Kabanata Kabanata 5 · 第5章

After two hours’ thought and care, during which Eugenie jumped up twenty

times from her work to see if the coffee were boiling, or to go and

listen to the noise her cousin made in dressing, she succeeded in

preparing a simple little breakfast, very inexpensive, but which,

nevertheless, departed alarmingly from the inveterate customs of the

house. The midday breakfast was always taken standing. Each took a slice

of bread, a little fruit or some butter, and a glass of wine. As Eugenie

looked at the table drawn up near the fire with an arm-chair placed

before her cousin’s plate, at the two dishes of fruit, the egg-cup, the

bottle of white wine, the bread, and the sugar heaped up in a saucer,

she trembled in all her limbs at the mere thought of the look her father

would give her if he should come in at that moment. She glanced often

at the clock to see if her cousin could breakfast before the master’s

return.

“Don’t be troubled, Eugenie; if your father comes in, I will take it all

upon myself,” said Madame Grandet.

Eugenie could not repress a tear.

“Oh, my good mother!” she cried, “I have never loved you enough.”

Charles, who had been tramping about his room for some time, singing to

himself, now came down. Happily, it was only eleven o’clock. The true

Parisian! he had put as much dandyism into his dress as if he were in

the chateau of the noble lady then travelling in Scotland. He came into

the room with the smiling, courteous manner so becoming to youth,

which made Eugenie’s heart beat with mournful joy. He had taken the

destruction of his castles in Anjou as a joke, and came up to his aunt

gaily.

“Have you slept well, dear aunt? and you, too, my cousin?”

“Very well, monsieur; did you?” said Madame Grandet.

“I? perfectly.”

“You must be hungry, cousin,” said Eugenie; “will you take your seat?”

“I never breakfast before midday; I never get up till then. However, I

fared so badly on the journey that I am glad to eat something at once.

Besides--” here he pulled out the prettiest watch Breguet ever made.

“Dear me! I am early, it is only eleven o’clock!”

“Early?” said Madame Grandet.

“Yes; but I wanted to put my things in order. Well, I shall be glad to

have anything to eat,--anything, it doesn’t matter what, a chicken, a

partridge.”

“Holy Virgin!” exclaimed Nanon, overhearing the words.

“A partridge!” whispered Eugenie to herself; she would gladly have given

the whole of her little hoard for a partridge.

“Come and sit down,” said his aunt.

The young dandy let himself drop into an easy-chair, just as a pretty

woman falls gracefully upon a sofa. Eugenie and her mother took ordinary

chairs and sat beside him, near the fire.

“Do you always live here?” said Charles, thinking the room uglier by

daylight than it had seemed the night before.

“Always,” answered Eugenie, looking at him, “except during the vintage.

Then we go and help Nanon, and live at the Abbaye des Noyers.”

“Don’t you ever take walks?”

“Sometimes on Sunday after vespers, when the weather is fine,”

said Madame Grandet, “we walk on the bridge, or we go and watch the

haymakers.”

“Have you a theatre?”

“Go to the theatre!” exclaimed Madame Grandet, “see a play! Why,

monsieur, don’t you know it is a mortal sin?”

“See here, monsieur,” said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, “here are your

chickens,--in the shell.”

“Oh! fresh eggs,” said Charles, who, like all people accustomed to

luxury, had already forgotten about his partridge, “that is delicious:

now, if you will give me the butter, my good girl.”

“Butter! then you can’t have the _galette_.”

“Nanon, bring the butter,” cried Eugenie.

The young girl watched her cousin as he cut his sippets, with as much

pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where innocence and virtue

triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming mother, improved, and trained

by a woman of fashion, had the elegant, dainty, foppish movements of

a coxcomb. The compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a young girl

possess a power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles, finding

himself the object of the attentions of his aunt and cousin, could not

escape the influence of feelings which flowed towards him, as it were,

and inundated him. He gave Eugenie a bright, caressing look full of

kindness,--a look which seemed itself a smile. He perceived, as his eyes

lingered upon her, the exquisite harmony of features in the pure face,

the grace of her innocent attitude, the magic clearness of the eyes,

where young love sparkled and desire shone unconsciously.

“Ah! my dear cousin, if you were in full dress at the Opera, I assure

you my aunt’s words would come true,--you would make the men commit the

mortal sin of envy, and the women the sin of jealousy.”

