第 十二 章 · 第12章

On the morrow of this death Eugenie felt a new motive for attachment to

the house in which she was born, where she had suffered so much, where

her mother had just died. She could not see the window and the chair on

its castors without weeping. She thought she had mistaken the heart of

her old father when she found herself the object of his tenderest cares.

He came in the morning and gave her his arm to take her to breakfast;

he looked at her for hours together with an eye that was almost kind; he

brooded over her as though she had been gold. The old man was so unlike

himself, he trembled so often before his daughter, that Nanon and the

Cruchotines, who witnessed his weakness, attributed it to his great age,

and feared that his faculties were giving away. But the day on which

the family put on their mourning, and after dinner, to which meal Maitre

Cruchot (the only person who knew his secret) had been invited, the

conduct of the old miser was explained.

“My dear child,” he said to Eugenie when the table had been cleared and

the doors carefully shut, “you are now your mother’s heiress, and we

have a few little matters to settle between us. Isn’t that so, Cruchot?”

“Yes.”

“Is it necessary to talk of them to-day, father?”

“Yes, yes, little one; I can’t bear the uncertainty in which I’m placed.

I think you don’t want to give me pain?”

“Oh! father--”

“Well, then! let us settle it all to-night.”

“What is it you wish me to do?”

“My little girl, it is not for me to say. Tell her, Cruchot.”

“Mademoiselle, your father does not wish to divide the property, nor

sell the estate, nor pay enormous taxes on the ready money which he may

possess. Therefore, to avoid all this, he must be released from making

the inventory of his whole fortune, part of which you inherit from your

mother, and which is now undivided between you and your father--”

“Cruchot, are you quite sure of what you are saying before you tell it

to a mere child?”

“Let me tell it my own way, Grandet.”

“Yes, yes, my friend. Neither you nor my daughter wish to rob me,--do

you, little one?”

“But, Monsieur Cruchot, what am I to do?” said Eugenie impatiently.

“Well,” said the notary, “it is necessary to sign this deed, by which

you renounce your rights to your mother’s estate and leave your father

the use and disposition, during his lifetime, of all the property

undivided between you, of which he guarantees you the capital.”

“I do not understand a word of what you are saying,” returned Eugenie;

“give me the deed, and show me where I am to sign it.”

Pere Grandet looked alternately at the deed and at his daughter, at his

daughter and at the deed, undergoing as he did so such violent emotion

that he wiped the sweat from his brow.

“My little girl,” he said, “if, instead of signing this deed, which will

cost a great deal to record, you would simply agree to renounce your

rights as heir to your poor dear, deceased mother’s property, and would

trust to me for the future, I should like it better. In that case I will

pay you monthly the good round sum of a hundred francs. See, now, you

could pay for as many masses as you want for anybody--Hein! a hundred

francs a month--in _livres_?”

“I will do all you wish, father.”

“Mademoiselle,” said the notary, “it is my duty to point out to you that

you are despoiling yourself without guarantee--”

“Good heavens! what is all that to me?”

“Hold your tongue, Cruchot! It’s settled, all settled,” cried Grandet,

taking his daughter’s hand and striking it with his own. “Eugenie, you

won’t go back on your word?--you are an honest girl, hein?”

“Oh! father!--”

He kissed her effusively, and pressed her in his arms till he almost

choked her.

“Go, my good child, you restore your father’s life; but you only return

to him that which he gave you: we are quits. This is how business should

be done. Life is a business. I bless you! you are a virtuous girl,

and you love your father. Do just what you like in future. To-morrow,

Cruchot,” he added, looking at the horrified notary, “you will see about

preparing the deed of relinquishment, and then enter it on the records

of the court.”

The next morning Eugenie signed the papers by which she herself

completed her spoliation. At the end of the first year, however, in

spite of his bargain, the old man had not given his daughter one sou

of the hundred francs he had so solemnly pledged to her. When Eugenie

pleasantly reminded him of this, he could not help coloring, and went

hastily to his secret hiding-place, from whence he brought down about a

third of the jewels he had taken from his nephew, and gave them to her.

“There, little one,” he said in a sarcastic tone, “do you want those for

your twelve hundred francs?”

“Oh! father, truly? will you really give them to me?”

“I’ll give you as many more next year,” he said, throwing them into her

apron. “So before long you’ll get all his gewgaws,” he added, rubbing

his hands, delighted to be able to speculate on his daughter’s feelings.

Nevertheless, the old man, though still robust, felt the importance

of initiating his daughter into the secrets of his thrift and its

management. For two consecutive years he made her order the household

meals in his presence and receive the rents, and he taught her slowly

and successively the names and remunerative capacity of his vineyards

and his farms. About the third year he had so thoroughly accustomed her

to his avaricious methods that they had turned into the settled habits

of her own life, and he was able to leave the household keys in her

charge without anxiety, and to install her as mistress of the house.

