Eugenie Grandet

“Hold your tongue, my son!” said his mother; “they might hear you. Besides, what you say is not in good taste, – law-school language.”

“Well, uncle,” cried the president when he saw the des Grassins disappearing, “I began by being de Bonfons, and I have ended as nothing but Cruchot.”

“I saw that that annoyed you; but the wind has set fair for the des Grassins. What a fool you are, with all your cleverness! Let them sail off on Grandet’s ‘We’ll see about it,’ and keep yourself quiet, young man. Eugenie will none the less be your wife.”

In a few moments the news of Grandet’s magnanimous resolve was disseminated in three houses at the same moment, and the whole town began to talk of his fraternal devotion. Every one forgave Grandet for the sale made in defiance of the good faith pledged to the community; they admired his sense of honor, and began to laud a generosity of which they had never thought him capable. It is part of the French nature to grow enthusiastic, or angry, or fervent about some meteor of the moment. Can it be that collective beings, nationalities, peoples, are devoid of memory?

When Pere Grandet had shut the door he called Nanon.

“Don’t let the dog loose, and don’t go to bed; we have work to do together. At eleven o’clock Cornoiller will be at the door with the chariot from Froidfond. Listen for him and prevent his knocking; tell him to come in softly. Police regulations don’t allow nocturnal racket. Besides, the whole neighborhood need not know that I am starting on a journey.”

So saying, Grandet returned to his private room, where Nanon heard him moving about, rummaging, and walking to and fro, though with much precaution, for he evidently did not wish to wake his wife and daughter, and above all not to rouse the attention of his nephew, whom he had begun to anathematize when he saw a thread of light under his door. About the middle of the night Eugenie, intent on her cousin, fancied she heard a cry like that of a dying person. It must be Charles, she thought; he was so pale, so full of despair when she had seen him last, – could he have killed himself? She wrapped herself quickly in a loose garment, – a sort of pelisse with a hood, – and was about to leave the room when a bright light coming through the chinks of her door made her think of fire. But she recovered herself as she heard Nanon’s heavy steps and gruff voice mingling with the snorting of several horses.

“Can my father be carrying off my cousin?” she said to herself, opening her door with great precaution lest it should creak, and yet enough to let her see into the corridor.

Suddenly her eye encountered that of her father; and his glance, vague and unnoticing as it was, terrified her. The goodman and Nanon were yoked together by a stout stick, each end of which rested on their shoulders; a stout rope was passed over it, on which was slung a small barrel or keg like those Pere Grandet still made in his bakehouse as an amusement for his leisure hours.

“Holy Virgin, how heavy it is!” said the voice of Nanon.

“What a pity that it is only copper sous!” answered Grandet. “Take care you don’t knock over the candlestick.”

The scene was lighted by a single candle placed between two rails of the staircase.

“Cornoiller,” said Grandet to his keeper in partibus, “have you brought your pistols?”

“No, monsieur. Mercy! what’s there to fear for your copper sous?”

“Oh! nothing,” said Pere Grandet.

“Besides, we shall go fast,” added the man; “your farmers have picked out their best horses.”

“Very good. You did not tell them where I was going?”

“I didn’t know where.”

“Very good. Is the carriage strong?”

“Strong? hear to that, now! Why, it can carry three thousand weight. How much does that old keg weigh?”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Nanon. “I ought to know! There’s pretty nigh eighteen hundred – ”

“Will you hold your tongue, Nanon! You are to tell my wife I have gone into the country. I shall be back to dinner. Drive fast, Cornoiller; I must get to Angers before nine o’clock.”

The carriage drove off. Nanon bolted the great door, let loose the dog, and went off to bed with a bruised shoulder, no one in the neighborhood suspecting either the departure of Grandet or the object of his journey. The precautions of the old miser and his reticence were never relaxed. No one had ever seen a penny in that house, filled as it was with gold. Hearing in the morning, through the gossip of the port, that exchange on gold had doubled in price in consequence of certain military preparations undertaken at Nantes, and that speculators had arrived at Angers to buy coin, the old wine-grower, by the simple process of borrowing horses from his farmers, seized the chance of selling his gold and of bringing back in the form of treasury notes the sum he intended to put into the Funds, having swelled it considerably by the exchange.

VIII

“My father has gone,” thought Eugenie, who heard all that took place from the head of the stairs. Silence was restored in the house, and the distant rumbling of the carriage, ceasing by degrees, no longer echoed through the sleeping town. At this moment Eugenie heard in her heart, before the sound caught her ears, a cry which pierced the partitions and came from her cousin’s chamber. A line of light, thin as the blade of a sabre, shone through a chink in the door and fell horizontally on the balusters of the rotten staircase.

