雙語(yǔ)·歐也妮·葛朗臺(tái) 家庭的苦難

V

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.”

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.

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 a 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; “l(fā)et’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.”

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.