The compliment went to Eugenie’s heart and set it beating, though she

did not understand its meaning.

“Oh! cousin,” she said, “you are laughing at a poor little country

girl.”

“If you knew me, my cousin, you would know that I abhor ridicule; it

withers the heart and jars upon all my feelings.” Here he swallowed his

buttered sippet very gracefully. “No, I really have not enough mind to

make fun of others; and doubtless it is a great defect. In Paris, when

they want to disparage a man, they say: ‘He has a good heart.’ The

phrase means: ‘The poor fellow is as stupid as a rhinoceros.’ But as I

am rich, and known to hit the bull’s-eye at thirty paces with any kind

of pistol, and even in the open fields, ridicule respects me.”

“My dear nephew, that bespeaks a good heart.”

“You have a very pretty ring,” said Eugenie; “is there any harm in

asking to see it?”

Charles held out his hand after loosening the ring, and Eugenie blushed

as she touched the pink nails of her cousin with the tips of her

fingers.

“See, mamma, what beautiful workmanship.”

“My! there’s a lot of gold!” said Nanon, bringing in the coffee.

“What is that?” exclaimed Charles, laughing, as he pointed to an oblong

pot of brown earthenware, glazed on the inside, and edged with a fringe

of ashes, from the bottom of which the coffee-grounds were bubbling up

and falling in the boiling liquid.

“It is boiled coffee,” said Nanon.

“Ah! my dear aunt, I shall at least leave one beneficent trace of my

visit here. You are indeed behind the age! I must teach you to make good

coffee in a Chaptal coffee-pot.”

He tried to explain the process of a Chaptal coffee-pot.

“Gracious! if there are so many things as all that to do,” said Nanon,

“we may as well give up our lives to it. I shall never make coffee that

way; I know that! Pray, who is to get the fodder for the cow while I

make the coffee?”

“I will make it,” said Eugenie.

“Child!” said Madame Grandet, looking at her daughter.

The word recalled to their minds the sorrow that was about to fall upon

the unfortunate young man; the three women were silent, and looked at

him with an air of commiseration that caught his attention.

“Is anything the matter, my cousin?” he said.

“Hush!” said Madame Grandet to Eugenie, who was about to answer;

“you know, my daughter, that your father charged us not to speak to

monsieur--”

“Say Charles,” said young Grandet.

“Ah! you are called Charles? What a beautiful name!” cried Eugenie.

Presentiments of evil are almost always justified. At this moment Nanon,

Madame Grandet, and Eugenie, who had all three been thinking with a

shudder of the old man’s return, heard the knock whose echoes they knew

but too well.

“There’s papa!” said Eugenie.

She removed the saucer filled with sugar, leaving a few pieces on the

table-cloth; Nanon carried off the egg-cup; Madame Grandet sat up like a

frightened hare. It was evidently a panic, which amazed Charles, who was

wholly unable to understand it.

“Why! what is the matter?” he asked.

“My father has come,” answered Eugenie.

“Well, what of that?”

Monsieur Grandet entered the room, threw his keen eye upon the table,

upon Charles, and saw the whole thing.

“Ha! ha! so you have been making a feast for your nephew; very good,

very good, very good indeed!” he said, without stuttering. “When the

cat’s away, the mice will play.”

“Feast!” thought Charles, incapable of suspecting or imagining the rules

and customs of the household.

“Give me my glass, Nanon,” said the master

Eugenie brought the glass. Grandet drew a horn-handled knife with a big

blade from his breeches’ pocket, cut a slice of bread, took a small bit

of butter, spread it carefully on the bread, and ate it standing. At

this moment Charlie was sweetening his coffee. Pere Grandet saw the

bits of sugar, looked at his wife, who turned pale, and made three steps

forward; he leaned down to the poor woman’s ear and said,--

“Where did you get all that sugar?”

“Nanon fetched it from Fessard’s; there was none.”

It is impossible to picture the profound interest the three women took

in this mute scene. Nanon had left her kitchen and stood looking into

the room to see what would happen. Charles, having tasted his coffee,

found it bitter and glanced about for the sugar, which Grandet had

already put away.

“What do you want?” said his uncle.

“The sugar.”

