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

will give the measure of his mind. When he had drunk his ratafia, he looked at his glass and said,--

"You have no sooner put your lips to a glass than it is empty! Such is life. You can't have and hold. Gold won't circulate and stay in your purse. If it were not for that, life would be too fine."

He was jovial and benevolent. When Nanon came with her spinning-wheel, "You must be tired," he said; "put away your hemp."

"Ah, bah! then I shall get sleepy," she answered.

"Poor Nanon! Will you have some ratafia?"

"I won't refuse a good offer; madame makes it a deal better than the apothecaries. What they sell is all drugs."

"They put too much sugar," said the master; "you can't taste anything else."


IX

The following day the family, meeting at eight o'clock for the early breakfast, made a picture of genuine domestic intimacy. Grief had drawn Madame Grandet, Eugenie, and Charles _en rapport_; even Nanon sympathized, without knowing why. The four now made one family. As to the old man, his satisfied avarice and the certainty of soon getting rid of the dandy without having to pay more than his journey to Nantes, made him nearly indifferent to his presence in the house. He left the two children, as he called Charles and Eugenie, free to conduct themselves as they pleased, under the eye of Madame Grandet, in whom he had implicit confidence as to all that concerned public and religious morality. He busied himself in straightening the boundaries of his fields and ditches along the high-road, in his poplar-plantations beside the Loire, in the winter work of his vineyards, and at Froidfond. All these things occupied his whole time.

For Eugenie the springtime of love had come. Since the scene at night when she gave her little treasure to her cousin, her heart had followed the treasure. Confederates in the same secret, they looked at each other with a mutual intelligence which sank to the depth of their consciousness, giving a closer communion, a more intimate relation to their feelings, and putting them, so to speak, beyond the pale of ordinary life. Did not their near relationship warrant the gentleness in their tones, the tenderness in their glances? Eugenie took delight in lulling her cousin's pain with the pretty childish joys of a new-born love. Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love and the birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and softest glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow and its tears of joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the pretty pebbles with which to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers forgotten as soon as plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming time, to spring forward into life? Love is our second transformation. Childhood and love were one and the same thing to Eugenie and to Charles; it was a first passion, with all its child-like play,--the more caressing to their hearts because they now were wrapped in sadness. Struggling at birth against the gloom of mourning, their love was only the more in harmony with the provincial plainness of that gray and ruined house. As they exchanged a few words beside the well in the silent court, or lingered in the garden for the sunset hour, sitting on a mossy seat saying to each other the infinite nothings of love, or mused in the silent calm which reigned between the house and the ramparts like that beneath the arches of a church, Charles comprehended the sanctity of love; for his great lady, his dear Annette, had taught him only its stormy troubles. At this moment he left the worldly passion, coquettish, vain, and showy as it was, and turned to the true, pure love. He loved even the house, whose customs no longer seemed to him ridiculous. He got up early in the mornings that he might talk with Eugenie for a moment before her father came to dole out the provisions; when the steps of the old man sounded on the staircase he escaped into the garden. The small criminality of this morning _tete-a-tete_ which Nanon pretended not to see, gave to their innocent love the lively charm of a forbidden joy.

After breakfast, when Grandet had gone to his fields and his other occupations, Charles remained with the mother and daughter, finding an unknown pleasure in holding their skeins, in watching them at work, in listening to their quiet prattle. The simplicity of this half-monastic life, which revealed to him the beauty of these souls, unknown and unknowing of the world, touched him keenly. He had believed such morals impossible in France, and admitted their existence nowhere but in Germany; even so, they seemed to him fabulous, only real in the novels of Auguste Lafontaine. Soon Eugenie became to him the Margaret of Goethe--before her fall. Day by day his words, his looks enraptured the poor girl, who yielded herself up with delicious non-resistance to the current of love; she caught her happiness as a swimmer seizes the overhanging branch of a willow to draw himself from the river and lie at rest upon its shore. Did no dread of a coming absence sadden the happy hours of those fleeting days? Daily some little circumstance reminded them of the parting that was at hand.

Three days after the departure of des Grassins, Grandet took his nephew to the Civil courts, with the solemnity which country people attach to all legal acts, that he might sign a deed surrendering his rights in his father's estate. Terrible renunciation! species of domestic apostasy! Charles also went before Maitre Cruchot to make two powers of attorney,--one for des Grassins, the other for the friend whom he had charged with the sale of his belongings. After that he attended to all the formalities necessary to obtain a passport for foreign countries; and finally, when he received his simple mourning clothes from Paris, he sent for the tailor of Saumur and sold to him his useless wardrobe. This last act pleased Grandet exceedingly.

