“What does that matter to me, so long as it comes my way?” the old vinegrower answered.
“If you had a mind to give your daughter golden scissors, you could very well afford it,” said the Abbé.
“I shall give her something better than scissors,” Grandet answered.
“What an idiot my nephew is!” thought the Abbé, as he looked at the magistrate, whose dark, ill-favored countenance was set off to perfection at that moment by a shock head of hair. “Why couldn’t he have hit on some expensive piece of foolery?”
“We will take a hand at cards, Mme. Grandet,” said Mme. des Grassins.
“But as we are all here, there are enough of us for two tables …”
“As today is Eugénie’s birthday, why not all play together at loto?” said old Grandet; “these two children could join in the game.”
The old cooper, who never played at any game whatever, pointed to his daughter and Adolphe.
“Here, Nanon, move the tables out.”
“We will help you, Mademoiselle Nanon,” said Mme. des Grassins cheerfully; she was thoroughly pleased because she had pleased Eugénie.
“I have never seen anything so pretty anywhere,” the heiress had said to her. “I have never been so happy in my life before.”
“It was Adolphe who chose it,” said Mme. des Grassins in the girl’s ear; “he brought it from Paris.”
“Go your ways, accursed scheming woman,” muttered the magistrate to himself. “If you or your husband ever find yourselves in a court of law, you shall be hard put to it to gain the day.”
The notary, calmly seated in his corner, watched the Abbé, and said to himself, “The des Grassins may do what they like; my fortune and my brother’s and my nephew’s fortunes altogether mount up to eleven hundred thousand francs. The des Grassins, at the very most, have only half as much, and they have a daughter. Let them give whatever they like, all will be ours some day—the heiress and her presents too.”
Two tables were in readiness by half-past eight o’clock. Mme. des Grassins, with her winning ways, had succeeded in placing her son next to Eugénie. The actors in the scene, so commonplace in appearance, so full of interest beneath the surface, each provided with slips of pasteboard of various colors and blue glass counters, seemed to be listening to the little jokes made by the old notary, who never drew a number without making some remark upon it, but they were all thinking of M. Grandet’s millions. The old cooper himself eyed the group with a certain self-complacency; he looked at Mme. des Grassins with her pink feathers and fresh toilette, at the banker’s soldierly face, at Adolphe, at the magistrate, at the Abbé and the notary, and within himself he said: “They are all after my crowns; that is what they are here for. It is for my daughter that they come to be bored here. Aha! and my daughter is for none of them, and all these people are so many harpoons to be used in my fishing.”
The merriment of this family party, the laughter, only sincere when it came from Eugénie or her mother, and to which the low whirring of Nanon’s spinning-wheel made an accompaniment, the sordid meanness playing for high stakes, the young girl herself, like some rare bird, the innocent victim of its high value, tracked down and snared by specious pretences of friendship; taken altogether, it was a sorry comedy that was being played in the old gray-painted parlor, by the dim light of the two candles. Was it not, however, a drama of all time, played out everywhere all over the world, but here reduced to its simplest expression? Old Grandet towered above the other actors, turning all this sham affection to his own account, and reaping a rich harvest from this simulated friendship. His face hovered above the scene like the interpretation of an evil dream. He was like the incarnation of the one god who yet finds worshipers in modern times, of Money and the power of wealth.
With him the gentler and sweeter impulses of human life only occupied the second place; but they so filled three purer hearts there, that there was no room in them for other thoughts—the hearts of Nanon, and of Eugénie and her mother. And yet, how much ignorance mingled with their innocent simplicity! Eugénie and her mother knew nothing of Grandet’s wealth; they saw everything through a medium of dim ideas peculiar to their own narrow world, and neither desired nor despised money, accustomed as they were to do without it. Nor were they conscious of an uncongenial atmosphere; the strength of their feelings, their inner life, made of them a strange exception in this gathering, wholly intent upon material interests. Appalling is the condition of man; there is no drop of happiness in his lot but has its source in ignorance.
Just as Mme. Grandet had won sixteen sous, the largest amount that had ever been punted beneath that roof, and big Nanon was beaming with delight at the sight of Madame pocketing that splendid sum, there was a knock at the house-door, so sudden and so loud that the women started on their chairs.
“No one in Saumur would knock in that way,” said the notary.
“What do they thump like that for?” said Nanon. “Do they want to break our door down?”
“Who the devil is it?” cried Grandet.
Nanon took up one of the candles and went to open the door. Grandet followed her.
“Grandet! Grandet!” cried his wife; a vague terror seized her, and she hurried to the door of the room.
The players all looked at each other.
“Suppose we go too?” said M. des Grassins. “That knock meant no good, it seemed to me.”
But M. des