“Put in more milk,” answered the master of the house; “your coffee will

taste sweeter.”

Eugenie took the saucer which Grandet had put away and placed it on the

table, looking calmly at her father as she did so. Most assuredly,

the Parisian woman who held a silken ladder with her feeble arms to

facilitate the flight of her lover, showed no greater courage than

Eugenie displayed when she replaced the sugar upon the table. The lover

rewarded his mistress when she proudly showed him her beautiful bruised

arm, and bathed every swollen vein with tears and kisses till it was

cured with happiness. Charles, on the other hand, never so much as knew

the secret of the cruel agitation that shook and bruised the heart of

his cousin, crushed as it was by the look of the old miser.

“You are not eating your breakfast, wife.”

The poor helot came forward with a piteous look, cut herself a piece of

bread, and took a pear. Eugenie boldly offered her father some grapes,

saying,--

“Taste my preserves, papa. My cousin, you will eat some, will you not? I

went to get these pretty grapes expressly for you.”

“If no one stops them, they will pillage Saumur for you, nephew. When

you have finished, we will go into the garden; I have something to tell

you which can’t be sweetened.”

Eugenie and her mother cast a look on Charles whose meaning the young

man could not mistake.

“What is it you mean, uncle? Since the death of my poor mother”--at

these words his voice softened--“no other sorrow can touch me.”

“My nephew, who knows by what afflictions God is pleased to try us?”

said his aunt.

“Ta, ta, ta, ta,” said Grandet, “there’s your nonsense beginning. I

am sorry to see those white hands of yours, nephew”; and he showed the

shoulder-of-mutton fists which Nature had put at the end of his own

arms. “There’s a pair of hands made to pick up silver pieces. You’ve

been brought up to put your feet in the kid out of which we make the

purses we keep our money in. A bad look-out! Very bad!”

“What do you mean, uncle? I’ll be hanged if I understand a single word

of what you are saying.”

“Come!” said Grandet.

The miser closed the blade of his knife with a snap, drank the last of

his wine, and opened the door.

“My cousin, take courage!”

The tone of the young girl struck terror to Charles’s heart, and he

followed his terrible uncle, a prey to disquieting thoughts. Eugenie,

her mother, and Nanon went into the kitchen, moved by irresistible

curiosity to watch the two actors in the scene which was about to take

place in the garden, where at first the uncle walked silently ahead of

the nephew. Grandet was not at all troubled at having to tell Charles of

the death of his father; but he did feel a sort of compassion in knowing

him to be without a penny, and he sought for some phrase or formula by

which to soften the communication of that cruel truth. “You have lost

your father,” seemed to him a mere nothing to say; fathers die before

their children. But “you are absolutely without means,”--all the

misfortunes of life were summed up in those words! Grandet walked round

the garden three times, the gravel crunching under his heavy step.

In the crucial moments of life our minds fasten upon the locality where

joys or sorrows overwhelm us. Charles noticed with minute attention the

box-borders of the little garden, the yellow leaves as they fluttered

down, the dilapidated walls, the gnarled fruit-trees,--picturesque

details which were destined to remain forever in his memory, blending

eternally, by the mnemonics that belong exclusively to the passions,

with the recollections of this solemn hour.

“It is very fine weather, very warm,” said Grandet, drawing a long

breath.

“Yes, uncle; but why--”

“Well, my lad,” answered his uncle, “I have some bad news to give you.

Your father is ill--”

“Then why am I here?” said Charles. “Nanon,” he cried, “order

post-horses! I can get a carriage somewhere?” he added, turning to his

uncle, who stood motionless.

“Horses and carriages are useless,” answered Grandet, looking at

Charles, who remained silent, his eyes growing fixed. “Yes, my poor boy,

you guess the truth,--he is dead. But that’s nothing; there is something

worse: he blew out his brains.”

“My father!”

“Yes, but that’s not the worst; the newspapers are all talking about it.

Here, read that.”

Grandet, who had borrowed the fatal article from Cruchot, thrust the

paper under his nephew’s eyes. The poor young man, still a child, still

at an age when feelings wear no mask, burst into tears.

“That’s good!” thought Grandet; “his eyes frightened me. He’ll be all

right if he weeps,--That is not the worst, my poor nephew,” he said

aloud, not noticing whether Charles heard him, “that is nothing; you

will get over it: but--”

“Never, never! My father! Oh, my father!”

