies of it. Such was Eugenie's love after +she had read that dreadful letter. She raised her eyes to heaven, +thinking of the last words uttered by her dying mother, who, with +the prescience of death, had looked into the future with clear +and penetrating eyes: Eugenie, remembering that prophetic death, +that prophetic life, measured with one glance her own destiny. +Nothing was left for her; she could only unfold her wings, +stretch upward to the skies, and live in prayer until the day of +her deliverance.</p> + +<p>"My mother was right," she said, weeping. "Suffer--and +die!"</p> + +<p>XIV</p> + +<p>Eugenie came slowly back from the garden to the house, and +avoided passing, as was her custom, through the corridor. But the +memory of her cousin was in the gray old hall and on the +chimney-piece, where stood a certain saucer and the old Sevres +sugar-bowl which she used every morning at her breakfast.</p> + +<p>This day was destined to be solemn throughout and full of +events. Nanon announced the cure of the parish church. He was +related to the Cruchots, and therefore in the interests of +Monsieur de Bonfons. For some time past the old abbe had urged +him to speak to Mademoiselle Grandet, from a purely religious +point of view, about the duty of marriage for a woman in her +position. When she saw her pastor, Eugenie supposed he had come +for the thousand francs which she gave monthly to the poor, and +she told Nanon to go and fetch them; but the cure only +smiled.</p> + +<p>"To-day, mademoiselle," he said, "I have come to speak to you +about a poor girl in whom the whole town of Saumur takes an +interest, who, through lack of charity to herself, neglects her +Christian duties."</p> + +<p>"Monsieur le cure, you have come to me at a moment when I +cannot think of my neighbor, I am filled with thoughts of myself. +I am very unhappy; my only refuge is in the Church; her bosom is +large enough to hold all human woe, her love so full that we may +draw from its depths and never drain it dry."</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle, in speaking of this young girl we shall speak +of you. Listen! If you wish to insure your salvation you have +only two paths to take,--either leave the world or obey its laws. +Obey either your earthly destiny or your heavenly destiny."</p> + +<p>"Ah! your voice speaks to me when I need to hear a voice. Yes, +God has sent you to me; I will bid farewell to the world and live +for God alone, in silence and seclusion."</p> + +<p>"My daughter, you must think long before you take so violent a +step. Marriage is life, the veil is death."</p> + +<p>"Yes, death,--a quick death!" she said, with dreadful +eagerness.</p> + +<p>"Death? but you have great obligations to fulfil to society, +mademoiselle. Are you not the mother of the poor, to whom you +give clothes and wood in winter and work in summer? Your great +fortune is a loan which you must return, and you have sacredly +accepted it as such. To bury yourself in a convent would be +selfishness; to remain an old maid is to fail in duty. In the +first place, can you manage your vast property alone? May you not +lose it? You will have law-suits, you will find yourself +surrounded by inextricable difficulties. Believe your pastor: a +husband is useful; you are bound to preserve what God has +bestowed upon you. I speak to you as a precious lamb of my flock. +You love God too truly not to find your salvation in the midst of +his world, of which you are noble ornament and to which you owe +your example."</p> + +<p>At this moment Madame des Grassins was announced. She came +incited by vengeance and the sense of a great despair.</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle," she said--"Ah! here is monsieur le cure; I am +silent. I came to speak to you on business; but I see that you +are conferring with--"</p> + +<p>"Madame," said the cure, "I leave the field to you."</p> + +<p>"Oh! monsieur le cure," said Eugenie, "come back later; your +support is very necessary to me just now."</p> + +<p>"Ah, yes, indeed, my poor child!" said Madame des +Grassins.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" asked Eugenie and the cure together.</p> + +<p>"Don't I know about your cousin's return, and his marriage +with Mademoiselle d'Aubrion? A woman doesn't carry her wits in +her pocket."</p> + +<p>Eugenie blushed, and remained silent for a moment. From this +day forth she assumed the impassible countenance for which her +father had been so remarkable.</p> + +<p>"Well, madame," she presently said, ironically, "no doubt I +carry my wits in my pocket, for I do not understand you. Speak, +say what you mean, before monsieur le cure; you know he is my +director."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, mademoiselle, here is what des Grassins writes +me. Read it."