“Because you are come of age,” Grandet interrupted his daughter, “you think you can set yourself to thwart me, I suppose? Mind what you are about, Eugénie—”
“But, father, your own brother’s son ought not to have to go without sugar in your house.”
“Tut, tut, tut, tut!” came from the cooper in a cadence of four semitones. “ ’Tis ‘my nephew’ here, and ‘my brother’s son’ there; Charles is nothing to us, he has not a brass farthing. His father is a bankrupt, and when the young sprig has cried as much as he wishes, he shall clear out of this; I will not have my house turned topsy-turvy for him.”
“What is a bankrupt, father?” asked Eugénie.
“A bankrupt,” replied her father, “is guilty of the most dishonorable action that can dishonor a man.”
“It must be a very great sin,” said Mme. Grandet, “and our brother will perhaps be eternally lost.”
“There you are with your preachments,” her husband retorted, shrugging his shoulders. “A bankrupt, Eugénie,” her father continued, “is a thief whom the law unfortunately takes under its protection. People trusted Guillaume Grandet with their goods, confiding in his character for fair-dealing and honesty; he has taken all they have, and left them nothing but the eyes in their heads to cry over their losses with. A bankrupt is worse than a highwayman; a highwayman sets upon you, and you have a chance to defend yourself; he risks his life besides, while the other—Charles is disgraced in fact.”
The words filled the poor girl’s heart; they weighed upon her with all their weight; she herself was so scrupulously conscientious; no flower in the depths of a forest had grown more delicately free from spot or stain; she knew none of the maxims of worldly wisdom, and nothing of its quibbles and its sophistries. So she accepted her father’s cruel definition and sweeping statements as to bankrupts; he drew no distinction between a fraudulent bankruptcy and a failure from unavoidable causes, and how should she?
“But, father, could you not have prevented this misfortune?”
“My brother did not ask my advice; besides, his liabilities amount to four millions.”
“How much is a million, father?” asked Eugénie, with the simplicity of a child who would fain have its wish fulfilled at once.
“A million?” queried Grandet. “Why, it is a million francs, two hundred thousand five-franc pieces; there are twenty sous in a franc, and it takes five francs of twenty sous each to make a five-franc piece.”
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” cried Eugénie, “how came my uncle to have four millions of his own? Is there really anybody in France who has so many millions as that?”
Grandet stroked his daughter’s chin and smiled. The wen seemed to grow larger.
“What will become of cousin Charles?”
“He will set out for the East Indies, and try to make a fortune. That is his father’s wish.”
“But has he any money to go with?”
“I shall pay his passage out as far as … yes … as far as Nantes.”
Eugénie sprang up and flung her arms about her father’s neck.
“Oh! father,” she said, “you are good!”
Her warm embrace embarrassed Grandet somewhat; perhaps, too, his conscience was not quite at ease.
“Does it take a long while to make a million?” she asked.
“Lord! yes,” said the cooper; “you know what a Napoleon is; well, then, it takes fifty thousand of them to make a million.”
“Mamma, we will have a neuvaine said for him.”
“That was what I was thinking,” her mother replied.
“Just like you! always thinking how to spend money. Really, one might suppose that we had any amount of money to throw away!”
As he spoke a sound of low, hoarse sobbing, more ominous than any which had preceded it, came from the garret. Eugénie and her mother shuddered,
“Nanon,” called Grandet, “go up and see that he is not killing himself.”
“Look here! you two,” he continued, turning to his wife and daughter, whose cheeks grew white at his tones, “there is to be no nonsense, mind! I am leaving the house. I am going round to see the Dutchmen who are going today. Then I shall go to Cruchot’s, and have a talk with him about all this.”
He went out. As soon as the door closed upon Grandet, Eugénie and her mother breathed more freely. The girl had never felt constraint in her father’s presence until that morning; but a few hours had wrought rapid changes in her ideas and feelings.
“Mamma, how many louis is a hogshead of wine worth?”
“Your father gets something between a hundred and a hundred and fifty francs for his; sometimes two hundred I believe, from what I have heard him say.”
“And would there be fourteen hundred hogsheads in a vintage?”
“I don’t know how many there are, child, upon my word; your father never talks about business to me.”
“But, anyhow, papa must be rich.”
“Maybe. But M. Cruchot told me that your father bought Froidfond two years ago. That would be a heavy pull on him.”
Eugénie, now at a loss as to her father’s wealth, went no further with her arithmetic.
“He did not even so much as see me, the poor dear!” said Nanon on her return. “He is lying there on his bed like a calf, crying like a Magdalen, you never saw the like! Poor young man, what can be the matter with him?”
“Let us go up at once and comfort him, mamma; if we hear a knock, we will come downstairs.”
There was something in the musical tones of her daughter’s voice which Mme. Grandet could not resist. Eugénie was sublime; she was a girl no longer, she was a woman. With beating hearts they climbed the stairs and went together to Charles’ room. The door was open. The young man saw nothing, and heard nothing; he was absorbed in his grief, an inarticulate cry broke from him now and again.
“How he loves his father!” said Eugénie in a low voice, and in her tone there was an unmistakable accent which betrayed the passion in her
