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.