</p> + +<p>Eugenie read the following letter:--</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>My dear Wife,--Charles Grandet has returned from the Indies +and has been in Paris about a month--</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>"A month!" thought Eugenie, her hand falling to her side. +After a pause she resumed the letter,--</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>I had to dance attendance before I was allowed to see the +future Vicomte d'Aubrion. Though all Paris is talking of his +marriage and the banns are published--</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>"He wrote to me after that!" thought Eugenie. She did not +conclude the thought; she did not cry out, as a Parisian woman +would have done, "The villain!" but though she said it not, +contempt was none the less present in her mind.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>The marriage, however, will not come off. The Marquis +d'Aubrion will never give his daughter to the son of a bankrupt. +I went to tell Grandet of the steps his uncle and I took in his +father's business, and the clever manoeuvres by which we had +managed to keep the creditor's quiet until the present time. The +insolent fellow had the face to say to me--to me, who for five +years have devoted myself night and day to his interests and his +honor!--that <i>his father's</i> <i>affairs were not his</i>! A +solicitor would have had the right to demand fees amounting to +thirty or forty thousand francs, one per cent on the total of the +debts. But patience! there are twelve hundred thousand francs +legitimately owing to the creditors, and I shall at once declare +his father a bankrupt.</p> + +<p>I went into this business on the word of that old crocodile +Grandet, and I have made promises in the name of his family. If +Monsieur de vicomte d'Aubrion does not care for his honor, I care +for mine. I shall explain my position to the creditors. Still, I +have too much respect for Mademoiselle Eugenie (to whom under +happier circumstances we once hoped to be allied) to act in this +matter before you have spoken to her about it--</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>There Eugenie paused, and coldly returned the letter without +finishing it.</p> + +<p>"I thank you," she said to Madame des Grassins.</p> + +<p>"Ah! you have the voice and manner of your deceased father," +Madame des Grassins replied.</p> + +<p>"Madame, you have eight thousand francs to pay us," said +Nanon, producing Charles's cheque.</p> + +<p>"That's true; have the kindness to come with me now, Madame +Cornoiller."</p> + +<p>"Monsieur le cure," said Eugenie with a noble composure, +inspired by the thought she was about to express, "would it be a +sin to remain a virgin after marriage?"</p> + +<p>"That is a case of conscience whose solution is not within my +knowledge. If you wish to know what the celebrated Sanchez says +of it in his treatise 'De Matrimonio,' I shall be able to tell +you to-morrow."</p> + +<p>The cure went away; Mademoiselle Grandet went up to her +father's secret room and spent the day there alone, without +coming down to dinner, in spite of Nanon's entreaties. She +appeared in the evening at the hour when the usual company began +to arrive. Never was the old hall so full as on this occasion. +The news of Charles's return and his foolish treachery had spread +through the whole town. But however watchful the curiosity of the +visitors might be, it was left unsatisfied. Eugenie, who expected +scrutiny, allowed none of the cruel emotions that wrung her soul +to appear on the calm surface of her face. She was able to show a +smiling front in answer to all who tried to testify their +interest by mournful looks or melancholy speeches. She hid her +misery behind a veil of courtesy. Towards nine o'clock the games +ended and the players left the tables, paying their losses and +discussing points of the game as they joined the rest of the +company. At the moment when the whole party rose to take leave, +an unexpected and striking event occurred, which resounded +through the length and breadth of Saumur, from thence through the +arrondissement, and even to the four surrounding prefectures.</p> + +<p>"Stay, monsieur le president," said Eugenie to Monsieur de +Bonfons as she saw him take his cane.</p> + +<p>There was not a person in that numerous assembly who was +unmoved by these words. The president turned pale, and was forced +to sit down.</p> + +<p>"The president gets the millions," said Mademoiselle de +Gribeaucourt.</p> + +<p>"It is plain enough; the president marries Mademoiselle +Grandet," cried Madame d'Orsonval.</p> + +<p>"All the trumps in one hand," said the abbe.</p> + +<p>"A love game," said the notary.</p> + +<p>Each and all said his say, made his pun, and looked at the +heiress mounted on her millions as on a pedestal. The drama begun +nine years before had reached its conclusion. To tell the +president, in face of all Saumur, to "stay," was surely the same +thing as proclaiming him her husband. In provincial towns social +conventionalities are so rigidly enforced than an infraction like +this constituted a solemn promise.