“He suffers!” she said, springing up the stairs. A second moan brought her to the landing near his room. The door was ajar, she pushed it open. Charles was sleeping; his head hung over the side of the old armchair, and his hand, from which the pen had fallen, nearly touched the floor. The oppressed breathing caused by the strained posture suddenly frightened Eugenie, who entered the room hastily.

“He must be very tired,” she said to herself, glancing at a dozen letters lying sealed upon the table. She read their addresses: “To Messrs. Farry, Breilmann, & Co., carriage-makers”; “To Monsieur Buisson, tailor,” etc.

“He has been settling all his affairs, so as to leave France at once,” she thought. Her eyes fell upon two open letters. The words, “My dear Annette,” at the head of one of them, blinded her for a moment. Her heart beat fast, her feet were nailed to the floor.

“His dear Annette! He loves! he is loved! No hope! What does he say to her?”

These thoughts rushed through her head and heart. She saw the words everywhere, even on the bricks of the floor, in letters of fire.

“Resign him already? No, no! I will not read the letter. I ought to go away – What if I do read it?”

She looked at Charles, then she gently took his head and placed it against the back of the chair; he let her do so, like a child which, though asleep, knows its mother’s touch and receives, without awaking, her kisses and watchful care. Like a mother Eugenie raised the drooping hand, and like a mother she gently kissed the chestnut hair – “Dear Annette!” a demon shrieked the words in her ear.

“I am doing wrong; but I must read it, that letter,” she said. She turned away her head, for her noble sense of honor reproached her. For the first time in her life good and evil struggled together in her heart. Up to that moment she had never had to blush for any action. Passion and curiosity triumphed. As she read each sentence her heart swelled more and more, and the keen glow which filled her being as she did so, only made the joys of first love still more precious.

My dear Annette, – Nothing could ever have separated us but the great misfortune which has now overwhelmed me, and which no human foresight could have prevented. My father has killed himself; his fortune and mine are irretrievably lost. I am orphaned at an age when, through the nature of my education, I am still a child; and yet I must lift myself as a man out of the abyss into which I am plunged. I have just spent half the night in facing my position. If I wish to leave France an honest man, – and there is no doubt of that, – I have not a hundred francs of my own with which to try my fate in the Indies or in America. Yes, my poor Anna, I must seek my fortune in those deadly climates. Under those skies, they tell me, I am sure to make it. As for remaining in Paris, I cannot do so. Neither my nature nor my face are made to bear the affronts, the neglect, the disdain shown to a ruined man, the son of a bankrupt! Good God! think of owing two millions! I should be killed in a duel the first week; therefore I shall not return there. Your love – the most tender and devoted love which ever ennobled the heart of man – cannot draw me back. Alas! my beloved, I have no money with which to go to you, to give and receive a last kiss from which I might derive some strength for my forlorn enterprise.

“Poor Charles! I did well to read the letter. I have gold; I will give it to him,” thought Eugenie.

She wiped her eyes, and went on reading.

I have never thought of the miseries of poverty. If I have the hundred louis required for the mere costs of the journey, I have not a sou for an outfit. But no, I have not the hundred louis, not even one louis. I don’t know that anything will be left after I have paid my debts in Paris. If I have nothing, I shall go quietly to Nantes and ship as a common sailor; and I will begin in the new world like other men who have started young without a sou and brought back the wealth of the Indies. During this long day I have faced my future coolly. It seems more horrible for me than for another, because I have been so petted by a mother who adored me, so indulged by the kindest of fathers, so blessed by meeting, on my entrance into life, with the love of an Anna! The flowers of life are all I have ever known. Such happiness could not last. Nevertheless, my dear Annette, I feel more courage than a careless young man is supposed to feel, – above all a young man used to the caressing ways of the dearest woman in all Paris, cradled in family joys, on whom all things smiled in his home, whose wishes were a law to his father – oh, my father! Annette, he is dead!

Well, I have thought over my position, and yours as well. I have grown old in twenty-four hours. Dear Anna, if in order to keep me with you in Paris you were to sacrifice your luxury, your dress, your opera-box, we should even then not have enough for the expenses of my extravagant ways of living. Besides, I would never accept such sacrifices. No, we must part now and forever —

“He gives her up! Blessed Virgin! What happiness!”

Eugenie quivered with joy. Charles made a movement, and a chill of terror ran through her. Fortunately, he did not wake, and she resumed her reading.

