“My uncle?” said Eugénie.
“Oh! that poor boy!” cried Mme. Grandet.
“Poor indeed!” said Grandet; “he has not a penny.”
“Ah! well, he is sleeping as if he were the king of all the world,” said Nanon pityingly.
Eugénie could not eat. Her heart was wrung as a woman’s heart can be when for the first time her whole soul is filled with sorrow and compassion for the sorrow of one she loves. She burst into tears.
“You did not know your uncle, so what is there to cry about?” said her father with a glance like a hungry tiger’s; just such a glance as he would give, no doubt, to his heaps of gold.
“But who wouldn’t feel sorry for the poor young man, sir?” said the serving-maid; “sleeping there like a log, and knowing nothing of his fate.”
“I did not speak to you, Nanon! Hold your tongue.”
In that moment Eugénie learned that a woman who loves must dissemble her feelings. She was silent.
“Until I come back, Mme. Grandet, you will say nothing about this to him, I hope,” the old cooper continued. “They are making a ditch in my meadows along the road, and I must go and see after it. I shall come back for the second breakfast at noon, and then my nephew and I will have a talk about his affairs. As for you, Mademoiselle Eugénie, if you are crying over that popinjay, let us have no more of it, child. He will be off posthaste to the Indies directly, and you will never set eyes on him any more.”
Her father took up his gloves, which were lying on the rim of his hat, put them on in his cool, deliberate way, inserting the fingers of one hand between those of the other, dovetail fashion, so as to thrust them down well into the tips of the gloves, and then he went out.
“Oh! mamma, I can scarcely breathe!” cried Eugénie when she was alone with her mother; “I have never suffered like this!”
Mme. Grandet, seeing her daughter’s white face, opened the window and let fresh air into the room.
“I feel better now,” said Eugénie after a little.
This nervous excitement in one who was usually so quiet and self-possessed produced an effect on Mme. Grandet. She looked at her daughter, and her mother’s love and sympathetic instinct told her everything. But, in truth, the celebrated Hungarian twin-sisters, united to each other by one of Nature’s errors, could scarcely have lived in closer sympathy than Eugénie and her mother. Were they not always together; together in the window where they sat the livelong day, together at church? Did they not breathe the same air even when they slept?
“My poor little girl!” said Mme. Grandet, drawing Eugénie’s head down till it rested upon her bosom.
Her daughter lifted her face, and gave her mother a questioning look which seemed to read her inmost thoughts.
“Why must he be sent to the Indies?” said the girl. “If he is in trouble, ought he not to stay here with us? Is he not our nearest relation?”
“Yes, dear child, that would only be natural; but your father has reasons for what he does, and we must respect them.”
Mother and daughter sat in silence, the one on her chair mounted on the wooden blocks, the other in her little armchair. Both women took up their needlework. Eugénie felt that her mother understood her, and her heart was full of gratitude for such tender sympathy.
“How kind you are, dear mamma!” she said as she took her mother’s hand and kissed it.
The worn, patient face, aged with many sorrows, lighted up at the words.
“Do you like him?” asked Eugénie.
For all answer, Mme. Grandet smiled. Then after a moment’s pause she murmured, “You cannot surely love him already? That would be a pity.”
“Why would it be a pity?” asked Eugénie. “You like him, Nanon likes him, why should I not like him too? Now then, mamma, let us set the table for his breakfast.”
She threw down her work, and her mother followed her example, saying as she did so, “You are a mad girl!”
But none the less she did sanction her daughter’s freak by assisting in it.
Eugénie called Nanon.
“Haven’t you all you want yet, mamselle?”
“Nanon, surely you will have some cream by twelve o’clock?”
“By twelve o’clock? Oh! yes,” answered the old servant,
“Very well, then, let the coffee be very strong. I have heard M. des Grassins say that they drink their coffee very strong in Paris. Put in plenty.”
“And where is it to come from?”
“You must buy some.”
“And suppose the master meets me?”
“He is down by the river.”
“I will just slip out then. But M. Fessard asked me when I went about the candle if the Three Holy Kings were paying us a visit. Our goings on will be all over the town.”
“Your father would be quite capable of beating us,” said Mme. Grandet, “if he suspected anything of all this.”
“Oh! well, then, never mind; he will beat us, we will take the beating on our knees.”
At this Mme. Grandet raised her eyes to heaven, and said no more. Nanon put on her sun bonnet and went out. Eugénie spread a clean linen tablecloth, then she went upstairs in quest of some bunches of grapes which she had amused herself by hanging from some strings up in the attic. She tripped lightly along the corridor, so as not to disturb her cousin, and could not resist the temptation to stop a moment before the door to listen to his even breathing.
“Trouble wakes while he is sleeping,” she said to herself.
She arranged her grapes on the few last green vine leaves as daintily as any experienced chef d’office, and set them on the table in triumph. She levied contributions on the pears which her father had counted out, and piled them up pyramid fashion, with autumn leaves among them. She came and went, and danced in and out. She might have ransacked the house; the will was in