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur le president," said Eugenie in a voice of some +emotion when they were left alone, "I know what pleases you in +me. Swear to leave me free during my whole life, to claim none of +the rights which marriage will give you over me, and my hand is +yours. Oh!" she added, seeing him about to kneel at her feet, "I +have more to say. I must not deceive you. In my heart I cherish +one inextinguishable feeling. Friendship is the only sentiment +which I can give to a husband. I wish neither to affront him nor +to violate the laws of my own heart. But you can possess my hand +and my fortune only at the cost of doing me an inestimable +service."</p> + +<p>"I am ready for all things," said the president.</p> + +<p>"Here are fifteen hundred thousand francs," she said, drawing +from her bosom a certificate of a hundred shares in the Bank of +France. "Go to Paris,--not to-morrow, but instantly. Find +Monsieur des Grassins, learn the names of my uncle's creditors, +call them together, pay them in full all that was owing, with +interest at five per cent from the day the debt was incurred to +the present time. Be careful to obtain a full and legal receipt, +in proper form, before a notary. You are a magistrate, and I can +trust this matter in your hands. You are a man of honor; I will +put faith in your word, and meet the dangers of life under +shelter of your name. Let us have mutual indulgence. We have +known each other so long that we are almost related; you would +not wish to render me unhappy."</p> + +<p>The president fell at the feet of the rich heiress, his heart +beating and wrung with joy.</p> + +<p>"I will be your slave!" he said.</p> + +<p>"When you obtain the receipts, monsieur," she resumed, with a +cold glance, "you will take them with all the other papers to my +cousin Grandet, and you will give him this letter. On your return +I will keep my word."</p> + +<p>The president understood perfectly that he owed the +acquiescence of Mademoiselle Grandet to some bitterness of love, +and he made haste to obey her orders, lest time should effect a +reconciliation between the pair.</p> + +<p>When Monsieur de Bonfons left her, Eugenie fell back in her +chair and burst into tears. All was over.</p> + +<p>The president took the mail-post, and reached Paris the next +evening. The morning after his arrival he went to see des +Grassins, and together they summoned the creditors to meet at the +notary's office where the vouchers had been deposited. Not a +single creditor failed to be present. Creditors though they were, +justice must be done to them, --they were all punctual. Monsieur +de Bonfons, in the name of Mademoiselle Grandet, paid them the +amount of their claims with interest. The payment of interest was +a remarkable event in the Parisian commerce of that day. When the +receipts were all legally registered, and des Grassins had +received for his services the sum of fifty thousand francs +allowed to him by Eugenie, the president made his way to the +hotel d'Aubrion and found Charles just entering his own apartment +after a serious encounter with his prospective father-in- law. +The old marquis had told him plainly that he should not marry his +daughter until all the creditors of Guillaume Grandet had been +paid in full.</p> + +<p>The president gave Charles the following letter:--</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>My Cousin,--Monsieur le president de Bonfons has undertaken to +place in your hands the aquittance for all claims upon my uncle, +also a receipt by which I acknowledge having received from you +the sum total of those claims. I have heard of a possible +failure, and I think that the son of a bankrupt may not be able +to marry Mademoiselle d'Aubrion. Yes, my cousin, you judged +rightly of my mind and of my manners. I have, it is true, no part +in the world; I understand neither its calculations nor its +customs; and I could not give you the pleasures that you seek in +it. Be happy, according to the social conventions to which you +have sacrificed our love. To make your happiness complete I can +only offer you your father's honor. Adieu! You will always have a +faithful friend in your cousin</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Eugenie.</p> + +<p>The president smiled at the exclamation which the ambitious +young man could not repress as he received the documents.</p> + +<p>"We shall announce our marriages at the same time," remarked +Monsieur de Bonfons.</p> + +<p>"Ah! you marry Eugenie? Well, I am delighted; she is a good +girl. But," added Charles, struck with a luminous idea, "she must +be rich?"</p> + +<p>"She had," said the president, with a mischievous smile, +"about nineteen millions four days ago; but she has only +seventeen millions to-day."</p> + +<p>Charles looked at him thunderstruck.</p> + +<p>"Seventeen mil--"</p> + +<p>"Seventeen millions; yes, monsieur. We shall muster, +Mademoiselle Grandet and I, an income of seven hundred and fifty +thousand francs when we marry."