When shall I return? I do not know. The climate of the West Indies ages a European, so they say; especially a European who works hard. Let us think what may happen ten years hence. In ten years your daughter will be eighteen; she will be your companion, your spy. To you society will be cruel, and your daughter perhaps more cruel still. We have seen cases of the harsh social judgment and ingratitude of daughters; let us take warning by them. Keep in the depths of your soul, as I shall in mine, the memory of four years of happiness, and be faithful, if you can, to the memory of your poor friend. I cannot exact such faithfulness, because, do you see, dear Annette, I must conform to the exigencies of my new life; I must take a commonplace view of them and do the best I can. Therefore I must think of marriage, which becomes one of the necessities of my future existence; and I will admit to you that I have found, here in Saumur, in my uncle’s house, a cousin whose face, manners, mind, and heart would please you, and who, besides, seems to me —

“He must have been very weary to have ceased writing to her,” thought Eugenie, as she gazed at the letter which stopped abruptly in the middle of the last sentence.

Already she defended him. How was it possible that an innocent girl should perceive the cold-heartedness evinced by this letter? To young girls religiously brought up, whose minds are ignorant and pure, all is love from the moment they set their feet within the enchanted regions of that passion. They walk there bathed in a celestial light shed from their own souls, which reflects its rays upon their lover; they color all with the flame of their own emotion and attribute to him their highest thoughts. A woman’s errors come almost always from her belief in good or her confidence in truth. In Eugenie’s simple heart the words, “My dear Annette, my loved one,” echoed like the sweetest language of love; they caressed her soul as, in childhood, the divine notes of the Venite adoremus, repeated by the organ, caressed her ear. Moreover, the tears which still lingered on the young man’s lashes gave signs of that nobility of heart by which young girls are rightly won. How could she know that Charles, though he loved his father and mourned him truly, was moved far more by paternal goodness than by the goodness of his own heart? Monsieur and Madame Guillaume Grandet, by gratifying every fancy of their son, and lavishing upon him the pleasures of a large fortune, had kept him from making the horrible calculations of which so many sons in Paris become more or less guilty when, face to face with the enjoyments of the world, they form desires and conceive schemes which they see with bitterness must be put off or laid aside during the lifetime of their parents. The liberality of the father in this instance had shed into the heart of the son a real love, in which there was no afterthought of self-interest.

Nevertheless, Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs of society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already an old man under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful education of social life, of that world where in one evening more crimes are committed in thought and speech than justice ever punishes at the assizes; where jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest ideas; where no one is counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and to see clear in that world is to believe in nothing, neither in feelings, nor in men, nor even in events, – for events are falsified. There, to “see clear” we must weigh a friend’s purse daily, learn how to keep ourselves adroitly on the top of the wave, cautiously admire nothing, neither works of art nor glorious actions, and remember that self-interest is the mainspring of all things here below. After committing many follies, the great lady – the beautiful Annette – compelled Charles to think seriously; with her perfumed hand among his curls, she talked to him of his future position; as she rearranged his locks, she taught him lessons of worldly prudence; she made him effeminate and materialized him, – a double corruption, but a delicate and elegant corruption, in the best taste.

“You are very foolish, Charles,” she would say to him. “I shall have a great deal of trouble in teaching you to understand the world. You behaved extremely ill to Monsieur des Lupeaulx. I know very well he is not an honorable man; but wait till he is no longer in power, then you may despise him as much as you like. Do you know what Madame Campan used to tell us? – ‘My dears, as long as a man is a minister, adore him; when he falls, help to drag him in the gutter. Powerful, he is a sort of god; fallen, he is lower than Marat in the sewer, because he is living, and Marat is dead. Life is a series of combinations, and you must study them and understand them if you want to keep yourselves always in good position.’”

Charles was too much a man of the world, his parents had made him too happy, he had received too much adulation in society, to be possessed of noble sentiments. The grain of gold dropped by his mother into his heart was beaten thin in the smithy of Parisian society; he had spread it superficially, and it was worn away by the friction of life. Charles was only twenty-one years old. At that age the freshness of youth seems inseparable from candor and sincerity of soul. The voice, the glance, the face itself, seem in harmony with the feelings; and thus it happens that the sternest judge, the most sceptical lawyer, the least complying of usurers, always hesitate to admit decrepitude of heart or the corruption of worldly calculation while the eyes are still bathed in purity and no wrinkles seam the brow. Charles, so far, had had no occasion to apply the maxims of Parisian morality; up to this time he was still endowed with the beauty of inexperience. And yet, unknown to himself, he had been inoculated with selfishness. The germs of Parisian political economy, latent in his heart, would assuredly burst forth, sooner or later, whenever the careless spectator became an actor in the drama of real life.

