“Take care,” she said, “or you may love him.”
“Love him!” said Eugénie. “Ah! if you only knew what my father said.”
Charles moved slightly as he lay, and saw his aunt and cousin.
“I have lost my father,” he cried; “my poor father! If he had only trusted me and told me about his losses, we might have worked together to repair them. Mon Dieu! my kind father! I was so sure that I should see him again, and I said goodbye so carelessly, I am afraid, never thinking …”
His words were interrupted by sobs.
“We will surely pray for him,” said Mme. Grandet. “Submit yourself to the will of God.”
“Take courage, cousin,” said Eugénie, gently; “nothing can give your father back to you; you must now think how to save your honor …”
A woman always has her wits about her, even in her capacity of comforter, and with instinctive tact Eugénie sought to divert her cousin’s mind from his sorrow by leading him to think about himself.
“My honor?” cried the young man, hastily pushing back the hair from his eyes. He sat upright upon the bed, and folded his arms. “Ah! true. My uncle said that my father had failed.”
He hid his face in his hands with a heartrending cry of pain.
“Leave me! leave me! cousin Eugénie,” he entreated. “Oh! God forgive my father, for he must have been terribly unhappy!”
There was something in the sight of this young sorrow, this utter abandonment of grief, that was horribly engaging. It was a sorrow that shrank from the gaze of others, and Charles’ gesture of entreaty that they should leave him to himself was understood by Eugénie and her mother. They went silently downstairs again, took their places by the great window, and sewed on for nearly an hour without a word to each other.
Eugénie had looked round the room; it was a stolen glance. In one of those hasty surveys by which a girl sees everything in a moment, she had noticed the pretty trifles on the toilette-table—the scissors, the razors mounted with gold. The gleams of splendor and luxury, seen amidst all this misery, made Charles still more interesting in her eyes, perhaps by the very force of the contrast. Their life had been so lonely and so quiet; such an event as this, with its painful interest, had never broken the monotony of their lives; little had occurred to stir their imaginations, and now this tragical drama was being enacted under their eyes.
“Mamma,” said Eugénie, “shall we wear mourning?”
“Your father will decide that,” replied Mme. Grandet, and once more they sewed in silence. Eugénie’s needle moved with a mechanical regularity, which betrayed her preoccupation of mind. The first wish of this adorable girl was to share her cousin’s mourning. About four o’clock a sharp knock at the door sent a sudden thrill of terror through Mme. Grandet.
“What can have brought your father back?” she said to her daughter.
The vinegrower came in in high good humor. He rubbed his hands so energetically that nothing but a skin like leather could have borne it, and indeed his hands were tanned like Russia leather, though the fragrant pine-rosin and incense had been omitted in the process. For a time he walked up and down and looked at the weather, but at last his secret escaped him.
“I have hooked them, wife,” he said, without stammering; “I have them safe. Our wine is sold! The Dutchmen and Belgians were setting out this morning; I hung about in the marketplace in front of their inn, looking as simple as I could. What’s-his-name—you know the man—came up to me. All the best growers are hanging off and holding their vintages; they wanted to wait, and so they can, I have not hindered them. Our Belgian was at his wits’ end, I saw that. So the bargain was struck; he is taking the whole of our vintage at two hundred francs the hogshead, half of it paid down at once in gold, and I have promissory notes for the rest. There are six louis for you. In three months’ time prices will go down.”
The last words came out quietly enough, but there was something so sardonic in the tone that if the little knots of growers, then standing in the twilight in the marketplace of Saumur, in dismay at the news of Grandet’s sale, had heard him speak, they would have shuddered; there would have been a panic on the market—wines would have fallen fifty percent.
“You have a thousand hogsheads this year, father, have you not?” asked Eugénie.
“Yes, little girl.”
These words indicated that the cooper’s joy had indeed reached high-water mark.
“That will mean two hundred thousand francs?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle Grandet.”
“Well, then, father, you can easily help Charles.”
The surprise, the wrath and bewilderment with which Belshazzar beheld Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin written upon his palace wall were as nothing compared with Grandet’s cold fury; he had forgotten all about Charles, and now he found that all his daughter’s inmost thoughts were of his nephew, and that this arithmetic of hers referred to him. It was exasperating.
“Look here!” he thundered; “ever since that scapegrace set foot in my house everything has gone askew. You take it upon yourselves to buy sugarplums, and make a great set-out for him. I will not have these doings. I should think, at my age, I ought to know what is right and proper to do. At any rate, I have no need to take lessons from my daughter, nor from anyone else. I shall do for my nephew whatever it is right and proper for me to do; it is no business of yours, you need not meddle in it.—And now, as for you, Eugénie,” he added, turning towards her, “if you say another word about it, I will send you and Nanon
