“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.