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

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About four o'clock, just as Eugenie and her mother had finished setting the table for six persons, and after the master of the house had brought up a few bottles of the exquisite wine which provincials cherish with true affection, Charles came down into the hall. The young fellow was pale; his gestures, the expression of his face, his glance, and the tones of his voice, all had a sadness which was full of grace. He was not pretending grief, he truly suffered; and the veil of pain cast over his features gave him an interesting air dear to the heart of women. Eugenie loved him the more for it. Perhaps she felt that sorrow drew him nearer to her. Charles was no longer the rich and distinguished young man placed in a sphere far above her, but a relation plunged into frightful misery. Misery begets equality. Women have this in common with the angels,--suffering humanity belongs to them. Charles and Eugenie understood each other and spoke only with their eyes; for the poor fallen dandy, orphaned and impoverished, sat apart in a corner of the room, and was proudly calm and silent. Yet, from time to time, the gentle and caressing glance of the young girl shone upon him and constrained him away from his sad thoughts, drawing him with her into the fields of hope and of futurity, where she loved to hold him at her side.


VII

At this moment the town of Saumur was more excited about the dinner given by Grandet to the Cruchots than it had been the night before at the sale of his vintage, though that constituted a crime of high-treason against the whole wine-growing community. If the politic old miser had given his dinner from the same idea that cost the dog of Alcibiades his tail, he might perhaps have been called a great man; but the fact is, considering himself superior to a community which he could trick on all occasions, he paid very little heed to what Saumur might say.

The des Grassins soon learned the facts of the failure and the violent death of Guillaume Grandet, and they determined to go to their client's house that very evening to commiserate his misfortune and show him some marks of friendship, with a view of ascertaining the motives which had led him to invite the Cruchots to dinner. At precisely five o'clock Monsieur C. de Bonfons and his uncle the notary arrived in their Sunday clothes. The party sat down to table and began to dine with good appetites. Grandet was grave, Charles silent, Eugenie dumb, and Madame Grandet did not say more than usual; so that the dinner was, very properly, a repast of condolence. When they rose from table Charles said to his aunt and uncle,--

"Will you permit me to retire? I am obliged to undertake a long and painful correspondence."

"Certainly, nephew."

As soon as the goodman was certain that Charles could hear nothing and was probably deep in his letter-writing, he said, with a dissimulating glance at his wife,--

"Madame Grandet, what we have to talk about will be Latin to you; it is half-past seven; you can go and attend to your household accounts. Good-night, my daughter."

He kissed Eugenie, and the two women departed. A scene now took place in which Pere Grandet brought to bear, more than at any other moment of his life, the shrewd dexterity he had acquired in his intercourse with men, and which had won him from those whose flesh he sometimes bit too sharply the nickname of "the old dog." If the mayor of Saumur had carried his ambition higher still, if fortunate circumstances, drawing him towards the higher social spheres, had sent him into congresses where the affairs of nations were discussed, and had he there employed the genius with which his personal interests had endowed him, he would undoubtedly have proved nobly useful to his native land. Yet it is perhaps equally certain that outside of Saumur the goodman would have cut a very sorry figure. Possibly there are minds like certain animals which cease to breed when transplanted from the climates in which they are born.

"M-m-mon-sieur le p-p-president, you said t-t-that b-b-bankruptcy--"

The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that while they listened they unconsciously made faces and moved their lips, as if pronouncing the words over which he was hesitating and stuttering at will. Here it may be well to give the history of this impediment of the speech and hearing of Monsieur Grandet. No one in Anjou heard better, or could pronounce more crisply the French language (with an Angevin accent) than the wily old cooper. Some years earlier, in spite of his shrewdness, he had been taken in by an Israelite, who in the course of the discussion held his hand behind his ear to catch sounds, and mangled his meaning so thoroughly in trying to utter his words that Grandet fell a victim to his humanity and was compelled to prompt the wily Jew with the words and ideas he seemed to seek, to complete himself the arguments of the said Jew, to say what that cursed Jew ought to have said for himself; in short, to be the Jew instead of being Grandet. When the cooper came out of this curious encounter he had concluded the only bargain of which in the course of a long commercial life he ever had occasion to complain. But if he lost at the time pecuniarily, he gained morally a valuable lesson; later, he gathered its fruits. Indeed, the goodman ended by blessing that Jew for having taught him the art of irritating his commercial antagonist and leading him to forget his own thoughts in his impatience to suggest those over which his tormentor was stuttering. No affair had ever needed the assistance of deafness, impediments of speech, and all the incomprehensible circumlocutions with which Grandet enveloped his ideas, as much as the affair now in hand. In the first place, he did not mean to shoulder the responsibility of his own scheme; in the next, he was determined to remain master of the conversation and to leave his real intentions in doubt.

"M-m-monsieur de B-B-Bonfons,"--for the second time in three years Grandet called the Cruchot nephew Monsieur de Bonfons; the president felt he might consider himself the artful old fellow's son-in-law,--"you-ou said th-th-that b-b-bankruptcy c-c-could, in some c-c-cases, b-b-be p-p-prevented b-b-by--"

"By the courts of commerce themselves. It is done constantly," said Monsieur C. de Bonfons, bestriding Grandet's meaning, or thinking he guessed it, and kindly wishing to help him out with it. "Listen."

