Then she opened her door, went out on to the landing, and bent over the staircase to hear the sounds in the house.
“He is not getting up yet,” she thought. She heard Nanon’s morning cough as the good woman went to and fro, swept out the dining-room, lit the kitchen fire, chained up the dog, and talked to her friends the brutes in the stable.
Eugénie fled down the staircase, and ran over to Nanon, who was milking the cow.
“Nanon,” she cried, “do let us have some cream for my cousin’s coffee, there’s a dear.”
“But, mademoiselle, you can’t have cream off this morning’s milk,” said Nanon, as she burst out laughing. “I can’t make cream for you. Your cousin is as charming as charming can be, that he is! You haven’t seen him in that silk night rail of his, all flowers and gold! I did though! The linen he wears is every bit as fine as M. le Curé’s surplice.”
“Nanon, make some cake for us.”
“And who is to find the wood to heat the oven, and the flour and the butter?” asked Nanon, who in her capacity of Grandet’s prime minister was a person of immense importance in Eugénie’s eyes, and even in Eugénie’s mother’s. “Is he to be robbed to make a feast for your cousin? Ask for the butter and the flour and the firewood; he is your father, go and ask him, he may give them to you. There! there he is, just coming downstairs to see after the provisions—”
But Eugénie had escaped into the garden; the sound of her father’s footstep on the creaking staircase terrified her. She was conscious of a happiness that shrank from the observation of others, a happiness which, as we are apt to think, and perhaps not without reason, shines from our eyes, and is written at large upon our foreheads. And not only so, she was conscious of other thoughts. The bleak discomfort of her father’s house had struck her for the first time, and, with a dim feeling of vexation, the poor child wished that she could alter it all, and bring it more into harmony with her cousin’s elegance. She felt a passionate longing to do something for him, without the slightest idea what that something should be. The womanly instinct awakened in her at the first sight of her cousin was only the stronger because she had reached her three-and-twentieth year, and mind and heart were fully developed; and she was so natural and simple that she acted on the promptings of her angelic nature without submitting herself, her impressions, or her feelings to any introspective process.
For the first time in her life the sight of her father struck a sort of terror into her heart; she felt that he was the master of her fate, and that she was guiltily hiding some of her thoughts from him. She began to walk hurriedly up and down, wondering how it was that the air was so fresh; there was a reviving force in the sunlight, it seemed to be within her as well as without, it was as if a new life had begun.
While she was still thinking how to gain her end concerning the cake, a quarrel came to pass between Nanon and Grandet, a thing as rare as a winter swallow. The goodman had just taken his keys, and was about to dole out the provisions required for the day.
“Is there any bread left over from yesterday?” he asked of Nanon.
“Not a crumb, sir.”
Grandet took up a large loaf, round in form and close in consistence, shaped in one of the flat baskets which they use for baking in Anjou, and was about to cut it, when Nanon broke in upon him with—
“There are five of us today, sir.”
“True,” answered Grandet; “but these loaves of yours weigh six pounds apiece; there will be some left over. Besides, these young fellows from Paris never touch bread, as you will soon see.”
“Then do they eat ‘kitchen’?” asked Nanon.
This word “kitchen” in the Angevin dictionary signifies anything which is spread upon bread; from butter, the commonest variety, to preserved peaches, the most distinguished of all kitchens; and those who, as small children, have nibbled off the kitchen and left the bread, will readily understand the bearing of Nanon’s remark.
“No,” replied Grandet with much gravity, “they eat neither bread nor kitchen; they are like a girl in love, as you may say.”
Having at length cut down the day’s rations to the lowest possible point, the miser was about to go to his fruit-loft, first carefully locking up the cupboards of his storeroom, when Nanon stopped him.
“Just give me some flour and butter, sir,” she said, “and I will make a cake for the children.”
“Are you going to turn the house upside down because my nephew is here?”
“Your nephew was no more in my mind than your dog, no more than he was in yours. … There, now! you have only put out six lumps of sugar, and I want eight.”
“Come, come, Nanon; I have never seen you like this before. What has come over you? Are you mistress here? You will have six lumps of sugar and no more.”
“Oh, very well; and what is your
