Eugenie Grandet, Honoré de Balzac [the reader ebook TXT] 📗

Your cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have seen him in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He wears linen as fine as the surplice of monsieur le cure."

"Nanon, please make us a _galette_."

"And who'll give me wood for the oven, and flour and butter for the cakes?" said Nanon, who in her function of prime-minister to Grandet assumed at times enormous importance in the eyes of Eugenie and her mother. "Mustn't rob the master to feast the cousin. You ask him for butter and flour and wood: he's your father, perhaps he'll give you some. See! there he is now, coming to give out the provisions."

Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard the staircase shaking under her father's step. Already she felt the effects of that virgin modesty and that special consciousness of happiness which lead us to fancy, not perhaps without reason, that our thoughts are graven on our foreheads and are open to the eyes of all. Perceiving for the first time the cold nakedness of her father's house, the poor girl felt a sort of rage that she could not put it in harmony with her cousin's elegance. She felt the need of doing something for him,--what, she did not know. Ingenuous and truthful, she followed her angelic nature without mistrusting her impressions or her feelings. The mere sight of her cousin had wakened within her the natural yearnings of a woman,--yearnings that were the more likely to develop ardently because, having reached her twenty-third year, she was in the plenitude of her intelligence and her desires. For the first time in her life her heart was full of terror at the sight of her father; in him she saw the master of the fate, and she fancied herself guilty of wrong-doing in hiding from his knowledge certain thoughts. She walked with hasty steps, surprised to breathe a purer air, to feel the sun's rays quickening her pulses, to absorb from their heat a moral warmth and a new life. As she turned over in her mind some stratagem by which to get the cake, a quarrel--an event as rare as the sight of swallows in winter--broke out between la Grande Nanon and Grandet. Armed with his keys, the master had come to dole out provisions for the day's consumption.

"Is there any bread left from yesterday?" he said to Nanon.

"Not a crumb, monsieur."

Grandet took a large round loaf, well floured and moulded in one of the flat baskets which they use for baking in Anjou, and was about to cut it, when Nanon said to him,--

"We are five, to-day, monsieur."

"That's true," said Grandet, "but your loaves weigh six pounds; there'll be some left. Besides, these young fellows from Paris don't eat bread, you'll see."

"Then they must eat _frippe_?" said Nanon.

_Frippe_ is a word of the local lexicon of Anjou, and means any accompaniment of bread, from butter which is spread upon it, the commonest kind of _frippe_, to peach preserve, the most distinguished of all the _frippes_; those who in their childhood have licked the _frippe_ and left the bread, will comprehend the meaning of Nanon's speech.

"No," answered Grandet, "they eat neither bread nor _frippe_; they are something like marriageable girls."

After ordering the meals for the day with his usual parsimony, the goodman, having locked the closets containing the supplies, was about to go towards the fruit-garden, when Nanon stopped him to say,--

"Monsieur, give me a little flour and some butter, and I'll make a _galette_ for the young ones."

"Are you going to pillage the house on account of my nephew?"

"I wasn't thinking any more of your nephew than I was of your dog,--not more than you think yourself; for, look here, you've only forked out six bits of sugar. I want eight."

"What's all this, Nanon? I have never seen you like this before. What have you got in your head? Are you the mistress here? You sha'n't have more than six pieces of sugar."

"Well, then, how is your nephew to sweeten his coffee?"

"With two pieces; I'll go without myself."

"Go without sugar at your age! I'd rather buy you some out of my own pocket."

"Mind your own business."

In spite of the recent fall in prices, sugar was still in Grandet's eyes the most valuable of all the colonial products; to him it was always six francs a pound. The necessity of economizing it, acquired under the Empire, had grown to be the most inveterate of his habits. All women, even the greatest ninnies, know how to dodge and dodge to get their ends; Nanon abandoned the sugar for the sake of getting the _galette_.

"Mademoiselle!" she called through the window, "do you want some _galette_?"

"No, no," answered Eugenie.

"Come, Nanon," said Grandet, hearing his daughter's voice. "See here." He opened the cupboard where the flour was kept, gave her a cupful, and added a few ounces of butter to the piece he had already cut off.

"I shall want wood for the oven," said the implacable Nanon.

"Well, take what you want," he answered sadly; "but in that case you must make us a fruit-tart, and you'll cook the whole dinner in the oven. In that way you won't need two fires."

"Goodness!" cried Nanon, "you needn't tell me that."

Grandet cast a look that was well-nigh paternal upon his faithful deputy.

"Mademoiselle," she cried, when his back was turned, "we shall have the _galette_."

Pere Grandet returned from the garden with the fruit and arranged a plateful on the kitchen-table.