"Y-yes," said Grandet humbly, with the mischievous expression of a boy who is inwardly laughing at his teacher while he pays him the greatest attention.

"When a man so respected and important as, for example, your late brother--"

"M-my b-b-brother, yes."

"--is threatened with insolvency--"

"They c-c-call it in-ins-s-solvency?"

"Yes; when his failure is imminent, the court of commerce, to which he is amenable (please follow me attentively), has the power, by a decree, to appoint a receiver. Liquidation, you understand, is not the same as failure. When a man fails, he is dishonored; but when he merely liquidates, he remains an honest man."

"T-t-that's very d-d-different, if it d-d-doesn't c-c-cost m-m-more," said Grandet.

"But a liquidation can be managed without having recourse to the courts at all. For," said the president, sniffing a pinch of snuff, "don't you know how failures are declared?"

"N-n-no, I n-n-never t-t-thought," answered Grandet.

"In the first place," resumed the magistrate, "by filing the schedule in the record office of the court, which the merchant may do himself, or his representative for him with a power of attorney duly certified. In the second place, the failure may be declared under compulsion from the creditors. Now if the merchant does not file his schedule, and if no creditor appears before the courts to obtain a decree of insolvency against the merchant, what happens?"

"W-w-what h-h-happens?"

"Why, the family of the deceased, his representatives, his heirs, or the merchant himself, if he is not dead, or his friends if he is only hiding, liquidate his business. Perhaps you would like to liquidate your brother's affairs?"

"Ah! Grandet," said the notary, "that would be the right thing to do. There is honor down here in the provinces. If you save your name--for it is your name--you will be a man--"

"A noble man!" cried the president, interrupting his uncle.

"Certainly," answered the old man, "my b-b-brother's name was G-G-Grandet, like m-m-mine. Th-that's c-c-certain; I d-d-don't d-d-deny it. And th-th-this l-l-liquidation might be, in m-m-many ways, v-v-very advan-t-t-tageous t-t-to the interests of m-m-my n-n-nephew, whom I l-l-love. But I must consider. I don't k-k-know the t-t-tricks of P-P-Paris. I b-b-belong to Sau-m-mur, d-d-don't you see? M-m-my vines, my d-d-drains--in short, I've my own b-b-business. I never g-g-give n-n-notes. What are n-n-notes? I t-t-take a good m-m-many, but I have never s-s-signed one. I d-d-don't understand such things. I have h-h-heard say that n-n-notes c-c-can be b-b-bought up."

"Of course," said the president. "Notes can be bought in the market, less so much per cent. Don't you understand?"

Grandet made an ear-trumpet of his hand, and the president repeated his words.

"Well, then," replied the man, "there's s-s-something to be g-g-got out of it? I k-know n-nothing at my age about such th-th-things. I l-l-live here and l-l-look after the v-v-vines. The vines g-g-grow, and it's the w-w-wine that p-p-pays. L-l-look after the v-v-vintage, t-t-that's my r-r-rule. My c-c-chief interests are at Froidfond. I c-c-can't l-l-leave my h-h-house to m-m-muddle myself with a d-d-devilish b-b-business I kn-know n-n-nothing about. You say I ought to l-l-liquidate my b-b-brother's af-f-fairs, to p-p-prevent the f-f-failure. I c-c-can't be in two p-p-places at once, unless I were a little b-b-bird, and--"

"I understand," cried the notary. "Well, my old friend, you have friends, old friends, capable of devoting themselves to your interests."

"All right!" thought Grandet, "make haste and come to the point!"

"Suppose one of them went to Paris and saw your brother Guillaume's chief creditor and said to him--"

"One m-m-moment," interrupted the goodman, "said wh-wh-what? Something l-l-like this. Monsieur Gr-Grandet of Saumur this, Monsieur Grandet of Saumur that. He l-loves his b-b-brother, he loves his n-nephew. Grandet is a g-g-good uncle; he m-m-means well. He has sold his v-v-vintage. D-d-don't declare a f-f-failure; c-c-call a meeting; l-l-liquidate; and then Gr-Gr-Grandet will see what he c-c-can do. B-b-better liquidate than l-let the l-l-law st-st-stick its n-n-nose in. Hein? isn't it so?"

"Exactly so," said the president.

"B-because, don't you see, Monsieur de B-Bonfons, a man must l-l-look b-b-before he l-leaps. If you c-c-can't, you c-c-can't. M-m-must know all about the m-m-matter, all the resources and the debts, if you d-d-don't want to be r-r-ruined. Hein? isn't it so?"

"Certainly," said the president. "I'm of opinion that in a few months the debts might be bought up for a certain sum, and then paid in full by an agreement. Ha! ha! you can coax a dog a long way if you show him a bit of lard. If there has been no declaration of failure, and you hold a lien on the debts, you come out of