Nearly all young girls succumb to the tender promises such an outward appearance seems to offer: even if Eugenie had been as prudent and observing as provincial girls are often found to be, she was not likely to distrust her cousin when his manners, words, and actions were still in unison with the aspirations of a youthful heart. A mere chance – a fatal chance – threw in her way the last effusions of real feeling which stirred the young man’s soul; she heard as it were the last breathings of his conscience. She laid down the letter – to her so full of love – and began smilingly to watch her sleeping cousin; the fresh illusions of life were still, for her at least, upon his face; she vowed to herself to love him always. Then she cast her eyes on the other letter, without attaching much importance to this second indiscretion; and though she read it, it was only to obtain new proofs of the noble qualities which, like all women, she attributed to the man her heart had chosen.

My dear Alphonse, – When you receive this letter I shall be without friends; but let me assure you that while I doubt the friendship of the world, I have never doubted yours. I beg you therefore to settle all my affairs, and I trust to you to get as much as you can out of my possessions. By this time you know my situation. I have nothing left, and I intend to go at once to the Indies. I have just written to all the people to whom I think I owe money, and you will find enclosed a list of their names, as correct as I can make it from memory. My books, my furniture, my pictures, my horses, etc., ought, I think, to pay my debts. I do not wish to keep anything, except, perhaps, a few baubles which might serve as the beginning of an outfit for my enterprise. My dear Alphonse, I will send you a proper power of attorney under which you can make these sales. Send me all my weapons. Keep Briton for yourself; nobody would pay the value of that noble beast, and I would rather give him to you – like a mourning-ring bequeathed by a dying man to his executor. Farry, Breilmann, & Co. built me a very comfortable travelling-carriage, which they have not yet delivered; persuade them to keep it and not ask for any payment on it. If they refuse, do what you can in the matter, and avoid everything that might seem dishonorable in me under my present circumstances. I owe the British Islander six louis, which I lost at cards; don’t fail to pay him —

“Dear cousin!” whispered Eugenie, throwing down the letter and running softly back to her room, carrying one of the lighted candles. A thrill of pleasure passed over her as she opened the drawer of an old oak cabinet, a fine specimen of the period called the Renaissance, on which could still be seen, partly effaced, the famous royal salamander. She took from the drawer a large purse of red velvet with gold tassels, edged with a tarnished fringe of gold wire, – a relic inherited from her grandmother. She weighed it proudly in her hand, and began with delight to count over the forgotten items of her little hoard. First she took out twenty portugaises, still new, struck in the reign of John V., 1725, worth by exchange, as her father told her, five lisbonnines, or a hundred and sixty-eight francs, sixty-four centimes each; their conventional value, however, was a hundred and eighty francs apiece, on account of the rarity and beauty of the coins, which shone like little suns. Item, five genovines, or five hundred-franc pieces of Genoa; another very rare coin worth eighty-seven francs on exchange, but a hundred francs to collectors. These had formerly belonged to old Monsieur de la Bertelliere. Item, three gold quadruples, Spanish, of Philip V., struck in 1729, given to her one by one by Madame Gentillet, who never failed to say, using the same words, when she made the gift, “This dear little canary, this little yellow-boy, is worth ninety-eight francs! Keep it, my pretty one, it will be the flower of your treasure.” Item (that which her father valued most of all, the gold of these coins being twenty-three carats and a fraction), a hundred Dutch ducats, made in the year 1756, and worth thirteen francs apiece. Item, a great curiosity, a species of medal precious to the soul of misers, – three rupees with the sign of the Scales, and five rupees with the sign of the Virgin, all in pure gold of twenty-four carats; the magnificent money of the Great Mogul, each of which was worth by mere weight thirty-seven francs, forty centimes, but at least fifty francs to those connoisseurs who love to handle gold. Item, the napoleon of forty francs received the day before, which she had forgotten to put away in the velvet purse. This treasure was all in virgin coins, true works of art, which Grandet from time to time inquired after and asked to see, pointing out to his daughter their intrinsic merits, – such as the beauty of the milled edge, the clearness of the flat surface, the richness of the lettering, whose angles were not yet rubbed off.

Eugenie gave no thought to these rarities, nor to her father’s mania for them, nor to the danger she incurred in depriving herself of a treasure so dear to him; no, she thought only of her cousin, and soon made out, after a few mistakes of calculation, that she possessed about five thousand eight hundred francs in actual value, which might be sold for their additional value to collectors for nearly six thousand. She looked at her wealth and clapped her hands like a happy child forced to spend its overflowing joy in artless movements of the body. Father and daughter had each counted up their fortune this night, – he, to sell his gold; Eugenie to fling hers into the ocean of affection. She put the pieces back into the old purse, took it in her hand, and ran upstairs without hesitation. The secret misery of her cousin made her forget the hour and conventional propriety; she was strong in her conscience, in her devotion, in her happiness.