M. le Président de Bonfons was the hero of the circle; they lauded his talents, his personal appearance, his learning, his amiability; he was an inexhaustible subject of admiring comment. Such an one would call attention to the fact that in seven years the magistrate had largely increased his fortune; Bonfons had at least ten thousand francs a year; and his property, like the lands of all the Cruchots in fact, lay within the compass of the heiress’ vast estates.
“Do you know, mademoiselle,” another courtier would remark, “that the Cruchots have forty thousand livres a year among them!”
“And they are putting money by,” said Mlle. de Gribeaucourt, an old and trusty Cruchotine. “Quite lately a gentleman came from Paris on purpose to offer M. Cruchot two hundred thousand francs for his professional connection. If he could gain an appointment as justice of the peace, he ought to take the offer.”
“He means to succeed M. de Bonfons as President, and is taking steps to that end,” said Mme. d’Orsonval, “for M. le Président will be Councillor, and then a President of a Court; he is so gifted that he is sure to succeed.”
“Yes,” said another, “he is a very remarkable man. Do you not think so, mademoiselle?”
M. le Président had striven to act up to the part he wanted to play. He was forty years old, his countenance was dark and ill-favored, he had, moreover, the wizened look which is frequently seen in men of his profession; but he affected the airs of youth, sported a malacca cane, refrained from taking snuff in Mlle. Grandet’s house, and went thither arrayed in a white cravat and a shirt with huge frills, which gave him a quaint family resemblance to a turkey-gobbler. He called the fair heiress “our dear Eugénie,” and spoke as if he were an intimate friend of the family. In fact, but for the number of those assembled, and the substitution of whist for loto, and the absence of M. and Mme. Grandet, the scene was scarcely changed; it might almost have been that first evening on which this story began.
The pack was still in pursuit of Eugénie’s millions; it was a more numerous pack now; they gave tongue together, and hunted down their prey more systematically.
If Charles had come back from the far-off Indies, he would have found the same motives at work and almost the same people. Mme. des Grassins, for whom Eugénie had nothing but kindness and pity, still remained to vex the Cruchots. Eugénie’s face still shone out against the dark background, and Charles (though invisible) reigned there supreme as in other days.
Yet some advance had been made. Eugénie’s birthday bouquet was never forgotten by the magistrate. Indeed, it had become an institution; every evening he brought the heiress a huge and wonderful bouquet. Mme. Cornoiller ostentatiously placed these offerings in a vase, and promptly flung them into a corner of the yard as soon as the visitors had departed.
In the early spring Mme. des Grassins made a move, and sought to trouble the felicity of the Cruchotins by talking to Eugénie of the Marquis de Froidfond, whose ruined fortunes might be retrieved if the heiress would return his estate to him by a marriage contract. Mme. des Grassins lauded the Marquis and his title to the skies; and, taking Eugénie’s quiet smile for consent, she went about saying that M. le Président Cruchot’s marriage was not such a settled thing as some people imagined.
“M. de Froidfond may be fifty years old,” she said, “but he looks no older than M. Cruchot; he is a widower, and has a family, it is true; but he is a marquis, he will be a peer of France one of these days, it is not such a bad match as times go. I know of my own certain knowledge that when old Grandet added his own property to the Froidfond estate he meant to graft his family into the Froidfonds. He often told me as much. Oh! he was a shrewd old man, was Grandet.”
“Ah! Nanon,” Eugénie said one evening, as she went to bed, “why has he not once written to me in seven years?”
While