* * * * *

Five years passed away without a single event to relieve the monotonous

existence of Eugenie and her father. The same actions were performed

daily with the automatic regularity of clockwork. The deep sadness of

Mademoiselle Grandet was known to every one; but if others surmised the

cause, she herself never uttered a word that justified the suspicions

which all Saumur entertained about the state of the rich heiress’s

heart. Her only society was made up of the three Cruchots and a few of

their particular friends whom they had, little by little, introduced

into the Grandet household. They had taught her to play whist, and

they came every night for their game. During the year 1827 her father,

feeling the weight of his infirmities, was obliged to initiate her still

further into the secrets of his landed property, and told her that in

case of difficulty she was to have recourse to Maitre Cruchot, whose

integrity was well known to him.

Towards the end of this year the old man, then eighty-two, was seized by

paralysis, which made rapid progress. Dr. Bergerin gave him up. Eugenie,

feeling that she was about to be left alone in the world, came, as it

were, nearer to her father, and clasped more tightly this last living

link of affection. To her mind, as in that of all loving women, love was

the whole of life. Charles was not there, and she devoted all her care

and attention to the old father, whose faculties had begun to weaken,

though his avarice remained instinctively acute. The death of this man

offered no contrast to his life. In the morning he made them roll him

to a spot between the chimney of his chamber and the door of the secret

room, which was filled, no doubt, with gold. He asked for an explanation

of every noise he heard, even the slightest; to the great astonishment

of the notary, he even heard the watch-dog yawning in the court-yard. He

woke up from his apparent stupor at the day and hour when the rents

were due, or when accounts had to be settled with his vine-dressers, and

receipts given. At such times he worked his chair forward on its castors

until he faced the door of the inner room. He made his daughter open it,

and watched while she placed the bags of money one upon another in his

secret receptacles and relocked the door. Then she returned silently to

her seat, after giving him the key, which he replaced in his waistcoat

pocket and fingered from time to time. His old friend the notary,

feeling sure that the rich heiress would inevitably marry his nephew

the president, if Charles Grandet did not return, redoubled all his

attentions; he came every day to take Grandet’s orders, went on his

errands to Froidfond, to the farms and the fields and the vineyards,

sold the vintages, and turned everything into gold and silver, which

found their way in sacks to the secret hiding-place.

At length the last struggle came, in which the strong frame of the

old man slowly yielded to destruction. He was determined to sit at

the chimney-corner facing the door of the secret room. He drew off and

rolled up all the coverings which were laid over him, saying to Nanon,

“Put them away, lock them up, for fear they should be stolen.”

So long as he could open his eyes, in which his whole being had now

taken refuge, he turned them to the door behind which lay his treasures,

saying to his daughter, “Are they there? are they there?” in a tone of

voice which revealed a sort of panic fear.

“Yes, my father,” she would answer.

“Take care of the gold--put gold before me.”

Eugenie would then spread coins on a table before him, and he would sit

for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like a child who, at

the moment it first begins to see, gazes in stupid contemplation at the

same object, and like the child, a distressful smile would flicker upon

his face.

“It warms me!” he would sometimes say, as an expression of beatitude

stole across his features.

When the cure of the parish came to administer the last sacraments, the

old man’s eyes, sightless, apparently, for some hours, kindled at the

sight of the cross, the candlesticks, and the holy-water vessel of

silver; he gazed at them fixedly, and his wen moved for the last time.

When the priest put the crucifix of silver-gilt to his lips, that he

might kiss the Christ, he made a frightful gesture, as if to seize it;

and that last effort cost him his life. He called Eugenie, whom he

did not see, though she was kneeling beside him bathing with tears his

stiffening hand, which was already cold.

“My father, bless me!” she entreated.

“Take care of it all. You will render me an account yonder!” he said,

proving by these last words that Christianity must always be the

religion of misers.

* * * * *

Eugenie Grandet was now alone in the world in that gray house, with none

but Nanon to whom she could turn with the certainty of being heard and

understood,--Nanon the sole being who loved her for herself and with

whom she could speak of her sorrows. La Grande Nanon was a providence

for Eugenie. She was not a servant, but a humble friend. After her

father’s death Eugenie learned from Maitre Cruchot that she possessed

an income of three hundred thousand francs from landed and personal

property in the arrondissement of Saumur; also six millions invested at

three per cent in the Funds (bought at sixty, and now worth seventy-six

francs); also two millions in gold coin, and a hundred thousand francs

in silver crown-pieces, besides all the interest which was still to be

collected. The sum total of her property reached seventeen millions.