</p> + +<p>"My dear cousin," said Charles, recovering a little of his +assurance, "we can push each other's fortunes."</p> + +<p>"Agreed," said the president. "Here is also a little case +which I am charged to give into your own hands," he added, +placing on the table the leather box which contained the +dressing-case.</p> + +<p>"Well, my dear friend," said Madame d'Aubrion, entering the +room without noticing the president, "don't pay any attention to +what poor Monsieur d'Aubrion has just said to you; the Duchesse +de Chaulieu has turned his head. I repeat, nothing shall +interfere with the marriage--"</p> + +<p>"Very good, madame. The three millions which my father owed +were paid yesterday."</p> + +<p>"In money?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, in full, capital and interest; and I am about to do +honor to his memory--"</p> + +<p>"What folly!" exclaimed his mother-in-law. "Who is this?" she +whispered in Grandet's ear, perceiving the president.</p> + +<p>"My man of business," he answered in a low voice.</p> + +<p>The marquise bowed superciliously to Monsieur de Bonfons.</p> + +<p>"We are pushing each other's fortunes already," said the +president, taking up his hat. "Good-by, cousin."</p> + +<p>"He is laughing at me, the old cockatoo! I'd like to put six +inches of iron into him!" muttered Charles.</p> + +<p>The president was out of hearing. Three days later Monsieur de +Bonfons, on his return to Saumur, announced his marriage with +Eugenie. Six months after the marriage he was appointed +councillor in the Cour royale at Angers. Before leaving Saumur +Madame de Bonfons had the gold of certain jewels, once so +precious to her, melted up, and put, together with the eight +thousand francs paid back by her cousin, into a golden pyx, which +she gave to the parish church where she had so long prayed for +<i>him</i>. She now spent her time between Angers and Saumur. Her +husband, who had shown some public spirit on a certain occasion, +became a judge in the superior courts, and finally, after a few +years, president of them. He was anxiously awaiting a general +election, in the hope of being returned to the Chamber of +deputies. He hankered after a peerage; and then--</p> + +<p>"The king will be his cousin, won't he?" said Nanon, la Grande +Nanon, Madame Cornoiller, bourgeoise of Saumur, as she listened +to her mistress, who was recounting the honors to which she was +called.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Monsieur de Bonfons (he had finally abolished +his patronymic of Cruchot) did not realize any of his ambitious +ideas. He died eight days after his election as deputy of Saumur. +God, who sees all and never strikes amiss, punished him, no +doubt, for his sordid calculations and the legal cleverness with +which, <i>accurante Cruchot</i>, he had drawn up his marriage +contract, in which husband and wife gave to each other, "in case +they should have no children, their entire property of every +kind, landed or otherwise, without exception or reservation, +dispensing even with the formality of an inventory; provided that +said omission of said inventory shall not injure their heirs and +assigns, it being understood that this deed of gift is, etc., +etc." This clause of the contract will explain the profound +respect which monsieur le president always testified for the +wishes, and above all, for the solitude of Madame de Bonfons. +Women cited him as the most considerate and delicate of men, +pitied him, and even went so far as to find fault with the +passion and grief of Eugenie, blaming her, as women know so well +how to blame, with cruel but discreet insinuation.</p> + +<p>"Madame de Bonfons must be very ill to leave her husband +entirely alone. Poor woman! Is she likely to get well? What is +it? Something gastric? A cancer?"--"She has grown perfectly +yellow. She ought to consult some celebrated doctor in +Paris."--"How can she be happy without a child? They say she +loves her husband; then why not give him an heir?--in his +position, too!"--"Do you know, it is really dreadful! If it is +the result of mere caprice, it is unpardonable. Poor +president!"</p> + +<p>Endowed with the delicate perception which a solitary soul +acquires through constant meditation, through the exquisite +clear-sightedness with which a mind aloof from life fastens on +all that falls within its sphere, Eugenie, taught by suffering +and by her later education to divine thought, knew well that the +president desired her death that he might step into possession of +their immense fortune, augmented by the property of his uncle the +notary and his uncle the abbe, whom it had lately pleased God to +call to himself. The poor solitary pitied the president. +Providence avenged her for the calculations and the indifference +of a husband who respected the hopeless passion on which she +spent her life because it was his surest safeguard. To give life +to a child would give death to his hopes,--the hopes of +selfishness, the joys of ambition, which the president cherished +as he looked into the future.