“He has ruined you, you haven’t a penny.”

“What does that matter? My father! Where is my father?”

His sobs resounded horribly against those dreary walls and reverberated

in the echoes. The three women, filled with pity, wept also; for tears

are often as contagious as laughter. Charles, without listening further

to his uncle, ran through the court and up the staircase to his chamber,

where he threw himself across the bed and hid his face in the sheets, to

weep in peace for his lost parents.

“The first burst must have its way,” said Grandet, entering the

living-room, where Eugenie and her mother had hastily resumed their

seats and were sewing with trembling hands, after wiping their eyes.

“But that young man is good for nothing; his head is more taken up with

the dead than with his money.”

Eugenie shuddered as she heard her father’s comment on the most sacred

of all griefs. From that moment she began to judge him. Charles’s sobs,

though muffled, still sounded through the sepulchral house; and his deep

groans, which seemed to come from the earth beneath, only ceased towards

evening, after growing gradually feebler.

“Poor young man!” said Madame Grandet.

Fatal exclamation! Pere Grandet looked at his wife, at Eugenie, and at

the sugar-bowl. He recollected the extraordinary breakfast prepared for

the unfortunate youth, and he took a position in the middle of the room.

“Listen to me,” he said, with his usual composure. “I hope that you

will not continue this extravagance, Madame Grandet. I don’t give you MY

money to stuff that young fellow with sugar.”

“My mother had nothing to do with it,” said Eugenie; “it was I who--”

“Is it because you are of age,” said Grandet, interrupting his daughter,

“that you choose to contradict me? Remember, Eugenie--”

“Father, the son of your brother ought to receive from us--”

“Ta, ta, ta, ta!” exclaimed the cooper on four chromatic tones; “the son

of my brother this, my nephew that! Charles is nothing at all to us; he

hasn’t a farthing, his father has failed; and when this dandy has cried

his fill, off he goes from here. I won’t have him revolutionize my

household.”

“What is ‘failing,’ father?” asked Eugenie.

“To fail,” answered her father, “is to commit the most dishonorable

action that can disgrace a man.”

“It must be a great sin,” said Madame Grandet, “and our brother may be

damned.”

“There, there, don’t begin with your litanies!” said Grandet, shrugging

his shoulders. “To fail, Eugenie,” he resumed, “is to commit a theft

which the law, unfortunately, takes under its protection. People have

given their property to Guillaume Grandet trusting to his reputation for

honor and integrity; he has made away with it all, and left them nothing

but their eyes to weep with. A highway robber is better than a bankrupt:

the one attacks you and you can defend yourself, he risks his own life;

but the other--in short, Charles is dishonored.”

The words rang in the poor girl’s heart and weighed it down with their

heavy meaning. Upright and delicate as a flower born in the depths of

a forest, she knew nothing of the world’s maxims, of its deceitful

arguments and specious sophisms; she therefore believed the atrocious

explanation which her father gave her designedly, concealing the

distinction which exists between an involuntary failure and an

intentional one.

“Father, could you not have prevented such a misfortune?”

“My brother did not consult me. Besides, he owes four millions.”

“What is a ‘million,’ father?” she asked, with the simplicity of a child

which thinks it can find out at once all that it wants to know.

“A million?” said Grandet, “why, it is a million pieces of twenty sous

each, and it takes five twenty sous pieces to make five francs.”

“Dear me!” cried Eugenie, “how could my uncle possibly have had

four millions? Is there any one else in France who ever had so many

millions?” Pere Grandet stroked his chin, smiled, and his wen seemed to

dilate. “But what will become of my cousin Charles?”

“He is going off to the West Indies by his father’s request, and he will

try to make his fortune there.”

“Has he got the money to go with?”

“I shall pay for his journey as far as--yes, as far as Nantes.”

Eugenie sprang into his arms.

“Oh, father, how good you are!”

She kissed him with a warmth that almost made Grandet ashamed of

himself, for his conscience galled him a little.

“Will it take much time to amass a million?” she asked.

“Look here!” said the old miser, “you know what a napoleon is? Well, it

takes fifty thousand napoleons to make a million.”

“Mamma, we must say a great many _neuvaines_ for him.”

