Eugénie and her mother both gave Charles a look, which the young man could not mistake.
“What do you mean by that, uncle? Since my mother died …” (here his voice softened a little) “there is no misfortune possible for me. …”
“Who can know what afflictions God may send to make trial of us, nephew,” said his aunt.
“Tut, tut, tut,” muttered Grandet, “here you are beginning with your folly already! I am sorry to see that you have such white hands, nephew.”
He displayed the fists, like shoulders of mutton, with which nature had terminated his own arms.
“That is the sort of hand to rake the crowns together! You put the kind of leather on your feet that we used to make pocketbooks of to keep bills in. That is the way you have been brought up. That’s bad! That’s bad!”
“What do you mean, uncle? I’ll be hanged if I understand one word of this.”
“Come along,” said Grandet.
The miser shut his knife with a snap, drained his glass, and opened the door.
“Oh! keep up your courage, cousin!”
Something in the girl’s voice sent a sudden chill through Charles; he followed his formidable relative with dreadful misgivings. Eugénie and her mother and Nanon went into the kitchen; an uncontrollable anxiety led them to watch the two actors in the scene which was about to take place in the damp little garden.
Uncle and nephew walked together in silence at first. Grandet felt the situation to be a somewhat awkward one; not that he shrank at all from telling Charles of his father’s death, but he felt a kind of pity for a young man left in this way without a penny in the world, and he cast about for phrases that should break this cruel news as gently as might be. “You have lost your father!” he could say that; there was nothing in that; fathers usually predecease their children. But, “You have not a penny!” All the woes of the world were summed up in those words, so for the third time the worthy man walked the whole length of the path in the centre of the garden, crunching the gravel beneath his heavy boots, and no word was said.
At all great crises in our lives, any sudden joy or great sorrow, there comes a vivid consciousness of our surroundings that stamps them on the memory forever; and Charles, with every faculty strained and intent, saw the box-edging to the borders, the falling autumn leaves, the mouldering walls, the gnarled and twisted boughs of the fruit-trees, and till his dying day every picturesque detail of the little garden came back with the memory of the supreme hour of that early sorrow.
“It is very fine, very warm,” said Grandet, drawing in a deep breath of air.
“Yes, uncle, but why—”
“Well, my boy,” his uncle resumed, “I have some bad news for you. Your father is very ill …”
“What am I doing here?” cried Charles. “Nanon!” he shouted, “order post horses! I shall be sure to find a carriage of some sort in the place, I suppose,” he added, turning to his uncle, who had not stirred from where he stood.
“Horses and a carriage are of no use,” Grandet answered, looking at Charles, who immediately stared straight before him in silence. “Yes, my poor boy, you guess what has happened; he is dead. But that is nothing; there is something worse; he has shot himself through the head—”
“My father?”
“Yes, but that is nothing either. The newspapers are discussing it, as if it were any business of theirs. There, read for yourself.”
Grandet had borrowed Cruchot’s paper, and now he laid the fatal paragraph before Charles. The poor young fellow—he was only a lad as yet—made no attempt to hide his emotion, and burst into tears.
“Come, that is better,” said Grandet to himself. “That look in his eyes frightened me. He is crying; he will pull through.—Never mind, my poor nephew,” Grandet resumed aloud, not knowing whether Charles heard him or not, “that is nothing, you will get over it, but—”
“Never! never! My father! my father!”
“He has ruined you; you are penniless.”
“What is that to me. Where is my father? … my father!” The sound of his sobbing filled the little garden, reverberated in ghastly echoes from the walls. Tears are as infectious as laughter; the three women wept with pity for him. Charles broke from his uncle without waiting to hear more, and sprang into the yard, found the staircase, and fled to his own room, where he flung himself across the bed and buried his face in the bedclothes, that he might give way to his grief in solitude as far as possible from these relations.
“Let him alone till the first shower is over,” said Grandet, going back to the parlor. Eugénie and her mother had hastily returned to their places, had dried their eyes, and were sewing with cold, trembling fingers.
“But that fellow is good for nothing,” went on Grandet; “he is so taken up with dead folk that he doesn’t even think about the money.”
Eugénie shuddered to hear the most sacred of sorrows spoken of in such a way; from that moment she began to criticise her father. Charles’ sobs, smothered though they were, rang through that house of echoes; the sounds seemed to come from under the earth, a heartrending wail that grew fainter towards the end of the day, and only ceased as night drew on.
“Poor boy!” said Mme. Grandee.
It was an unfortunate remark! Goodman Grandet looked at his wife, then at Eugénie, then at the sugar basin; he recollected the sumptuous breakfast prepared that morning for their unhappy kinsman, and planted himself in the middle of the room.
“Oh! by the by,” he said, in his usual cool, deliberate way, “I hope you will not carry your extravagance any further, Mme. Grandet; I do not give you my money for you to squander it on sugar for that young rogue.”
“Mother had nothing whatever to do
