One and all were at liberty to watch Charles at their leisure, without any fear of offending the master of the house, for by this time Grandet was deep in a long letter which he held in his hand. He had taken the only candle from the table beside him, without any regard for the convenience of his guests or for their pleasure.
It seemed to Eugénie, who had never in her life beheld such a paragon, that her cousin was some seraphic vision, some creature fallen from the skies. The perfume exhaled by those shining locks, so gracefully curled, was delightful to her. She would fain have passed her fingers over the delicate, smooth surface of those wonderful gloves. She envied Charles his little hands, his complexion, the youthful refinement of his features. In fact, the sight of her cousin gave her the same sensations of exquisite pleasure that might be aroused in a young man by the contemplation of the fanciful portraits of ladies in English Keepsakes, portraits drawn by Westall and engraved by Finden, with a burin so skilful that you fear to breathe upon the vellum surface lest the celestial vision should disappear. And yet—how should the impression produced by a young exquisite upon an ignorant girl whose life was spent in darning stockings and mending her father’s clothes, in the dirty wainscoted window embrasure whence, in an hour, she saw scarcely one passerby in the silent street, how should her dim impressions be conveyed by such an image as this?
Charles drew from his pocket a handkerchief embroidered by the great lady who was traveling in Scotland. It was a dainty piece of work wrought by love, in hours that were lost to love; Eugénie gazed at her cousin, and wondered, was he really going to use it? Charles’ manners, his way of adjusting his eyeglass, his superciliousness, his affectations, his manifest contempt for the little box which had but lately given so much pleasure to the wealthy heiress, and which in his eyes seemed to be a very absurd piece of rubbish; everything, in short, which had given offence to the Cruchots and the Grassinistes pleased Eugénie so much that she lay awake for long that night thinking about this phoenix of a cousin.
Meanwhile the numbers were drawn but languidly, and very soon the loto came to an end altogether. Big Nanon came into the room and said aloud, “Madame, you will have to give me some sheets to make the gentleman’s bed.”
Mme. Grandet disappeared with Nanon, and Mme. des Grassins said in a low voice, “Let us keep our sous, and give up the game.”
Each player took back his coin from the chipped saucer which held the stakes. Then there was a general stir, and a wheeling movement in the direction of the fire.
“Is the game over?” inquired Grandet, still reading his letter.
“Yes, yes,” answered Mme. des Grassins, seating herself next to Charles.
Eugénie left the room to help her mother and Nanon, moved by a thought that came with the vague feeling that stirred her heart for the first time. If she had been questioned by a skilful confessor, she would have no doubt admitted that her thought was neither for Nanon nor for her mother, but that she was seized with a restless and urgent desire to see that all was right in her cousin’s room, to busy herself on her cousin’s account, to see that nothing was forgotten, to think of everything he might require, and to make sure that it was there, to make certain that everything was as neat and pretty as might be. She alone, so Eugénie thought already, could enter into her cousin’s ideas and understand his tastes.
As a matter of fact, she came just at the right moment. Her mother and Nanon were about to leave the room in the belief that it was all in readiness; Eugénie convinced them in a moment that everything was yet to do. She filled Nanon’s head with these ideas: the sheets had not been aired, Nanon must bring the warming-pan, there were ashes, there was a fire downstairs. She herself covered the old table with a clean white cloth, and told Nanon to mind and be sure to change it every morning. There must be a good fire in the room; she overcame her mother’s objections; she induced Nanon to put a good supply of firewood outside in the passage, and to say nothing about it to her father. She ran downstairs into the parlor, sought in one of the sideboards for an old japanned tray which had belonged to the late M. de la Bertellière, and from the same source she procured a hexagonal crystal glass, a little gilt spoon with almost all the gilding rubbed off, and an old slender-necked glass bottle with Cupids engraved upon it; these she deposited in triumph on a corner of the chimneypiece. More ideas had crowded up in her mind during that one quarter of an hour than in all the years since she had come into the world.
“Mamma,” she began, “he will never be able to bear the smell of a tallow candle. Suppose that we buy a wax candle?”
She fled, lightly as a bird, to find her purse, and drew thence the five francs which she had received for the month’s expenses.
“Here, Nanon, be quick.”
“But what will your father say?”
This dreadful objection was raised by Mme. Grandet when she saw her daughter with an old Sèvres china sugar-basin which Grandet had