"Just see, monsieur," said Nanon, "what pretty boots your nephew has. What leather! why it smells good! What does he clean it with, I wonder? Am I to put your egg-polish on it?"

"Nanon, I think eggs would injure that kind of leather. Tell him you don't know how to black morocco; yes, that's morocco. He will get you something himself in Saumur to polish those boots with. I have heard that they put sugar into the blacking to make it shine."

"They look good to eat," said the cook, putting the boots to her nose. "Bless me! if they don't smell like madame's eau-de-cologne. Ah! how funny!"

"Funny!" said her master. "Do you call it funny to put more money into boots than the man who stands in them is worth?"

"Monsieur," she said, when Grandet returned the second time, after locking the fruit-garden, "won't you have the _pot-au-feu_ put on once or twice a week on account of your nephew?"

"Yes."

"Am I to go to the butcher's?"

"Certainly not. We will make the broth of fowls; the farmers will bring them. I shall tell Cornoiller to shoot some crows; they make the best soup in the world."

"Isn't it true, monsieur, that crows eat the dead?"

"You are a fool, Nanon. They eat what they can get, like the rest of the world. Don't we all live on the dead? What are legacies?"

Monsieur Grandet, having no further orders to give, drew out his watch, and seeing that he had half an hour to dispose of before breakfast, he took his hat, went and kissed his daughter, and said to her:

"Do you want to come for a walk in the fields, down by the Loire? I have something to do there."

Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the father and daughter went down the winding street to the shore.

"Where are you going at this early hour?" said Cruchot, the notary, meeting them.

"To see something," answered Grandet, not duped by the matutinal appearance of his friend.

When Pere Grandet went to "see something," the notary knew by experience there was something to be got by going with him; so he went.

"Come, Cruchot," said Grandet, "you are one of my friends. I'll show you what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good ground."

"Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for those that were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?" said Maitre Cruchot, opening his eyes with amazement. "What luck you have had! To cut down your trees at the very time they ran short of white-wood at Nantes, and to sell them at thirty francs!"

Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most solemn moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to bring down upon her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet had now reached the magnificent fields which he owned on the banks of the Loire, where thirty workmen were employed in clearing away, filling up, and levelling the spots formerly occupied by the poplars.

"Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! Jean," he cried to a laborer, "m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, b-both ways."

"Four times eight feet," said the man.

"Thirty-two feet lost," said Grandet to Cruchot. "I had three hundred poplars in this one line, isn't that so? Well, then, three h-h-hundred times thir-thirty-two lost m-m-me five hundred in h-h-hay; add twice as much for the side rows,--fifteen hundred; the middle rows as much more. So we may c-c-call it a th-thousand b-b-bales of h-h-hay--"

"Very good," said Cruchot, to help out his friend; "a thousand bales are worth about six hundred francs."

"Say t-t-twelve hundred, be-c-cause there's three or four hundred francs on the second crop. Well, then, c-c-calculate that t-twelve thousand francs a year for f-f-forty years with interest c-c-comes to--"

"Say sixty thousand francs," said the notary.

"I am willing; c-c-comes t-t-to sixty th-th-thousand. Very good," continued Grandet, without stuttering: "two thousand poplars forty years old will only yield me fifty thousand francs. There's a loss. I have found that myself," said Grandet, getting on his high horse. "Jean, fill up all the holes except those at the bank of the river; there you are to plant the poplars I have bought. Plant 'em there, and they'll get nourishment from the government," he said, turning to Cruchot, and giving a slight motion to the wen on his nose, which expressed more than the most ironical of smiles.

"True enough; poplars should only be planted on poor soil," said Cruchot, amazed at Grandet's calculations.

"Y-y-yes, monsieur," answered the old man satirically.

Eugenie, who was gazing at the sublime scenery of the Loire, and paying no attention to her father's reckonings, presently turned an ear to the remarks of Cruchot when she heard him say,--

"So you have brought a son-in-law from Paris. All Saumur is talking about your nephew. I shall soon have the marriage-contract to draw up, hey! Pere Grandet?"

"You g-g-got up very early to t-t-tell me that," said Grandet, accompanying the remark with a motion of his wen. "Well, old c-c-comrade, I'll be frank, and t-t-tell you what you want t-t-to know. I would rather, do you see, f-f-fling my daughter into the Loire than g-g-give her to her c-c-cousin. You may t-t-tell that everywhere,--no, never mind; let the world t-t-talk."

This answer dazzled and blinded the young girl with sudden light. The distant hopes upspringing in her heart bloomed suddenly, became real, tangible, like a cluster of flowers, and she saw them cut down and wilting on the earth. Since the previous evening she had attached herself to Charles by those links of happiness which bind soul to soul; from henceforth suffering was to rivet them. Is it not the noble destiny of women to be more moved by the dark solemnities