Eugenie Grandet - Honoré de Balzac (best mobile ebook reader txt) 📗

the last six francs, always stipulated for the "wife's pin-money" when he sold his yearly vintage. The four or five louis presented by the Belgian or the Dutchman who purchased the wine were the chief visible signs of Madame Grandet's annual revenues. But after she had received the five louis, her husband would often say to her, as though their purse were held in common: "Can you lend me a few sous?" and the poor woman, glad to be able to do something for a man whom her confessor held up to her as her lord and master, returned him in the course of the winter several crowns out of the "pin-money." When Grandet drew from his pocket the five-franc piece which he allowed monthly for the minor expenses,--thread, needles, and toilet,--of his daughter, he never failed to say as he buttoned his breeches' pocket: "And you, mother, do you want anything?"

"My friend," Madame Grandet would answer, moved by a sense of maternal dignity, "we will see about that later."

Wasted dignity! Grandet thought himself very generous to his wife. Philosophers who meet the like of Nanon, of Madame Grandet, of Eugenie, have surely a right to say that irony is at the bottom of the ways of Providence.

After the dinner at which for the first time allusion had been made to Eugenie's marriage, Nanon went to fetch a bottle of black-currant ratafia from Monsieur Grandet's bed-chamber, and nearly fell as she came down the stairs.

"You great stupid!" said her master; "are you going to tumble about like other people, hey?"

"Monsieur, it was that step on your staircase which has given way."

"She is right," said Madame Grandet; "it ought to have been mended long ago. Yesterday Eugenie nearly twisted her ankle."

"Here," said Grandet to Nanon, seeing that she looked quite pale, "as it is Eugenie's birthday, and you came near falling, take a little glass of ratafia to set you right."

"Faith! I've earned it," said Nanon; "most people would have broken the bottle; but I'd sooner have broken my elbow holding it up high."

"Poor Nanon!" said Grandet, filling a glass.

"Did you hurt yourself?" asked Eugenie, looking kindly at her.

"No, I didn't fall; I threw myself back on my haunches."

"Well! as it is Eugenie's birthday," said Grandet, "I'll have the step mended. You people don't know how to set your foot in the corner where the wood is still firm."

Grandet took the candle, leaving his wife, daughter, and servant without any other light than that from the hearth, where the flames were lively, and went into the bakehouse to fetch planks, nails, and tools.

"Can I help you?" cried Nanon, hearing him hammer on the stairs.

"No, no! I'm an old hand at it," answered the former cooper.

At the moment when Grandet was mending his worm-eaten staircase and whistling with all his might, in remembrance of the days of his youth, the three Cruchots knocked at the door.

"Is it you, Monsieur Cruchot?" asked Nanon, peeping through the little grating.

"Yes," answered the president.

Nanon opened the door, and the light from the hearth, reflected on the ceiling, enabled the three Cruchots to find their way into the room.

"Ha! you've come a-greeting," said Nanon, smelling the flowers.

"Excuse me, messieurs," cried Grandet, recognizing their voices; "I'll be with you in a moment. I'm not proud; I am patching up a step on my staircase."

"Go on, go on, Monsieur Grandet; a man's house is his castle," said the president sententiously.

Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet rose. The president, profiting by the darkness, said to Eugenie:

"Will you permit me, mademoiselle, to wish you, on this the day of your birth, a series of happy years and the continuance of the health which you now enjoy?"

He offered her a huge bouquet of choice flowers which were rare in Saumur; then, taking the heiress by the elbows, he kissed her on each side of her neck with a complacency that made her blush. The president, who looked like a rusty iron nail, felt that his courtship was progressing.

"Don't stand on ceremony," said Grandet, entering. "How well you do things on fete-days, Monsieur le president!"

"When it concerns mademoiselle," said the abbe, armed with his own bouquet, "every day is a fete-day for my nephew."

The abbe kissed Eugenie's hand. As for Maitre Cruchot, he boldly kissed her on both cheeks, remarking: "How we sprout up, to be sure! Every year is twelve months."

As he replaced the candlestick beside the clock, Grandet, who never forgot his own jokes, and repeated them to satiety when he thought them funny, said,--

"As this is Eugenie's birthday let us illuminate."

He carefully took off the branches of the candelabra, put a socket on each pedestal, took from Nanon a new tallow candle with paper twisted round the end of it, put it into the hollow, made it firm, lit it, and then sat down beside his wife, looking alternately at his friends, his daughter, and the two candles. The Abbe Cruchot, a plump, puffy little man, with a red wig plastered down and a face like an old female gambler, said as he stretched out his feet, well shod in stout shoes with silver buckles: "The des Grassins have not come?"

"Not yet," said Grandet.

"But are they coming?" asked the old notary, twisting his face, which had as many holes as a collander, into a queer grimace.

"I think so," answered Madame Grandet.

"Are your vintages all finished?" said Monsieur de Bonfons to Grandet.