“I was thinking so,” said Madame Grandet.

“That’s the way, always spending my money!” cried the father. “Do you

think there are francs on every bush?”

At this moment a muffled cry, more distressing than all the others,

echoed through the garrets and struck a chill to the hearts of Eugenie

and her mother.

“Nanon, go upstairs and see that he does not kill himself,” said

Grandet. “Now, then,” he added, looking at his wife and daughter, who

had turned pale at his words, “no nonsense, you two! I must leave you; I

have got to see about the Dutchmen who are going away to-day. And then I

must find Cruchot, and talk with him about all this.”

He departed. As soon as he had shut the door Eugenie and her mother

breathed more freely. Until this morning the young girl had never felt

constrained in the presence of her father; but for the last few hours

every moment wrought a change in her feelings and ideas.

“Mamma, how many louis are there in a cask of wine?”

“Your father sells his from a hundred to a hundred and fifty francs,

sometimes two hundred,--at least, so I’ve heard say.”

“Then papa must be rich?”

“Perhaps he is. But Monsieur Cruchot told me he bought Froidfond two

years ago; that may have pinched him.”

Eugenie, not being able to understand the question of her father’s

fortune, stopped short in her calculations.

“He didn’t even see me, the darling!” said Nanon, coming back from her

errand. “He’s stretched out like a calf on his bed and crying like the

Madeleine, and that’s a blessing! What’s the matter with the poor dear

young man!”

“Let us go and console him, mamma; if any one knocks, we can come down.”

Madame Grandet was helpless against the sweet persuasive tones of her

daughter’s voice. Eugenie was sublime: she had become a woman. The two,

with beating hearts, went up to Charles’s room. The door was open.

The young man heard and saw nothing; plunged in grief, he only uttered

inarticulate cries.

“How he loves his father!” said Eugenie in a low voice.

In the utterance of those words it was impossible to mistake the hopes

of a heart that, unknown to itself, had suddenly become passionate.

Madame Grandet cast a mother’s look upon her daughter, and then

whispered in her ear,--

“Take care, you will love him!”

“Love him!” answered Eugenie. “Ah! if you did but know what my father

said to Monsieur Cruchot.”

Charles turned over, and saw his aunt and cousin.

“I have lost my father, my poor father! If he had told me his secret

troubles we might have worked together to repair them. My God! my poor

father! I was so sure I should see him again that I think I kissed him

quite coldly--”

Sobs cut short the words.

“We will pray for him,” said Madame Grandet. “Resign yourself to the

will of God.”

“Cousin,” said Eugenie, “take courage! Your loss is irreparable;

therefore think only of saving your honor.”

With the delicate instinct of a woman who intuitively puts her mind

into all things, even at the moment when she offers consolation, Eugenie

sought to cheat her cousin’s grief by turning his thoughts inward upon

himself.

“My honor?” exclaimed the young man, tossing aside his hair with an

impatient gesture as he sat up on his bed and crossed his arms.

“Ah! that is true. My uncle said my father had failed.” He uttered a

heart-rending cry, and hid his face in his hands. “Leave me, leave me,

cousin! My God! my God! forgive my father, for he must have suffered

sorely!”

There was something terribly attractive in the sight of this young

sorrow, sincere without reasoning or afterthought. It was a virgin

grief which the simple hearts of Eugenie and her mother were fitted to

comprehend, and they obeyed the sign Charles made them to leave him

to himself. They went downstairs in silence and took their accustomed

places by the window and sewed for nearly an hour without exchanging

a word. Eugenie had seen in the furtive glance that she cast about the

young man’s room--that girlish glance which sees all in the twinkling

of an eye--the pretty trifles of his dressing-case, his scissors, his

razors embossed with gold. This gleam of luxury across her cousin’s

grief only made him the more interesting to her, possibly by way of

contrast. Never before had so serious an event, so dramatic a sight,

touched the imaginations of these two passive beings, hitherto sunk in

the stillness and calm of solitude.

“Mamma,” said Eugenie, “we must wear mourning for my uncle.”

“Your father will decide that,” answered Madame Grandet.

They relapsed into silence. Eugenie drew her stitches with a uniform

motion which revealed to an observer the teeming thoughts of her

meditation. The first desire of the girl’s heart was to share her

cousin’s mourning.