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.