"Yes, all of them," said the old man, rising to walk up and down the room, his chest swelling with pride as he said the words, "all of them." Through the door of the passage which led to the kitchen he saw la Grande Nanon sitting beside her fire with a candle and preparing to spin there, so as not to intrude among the guests.

"Nanon," he said, going into the passage, "put out that fire and that candle, and come and sit with us. Pardieu! the hall is big enough for all."

"But monsieur, you are to have the great people."

"Are not you as good as they? They are descended from Adam, and so are you."

Grandet came back to the president and said,--

"Have you sold your vintage?"

"No, not I; I shall keep it. If the wine is good this year, it will be better two years hence. The proprietors, you know, have made an agreement to keep up the price; and this year the Belgians won't get the better of us. Suppose they are sent off empty-handed for once, faith! they'll come back."

"Yes, but let us mind what we are about," said Grandet in a tone which made the president tremble.

"Is he driving some bargain?" thought Cruchot.

At this moment the knocker announced the des Grassins family, and their arrival interrupted a conversation which had begun between Madame Grandet and the abbe.

Madame des Grassins was one of those lively, plump little women, with pink-and-white skins, who, thanks to the claustral calm of the provinces and the habits of a virtuous life, keep their youth until they are past forty. She was like the last rose of autumn,--pleasant to the eye, though the petals have a certain frostiness, and their perfume is slight. She dressed well, got her fashions from Paris, set the tone to Saumur, and gave parties. Her husband, formerly a quartermaster in the Imperial guard, who had been desperately wounded at Austerlitz, and had since retired, still retained, in spite of his respect for Grandet, the seeming frankness of an old soldier.

"Good evening, Grandet," he said, holding out his hand and affecting a sort of superiority, with which he always crushed the Cruchots. "Mademoiselle," he added, turning to Eugenie, after bowing to Madame Grandet, "you are always beautiful and good, and truly I do not know what to wish you." So saying, he offered her a little box which his servant had brought and which contained a Cape heather,--a flower lately imported into Europe and very rare.

Madame des Grassins kissed Eugenie very affectionately, pressed her hand, and said: "Adolphe wishes to make you my little offering."

A tall, blond young man, pale and slight, with tolerable manners and seemingly rather shy, although he had just spent eight or ten thousand francs over his allowance in Paris, where he had been sent to study law, now came forward and kissed Eugenie on both cheeks, offering her a workbox with utensils in silver-gilt,--mere show-case trumpery, in spite of the monogram E.G. in gothic letters rather well engraved, which belonged properly to something in better taste. As she opened it, Eugenie experienced one of those unexpected and perfect delights which make a young girl blush and quiver and tremble with pleasure. She turned her eyes to her father as if to ask permission to accept it, and Monsieur Grandet replied: "Take it, my daughter," in a tone which would have made an actor illustrious.

The three Cruchots felt crushed as they saw the joyous, animated look cast upon Adolphe des Grassins by the heiress, to whom such riches were unheard-of. Monsieur des Grassins offered Grandet a pinch of snuff, took one himself, shook off the grains as they fell on the ribbon of the Legion of honor which was attached to the button-hole of his blue surtout; then he looked at the Cruchots with an air that seemed to say, "Parry that thrust if you can!" Madame des Grassins cast her eyes on the blue vases which held the Cruchot bouquets, looking at the enemy's gifts with the pretended interest of a satirical woman. At this delicate juncture the Abbe Cruchot left the company seated in a circle round the fire and joined Grandet at the lower end of the hall. As the two men reached the embrasure of the farthest window the priest said in the miser's ear: "Those people throw money out of the windows."

"What does that matter if it gets into my cellar?" retorted the old wine-grower.

"If you want to give gilt scissors to your daughter, you have the means," said the abbe.

"I give her something better than scissors," answered Grandet.

"My nephew is a blockhead," thought the abbe as he looked at the president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his brown countenance. "Couldn't he have found some little trifle which cost money?"

"We will join you at cards, Madame Grandet," said Madame des Grassins.

"We might have two tables, as we are all here."

"As it is Eugenie's birthday you had better play loto all together," said Pere Grandet: "the two young ones can join"; and the old cooper, who never played any game, motioned to his daughter and Adolphe. "Come, Nanon, set the tables."

"We will help you, Mademoiselle Nanon," said Madame des Grassins gaily, quite joyous at the joy she had given Eugenie.

"I have never in my life been so pleased," the heiress said to her; "I have never seen anything so pretty."

"Adolphe brought it from Paris, and he chose it," Madame des Grassins whispered in her ear.

"Go on! go on! damned intriguing thing!" thought the president. "If you ever have a suit in court, you or your husband, it shall go hard with you."

The notary, sitting in his corner, looked calmly at the abbe, saying to himself: "The des Grassins may do what they like; my property and my brother's and that of my nephew amount in