Mme. Grandet and her daughter gazed at each other in amazement.
“Take back the money, father; we want nothing, nothing but your love.”
“Oh! well, just as you like,” he said, as he pocketed the louis, “let us live together like good friends. Let us all go down to the dining-room and have dinner, and play loto every evening, and put our two sous into the pool, and be as merry as the maids. Eh! my wife?”
“Alas! how I wish that I could, if you would like it,” said the dying woman, “but I am not strong enough to get up.”
“Poor mother!” said the cooper, “you do not know how much I love you; and you too, child!”
He drew his daughter to him and embraced her with fervor.
“Oh! how pleasant it is to kiss one’s daughter after a squabble, my little girl! There! mother, do you see? We are quite at one again now. Just go and lock that away,” he said to Eugénie, as he pointed to the case. “There! there! don’t be frightened; I will never say another word to you about it.”
M. Bergerin, who was regarded as the cleverest doctor in Saumur, came before very long. He told Grandet plainly after the interview that the patient was very seriously ill; that any excitement might be fatal to her; that with a light diet, perfect tranquillity, and the most constant care, her life might possibly be prolonged until the end of the autumn.
“Will it be an expensive illness?” asked the worthy householder. “Will she want a lot of physic?”
“Not much physic, but very careful nursing,” answered the doctor, who could not help smiling.
“After all, M. Bergerin, you are a man of honor,” said Grandet uneasily. “I can depend upon you, can I not? Come and see my wife whenever, and as often as you think it really necessary. Preserve her life. My good wife—I am very fond of her, you see, though I may not show it; it is all shut up inside me, and I am one that takes things terribly to heart; I am in trouble too. It all began with my brother’s death; I am spending, oh!—heaps of money in Paris for him—the very eyes out of my head in fact, and it seems as if there were no end to it. Good day, sir. If you can save my wife, save her, even if it takes a hundred, or two hundred francs.”
In spite of Grandet’s fervent wishes that his wife might be restored to health, for this question of the inheritance was like a foretaste of death for him; in spite of his readiness to fulfil the least wishes of the astonished mother and daughter in every possible way; in spite of Eugénie’s tenderest and most devoted care, it was evident that Mme. Grandet’s life was rapidly drawing to a close. Day by day she grew weaker, and, as often happens at her time of life, she had no strength to resist the disease that was wasting her away. She seemed to have no more vitality than the autumn leaves; and as the sunlight shining through the leaves turns them to gold, so she seemed to be transformed by the light of heaven. Her death was a fitting close to her life, a death wholly Christian; is not that saying that it was sublime? Her love for her daughter, her meek virtues, her angelic patience, had never shone more brightly than in that month of October, 1822, when she passed away. All through her illness she had never uttered the slightest complaint, and her spotless soul left earth for heaven with but one regret—for the daughter whose sweet companionship had been the solace of her dreary life, and for whom her dying eyes foresaw troubles and sorrows manifold. She trembled at the thought of this lamb, spotless as she herself was, left alone in the world among selfish beings who sought to despoil her of her fleece, her treasure.
“There is no happiness save in heaven,” she said just before she died; “you will know that one day, my child.”
On the morrow after her mother’s death, it seemed to Eugénie that she had yet one more reason for clinging fondly to the old house where she had been born, and where she had found life so hard of late—it became for her the place where her mother had died. She could not see the old chair set on little blocks of wood, the place by the window where her mother used to sit, without shedding tears. Her father showed her such tenderness, and took such care of her, that she began to think that she had never understood his nature; he used to come to her room and take her down to breakfast on his arm, and sit looking at her for whole hours with something almost like kindness in his eyes, with the same brooding look that he gave his gold. Indeed, the old cooper almost trembled before his daughter, and was altogether so unlike himself, that Nanon and the Cruchotins wondered at these signs of weakness, and set it down to his advanced age; they began to fear that the old man’s mind was giving way. But when the day came on which the family began to wear their mourning, M. Cruchot, who alone was in his client’s confidence, was invited to dinner, and these mysteries were explained. Grandet waited till the table had been cleared, and the doors carefully shut.
Then he began. “My dear child, you are your mother’s heiress, and there are some little matters of business that we must settle between us. Is not that so, eh, Cruchot?”
“Yes.”
“Is it really pressing; must it be settled today, father?”
“Yes, yes, little girl. I could not endure this suspense any longer, and I am sure that you would not make things hard for me.”
“Oh! father—”
“Well, then, everything must be decided tonight.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
“Why, little girl, it is