</p> + +<p>God thus flung piles of gold upon this prisoner to whom gold +was a matter of indifference, who longed for heaven, who lived, +pious and good, in holy thoughts, succoring the unfortunate in +secret, and never wearying of such deeds. Madame de Bonfons +became a widow at thirty- six. She is still beautiful, but with +the beauty of a woman who is nearly forty years of age. Her face +is white and placid and calm; her voice gentle and +self-possessed; her manners are simple. She has the noblest +qualities of sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never soiled +her soul by contact with the world; but she has also the rigid +bearing of an old maid and the petty habits inseparable from the +narrow round of provincial life. In spite of her vast wealth, she +lives as the poor Eugenie Grandet once lived. The fire is never +lighted on her hearth until the day when her father allowed it to +be lighted in the hall, and it is put out in conformity with the +rules which governed her youthful years. She dresses as her +mother dressed. The house in Saumur, without sun, without warmth, +always in shadow, melancholy, is an image of her life. She +carefully accumulates her income, and might seem parsimonious did +she not disarm criticism by a noble employment of her wealth. +Pious and charitable institutions, a hospital for old age, +Christian schools for children, a public library richly endowed, +bear testimony against the charge of avarice which some persons +lay at her door. The churches of Saumur owe much of their +embellishment to her. Madame de Bonfons (sometimes ironically +spoken of as mademoiselle) inspires for the most part reverential +respect: and yet that noble heart, beating only with tenderest +emotions, has been, from first to last, subjected to the +calculations of human selfishness; money has cast its frigid +influence upon that hallowed life and taught distrust of feelings +to a woman who is all feeling.</p> + +<p>"I have none but you to love me," she says to Nanon.</p> + +<p>The hand of this woman stanches the secret wounds in many +families. She goes on her way to heaven attended by a train of +benefactions. The grandeur of her soul redeems the narrowness of +her education and the petty habits of her early life.</p> + +<p>Such is the history of Eugenie Grandet, who is in the world +but not of it; who, created to be supremely a wife and mother, +has neither husband nor children nor family. Lately there has +been some question of her marrying again. The Saumur people talk +of her and of the Marquis de Froidfond, whose family are +beginning to beset the rich widow just as, in former days, the +Cruchots laid siege to the rich heiress. Nanon and Cornoiller +are, it is said, in the interests of the marquis. Nothing could +be more false. Neither la Grande Nanon nor Cornoiller has +sufficient mind to understand the corruptions of the world.</p> + + +<p></p> + +<p><br> + ADDENDUM</p> + +<p>The following personages appear in other stories of the Human +Comedy.</p> + +<p>Chaulieu, Eleonore, Duchesse de<br> + Letters of Two Brides</p> + +<p>Grandet, Victor-Ange-Guillaume<br> + The Firm of Nucingen</p> + +<p>Grandet, Charles<br> + The Firm of Nucingen</p> + +<p>Keller, Francois<br> + Domestic Peace<br> + Cesar Birotteau<br> + The Government Clerks<br> + The Member for Arcis</p> + +<p>Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des<br> + The Muse of the Department<br> + A Bachelor's Establishment<br> + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris<br> + The Government Clerks<br> + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life<br> + Ursule Mirouet</p> + +<p>Nathan, Madame Raoul<br> + The Muse of the Department<br> + Lost Illusions<br> + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris<br> + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life<br> + The Government Clerks<br> + A Bachelor's Establishment<br> + Ursule Mirouet<br> + The Imaginary Mistress<br> + A Prince of Bohemia<br> + A Daughter of Eve<br> + The Unconscious Humorists</p> + +<p>Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de<br> + Father Goriot<br> + The Thirteen<br> + Cesar Birotteau<br> + Melmoth Reconciled<br> + Lost Illusions<br> + A Distinguished Provincial at Paris<br> + The Commission in Lunacy<br> + Scenes from a Courtesan's Life<br> + Modeste Mignon<br> + The Firm of Nucingen<br> + Another Study of Woman<br> + A Daughter of Eve<br> + The Member for Arcis</p> + +<p>Roguin<br> + Cesar Birotteau<br> + Eugenie Grandet<br> + A Bachelor's Establishment<br> + The Vendetta</p> + +<p></p> + +<p>End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore +de Balzac</p> + +Project Gutenberg Etext of Eugenie Grandet, by Honore de Balzac +******This file should be named gngnd10.txt or gngnd10.zip***** +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, gngnd11.txt. +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gngnd10a.txt. +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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