“Where is my cousin?” was her one thought.

The day on which Maitre Cruchot handed in to his client a clear and

exact schedule of the whole inheritance, Eugenie remained alone with

Nanon, sitting beside the fireplace in the vacant hall, where all was

now a memory, from the chair on castors which her mother had sat in, to

the glass from which her cousin drank.

“Nanon, we are alone--”

“Yes, mademoiselle; and if I knew where he was, the darling, I’d go on

foot to find him.”

“The ocean is between us,” she said.

While the poor heiress wept in company of an old servant, in that cold

dark house, which was to her the universe, the whole province rang, from

Nantes to Orleans, with the seventeen millions of Mademoiselle Grandet.

Among her first acts she had settled an annuity of twelve hundred francs

on Nanon, who, already possessed of six hundred more, became a rich and

enviable match. In less than a month that good soul passed from single

to wedded life under the protection of Antoine Cornoiller, who

was appointed keeper of all Mademoiselle Grandet’s estates. Madame

Cornoiller possessed one striking advantage over her contemporaries.

Although she was fifty-nine years of age, she did not look more than

forty. Her strong features had resisted the ravages of time. Thanks to

the healthy customs of her semi-conventual life, she laughed at old age

from the vantage-ground of a rosy skin and an iron constitution. Perhaps

she never looked as well in her life as she did on her marriage-day. She

had all the benefits of her ugliness, and was big and fat and strong,

with a look of happiness on her indestructible features which made a

good many people envy Cornoiller.

“Fast colors!” said the draper.

“Quite likely to have children,” said the salt merchant. “She’s pickled

in brine, saving your presence.”

“She is rich, and that fellow Cornoiller has done a good thing for

himself,” said a third man.

When she came forth from the old house on her way to the parish church,

Nanon, who was loved by all the neighborhood, received many compliments

as she walked down the tortuous street. Eugenie had given her three

dozen silver forks and spoons as a wedding present. Cornoiller, amazed

at such magnificence, spoke of his mistress with tears in his eyes;

he would willingly have been hacked in pieces in her behalf. Madame

Cornoiller, appointed housekeeper to Mademoiselle Grandet, got as much

happiness out of her new position as she did from the possession of

a husband. She took charge of the weekly accounts; she locked up the

provisions and gave them out daily, after the manner of her defunct

master; she ruled over two servants,--a cook, and a maid whose business

it was to mend the house-linen and make mademoiselle’s dresses.

Cornoiller combined the functions of keeper and bailiff. It is

unnecessary to say that the women-servants selected by Nanon were

“perfect treasures.” Mademoiselle Grandet thus had four servants, whose

devotion was unbounded. The farmers perceived no change after Monsieur

Grandet’s death; the usages and customs he had sternly established were

scrupulously carried out by Monsieur and Madame Cornoiller.

At thirty years of age Eugenie knew none of the joys of life. Her

pale, sad childhood had glided on beside a mother whose heart, always

misunderstood and wounded, had known only suffering. Leaving this life

joyfully, the mother pitied the daughter because she still must live;

and she left in her child’s soul some fugitive remorse and many lasting

regrets. Eugenie’s first and only love was a wellspring of sadness

within her. Meeting her lover for a few brief days, she had given him

her heart between two kisses furtively exchanged; then he had left her,

and a whole world lay between them. This love, cursed by her father, had

cost the life of her mother and brought her only sorrow, mingled with a

few frail hopes. Thus her upward spring towards happiness had wasted her

strength and given her nothing in exchange for it. In the life of

the soul, as in the physical life, there is an inspiration and a

respiration; the soul needs to absorb the sentiments of another soul and

assimilate them, that it may render them back enriched. Were it not for

this glorious human phenomenon, there would be no life for the heart;

air would be wanting; it would suffer, and then perish. Eugenie had

begun to suffer. For her, wealth was neither a power nor a consolation;

she could not live except through love, through religion, through faith

in the future. Love explained to her the mysteries of eternity. Her

heart and the Gospel taught her to know two worlds; she bathed, night

and day, in the depths of two infinite thoughts, which for her may have

had but one meaning. She drew back within herself, loving, and believing

herself beloved. For seven years her passion had invaded everything. Her

treasuries were not the millions whose revenues were rolling up; they

were Charles’s dressing-case, the portraits hanging above her bed, the

jewels recovered from her father and proudly spread upon a bed of wool

in a drawer of the oaken cabinet, the thimble of her aunt, used for a

while by her mother, which she wore religiously as she worked at a piece

of embroidery,--a Penelope’s web, begun for the sole purpose of putting

upon her finger that gold so rich in memories.

