“My father will not be back before dinner,” said Eugénie, in reply to an anxious look in her mother’s eyes.
The tones of Eugénie’s voice had grown strangely sweet; it was easy to see from her face and manner that the cousins had some thought in common. Their souls had rushed together, while perhaps as yet they scarcely knew the power or the nature of this force which was binding them each to each.
Charles sat in the dining-room; no one intruded upon his sorrow. Indeed, the three women had plenty to do. Grandet had gone without any warning, and his work-people were at a standstill. The slater came, the plumber, the bricklayer, and the carpenter followed; so did laborers, tenants, and vinedressers, some came to pay their dues, and others to receive them, and yet others to make bargains for the repairs which were being done. Mme. Grandet and Eugénie, therefore, were continually coming and going; they had to listen to interminable histories from laborers and country people.
Everything that came into the house Nanon promptly and securely stowed away in her kitchen. She always waited for her master’s instructions as to what should be kept, and what should be sold in the market. The worthy cooper, like many little country squires, was wont to drink his worst wine, and to reserve his spoiled or wind-fallen orchard fruit for home consumption.
Towards five o’clock that evening Grandet came back from Angers. He had made fourteen thousand francs on his gold, and carried a Government certificate bearing interest until the day when it should be transferred into rentes. He had left Cornoiller also in Angers to look after the horses, which had been nearly foundered by the night journey, and had given instructions to bring them back leisurely after they had had a thorough rest.
“I have been to Angers, wife,” he said; “and I am hungry—”
“Have you had nothing to eat since yesterday?” called Nanon from her kitchen.
“Nothing whatever,” said the worthy man.
Nanon brought in the soup, Des Grassins came to take his client’s instructions just as the family were sitting down to dinner, Grandet had not so much as seen his nephew all this time.
“Go on with your dinner, Grandet,” said the banker. “We can have a little chat. Have you heard what gold is fetching in Angers, and that people from Nantes are buying it there? I am going to send some over.”
“You need not trouble yourself,” answered his worthy client; “they have quite enough there by this time. I don’t like you to lose your labor when I can prevent it; we are too good friends for that.”
“But gold is at thirteen francs fifty centimes premium.”
“Say was at a premium.”
“How the deuce did you get to know that?”
“I went over to Angers myself last night,” Grandet told him in a low voice.
The banker started, and a whispered conversation followed; both des Grassins and Grandet looked at Charles from time to time, and once more a gesture of surprise escaped the banker, doubtless at the point where the old cooper commissioned him to purchase rentes to bring in a hundred thousand livres.
“M. Grandet,” said des Grassins, addressing Charles, “I am going to Paris, and if there is anything I can do for you—”
“Thank you, sir, there is nothing,” Charles replied.
“You must thank him more heartily than that, nephew. This gentleman is going to wind up your father’s business and settle with his creditors.”
“Then is there any hope of coming to an arrangement?” asked Charles.
“Why, are you not my nephew?” cried the cooper, with a fine assumption of pride. “Our honor is involved; is not your name Grandet?”
Charles rose from his chair, impulsively flung his arms about his uncle, turned pale, and left the room. Eugénie looked at her father with affection and pride in her eyes.
“Well, let us say goodbye, my good friend,” said Grandet. “I am very much at your service. Try to get round those fellows over yonder.”
The two diplomatists shook hands, and the cooper went to the door with his neighbor; he came back to the room again when he had closed the door on des Grassins, flung himself down in his easy chair, and said to Nanon: “Bring me some cordial.”
But he was too much excited to keep still; he rose and looked at old M. de la Bertellière’s portrait, and began to “dance a jig,” in Nanon’s phrase, singing to himself—
Once in the Gardes françaises
I had a grandpapa …
Nanon, Mme. Grandet, and Eugénie all looked at each other in silent dismay. The vinegrower’s ecstasies never boded any good.
The evening was soon over. Old Grandet went off early to bed, and no one was allowed to stay up after that; when he slept, everyone else must likewise sleep, much as in Poland, in the days of Augustus the Strong, whenever the king drank all his subjects were loyally tipsy. Wherefore, Nanon, Charles, and Eugénie were no less tired than the master of the house; and as for Mme. Grandet, she slept or woke, ate or drank, as her husband bade her. Yet during the two hours allotted to the digestion of his dinner the cooper was more facetious than he had ever been in his life before, and uttered not a few of his favorite aphorisms; one example will serve to plumb the depths of the cooper’s mind. When he had finished his cordial, he looked pensively at the glass, and thus delivered himself—
“You have no sooner set your lips to a glass than it is empty! Such is life. You cannot have your cake and eat it too, and you can’t turn over your money and keep it in your purse; if you could only do that, life would