"Ah! now you look like a man prepared to embark and make your fortune," he said, when Charles appeared in a surtout of plain black cloth. "Good! very good!"

"I hope you will believe, monsieur," answered his nephew, "that I shall always try to conform to my situation."

"What's that?" said his uncle, his eyes lighting up at a handful of gold which Charles was carrying.

"Monsieur, I have collected all my buttons and rings and other superfluities which may have some value; but not knowing any one in Saumur, I wanted to ask you to--"

"To buy them?" said Grandet, interrupting him.

"No, uncle; only to tell me of an honest man who--"

"Give me those things, I will go upstairs and estimate their value; I will come back and tell you what it is to a fraction. Jeweller's gold," examining a long chain, "eighteen or nineteen carats."

The goodman held out his huge hand and received the mass of gold, which he carried away.

"Cousin," said Grandet, "may I offer you these two buttons? They can fasten ribbons round your wrists; that sort of bracelet is much the fashion just now."

"I accept without hesitation," she answered, giving him an understanding look.

"Aunt, here is my mother's thimble; I have always kept it carefully in my dressing-case," said Charles, presenting a pretty gold thimble to Madame Grandet, who for many years had longed for one.

"I cannot thank you; no words are possible, my nephew," said the poor mother, whose eyes filled with tears. "Night and morning in my prayers I shall add one for you, the most earnest of all--for those who travel. If I die, Eugenie will keep this treasure for you."

"They are worth nine hundred and eighty-nine francs, seventy-five centimes," said Grandet, opening the door. "To save you the pain of selling them, I will advance the money--in _livres_."

The word _livres_ on the littoral of the Loire signifies that crown prices of six _livres_ are to be accepted as six francs without deduction.

"I dared not propose it to you," answered Charles; "but it was most repugnant to me to sell my jewels to some second-hand dealer in your own town. People should wash their dirty linen at home, as Napoleon said. I thank you for your kindness."

Grandet scratched his ear, and there was a moment's silence.

"My dear uncle," resumed Charles, looking at him with an uneasy air, as if he feared to wound his feelings, "my aunt and cousin have been kind enough to accept a trifling remembrance of me. Will you allow me to give you these sleeve-buttons, which are useless to me now? They will remind you of a poor fellow who, far away, will always think of those who are henceforth all his family."

"My lad, my lad, you mustn't rob yourself this way! Let me see, wife, what have you got?" he added, turning eagerly to her. "Ah! a gold thimble. And you, little girl? What! diamond buttons? Yes, I'll accept your present, nephew," he answered, shaking Charles by the hand. "But--you must let me--pay--your--yes, your passage to the Indies. Yes, I wish to pay your passage because--d'ye see, my boy?--in valuing your jewels I estimated only the weight of the gold; very likely the workmanship is worth something. So let us settle it that I am to give you fifteen hundred francs--in _livres_; Cruchot will lend them to me. I haven't got a copper farthing here,--unless Perrotet, who is behindhand with his rent, should pay up. By the bye, I'll go and see him."

He took his hat, put on his gloves, and went out.

"Then you are really going?" said Eugenie to her cousin, with a sad look, mingled with admiration.

"I must," he said, bowing his head.

For some days past, Charles's whole bearing, manners, and speech had become those of a man who, in spite of his profound affliction, feels the weight of immense obligations and has the strength to gather courage from misfortune. He no longer repined, he became a man. Eugenie never augured better of her cousin's character than when she saw him come down in the plain black clothes which suited well with his pale face and sombre countenance. On that day the two women put on their own mourning, and all three assisted at a Requiem celebrated in the parish church for the soul of the late Guillaume Grandet.

At the second breakfast Charles received letters from Paris and began to read them.

"Well, cousin, are you satisfied with the management of your affairs?" said Eugenie in a low voice.

"Never ask such questions, my daughter," said Grandet. "What the devil! do I tell you my affairs? Why do you poke your nose into your cousin's? Let the lad alone!"

"Oh! I haven't any secrets," said Charles.

"Ta, ta, ta, ta, nephew; you'll soon find out that you must hold your tongue in business."

When the two lovers were alone in the garden, Charles said to Eugenie, drawing her down on the old bench beneath the walnut-tree,--

"I did right to trust Alphonse; he has done famously. He has managed my affairs with prudence and good faith. I now owe nothing in Paris. All my things have been sold; and he tells me that he has taken the advice of an old sea-captain and spent three thousand francs on a commercial outfit of