It seemed unlikely that Mademoiselle Grandet would marry during the

period of her mourning. Her genuine piety was well known. Consequently

the Cruchots, whose policy was sagely guided by the old abbe, contented

themselves for the time being with surrounding the great heiress and

paying her the most affectionate attentions. Every evening the hall was

filled with a party of devoted Cruchotines, who sang the praises of

its mistress in every key. She had her doctor in ordinary, her grand

almoner, her chamberlain, her first lady of honor, her prime minister;

above all, her chancellor, a chancellor who would fain have said much to

her. If the heiress had wished for a train-bearer, one would instantly

have been found. She was a queen, obsequiously flattered. Flattery never

emanates from noble souls; it is the gift of little minds, who thus

still further belittle themselves to worm their way into the vital being

of the persons around whom they crawl. Flattery means self-interest. So

the people who, night after night, assembled in Mademoiselle Grandet’s

house (they called her Mademoiselle de Froidfond) outdid each other in

expressions of admiration. This concert of praise, never before bestowed

upon Eugenie, made her blush under its novelty; but insensibly her ear

became habituated to the sound, and however coarse the compliments might

be, she soon was so accustomed to hear her beauty lauded that if

any new-comer had seemed to think her plain, she would have felt the

reproach far more than she might have done eight years earlier. She

ended at last by loving the incense, which she secretly laid at the feet

of her idol. By degrees she grew accustomed to be treated as a sovereign

and to see her court pressing around her every evening.

Monsieur de Bonfons was the hero of the little circle, where his wit,

his person, his education, his amiability, were perpetually praised. One

or another would remark that in seven years he had largely increased his

fortune, that Bonfons brought in at least ten thousand francs a year,

and was surrounded, like the other possessions of the Cruchots, by the

vast domains of the heiress.

“Do you know, mademoiselle,” said an habitual visitor, “that the

Cruchots have an income of forty thousand francs among them!”

“And then, their savings!” exclaimed an elderly female Cruchotine,

Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt.

“A gentleman from Paris has lately offered Monsieur Cruchot two hundred

thousand francs for his practice,” said another. “He will sell it if he

is appointed _juge de paix_.”

“He wants to succeed Monsieur de Bonfons as president of the Civil

courts, and is taking measures,” replied Madame d’Orsonval. “Monsieur le

president will certainly be made councillor.”

“Yes, he is a very distinguished man,” said another,--“don’t you think

so, mademoiselle?”

Monsieur de Bonfons endeavored to put himself in keeping with the role

he sought to play. In spite of his forty years, in spite of his dusky

and crabbed features, withered like most judicial faces, he dressed

in youthful fashions, toyed with a bamboo cane, never took snuff in

Mademoiselle de Froidfond’s house, and came in a white cravat and a

shirt whose pleated frill gave him a family resemblance to the race of

turkeys. He addressed the beautiful heiress familiarly, and spoke of her

as “Our dear Eugenie.” In short, except for the number of visitors, the

change from loto to whist, and the disappearance of Monsieur and Madame

Grandet, the scene was about the same as the one with which this history

opened. The pack were still pursuing Eugenie and her millions; but the

hounds, more in number, lay better on the scent, and beset the prey more

unitedly. If Charles could have dropped from the Indian Isles, he would

have found the same people and the same interests. Madame des Grassins,

to whom Eugenie was full of kindness and courtesy, still persisted in

tormenting the Cruchots. Eugenie, as in former days, was the central

figure of the picture; and Charles, as heretofore, would still have

been the sovereign of all. Yet there had been some progress. The flowers

which the president formerly presented to Eugenie on her birthdays and

fete-days had now become a daily institution. Every evening he brought

the rich heiress a huge and magnificent bouquet, which Madame Cornoiller

placed conspicuously in a vase, and secretly threw into a corner of the

court-yard when the visitors had departed.

Early in the spring, Madame des Grassins attempted to trouble the peace

of the Cruchotines by talking to Eugenie of the Marquis de Froidfond,

whose ancient and ruined family might be restored if the heiress would

give him back his estates through marriage. Madame des Grassins rang

the changes on the peerage and the title of marquise, until, mistaking

Eugenie’s disdainful smile for acquiescence, she went about proclaiming

that the marriage with “Monsieur Cruchot” was not nearly as certain as

people thought.

“Though Monsieur de Froidfond is fifty,” she said, “he does not look

older than Monsieur Cruchot. He is a widower, and he has children,

that’s true. But then he is a marquis; he will be peer of France; and

in times like these where you will find a better match? I know it for

a fact that Pere Grandet, when he put all his money into Froidfond,

intended to graft himself upon that stock; he often told me so. He was a

deep one, that old man!”

“Ah! Nanon,” said Eugenie, one night as she was going to bed, “how is it

that in seven years he has never once written to me?”