daughter of a great lord? Charles has no family. Oh, my unhappy
son! my son! Listen, Grandet! I implore nothing for myself,
— besides, your property may not be large enough to carry a mortgage
of three millions, — but for my son! Brother, my suppliant hands
are clasped as I think of you; behold them! Grandet, I confide my
son to you in dying, and I look at the means of death with less
pain as I think that you will be to him a father. He loved me
well, my Charles; I was good to him, I never thwarted him; he will
not curse me. Ah, you see! he is gentle, he is like his mother, he
will cause you no grief. Poor boy! accustomed to all the
enjoyments of luxury, he knows nothing of the privations to which
you and I were condemned by the poverty of our youth. And I leave
him ruined! alone! Yes, all my friends will avoid him, and it is I
who have brought this humiliation upon him! Would that I had the
force to send him with one thrust into the heavens to his mother’s
side! Madness! I come back to my disaster — to his. I send him to
you that you may tell him in some fitting way of my death, of his
future fate. Be a father to him, but a good father. Do not tear
him all at once from his idle life, it would kill him. I beg him
on my knees to renounce all rights that, as his mother’s heir, he
may have on my estate. But the prayer is superfluous; he is
honorable, and he will feel that he must not appear among my
creditors. Bring him to see this at the right time; reveal to him
the hard conditions of the life I have made for him: and if he
still has tender thoughts of me, tell him in my name that all is
not lost for him. Yes, work, labor, which saved us both, may give
him back the fortune of which I have deprived him; and if he
listens to his father’s voice as it reaches him from the grave, he
will go the Indies. My brother, Charles is an upright and
courageous young man; give him the wherewithal to make his
venture; he will die sooner than not repay you the funds which you
may lend him. Grandet! if you will not do this, you will lay up
for yourself remorse. Ah, should my child find neither tenderness
nor succor in you, I would call down the vengeance of God upon
your cruelty!
If I had been able to save something from the wreck, I might have
had the right to leave him at least a portion of his mother’s
property; but my last monthly payments have absorbed everything. I
did not wish to die uncertain of my child’s fate; I hoped to feel
a sacred promise in a clasp of your hand which might have warmed
my heart: but time fails me. While Charles is journeying to you I
shall be preparing my assignment. I shall endeavor to show by the
order and good faith of my accounts that my disaster comes neither
from a faulty life nor from dishonesty. It is for my son’s sake
that I strive to do this.
Farewell, my brother! May the blessing of God be yours for the
generous guardianship I lay upon you, and which, I doubt not, you
will accept. A voice will henceforth and forever pray for you in
that world where we must all go, and where I am now as you read
these lines.
Victor-Ange-Guillaume Grandet.
“So you are talking?” said Pere Grandet as he carefully folded the letter in its original creases and put it into his waistcoat-pocket. He looked at his nephew with a humble, timid air, beneath which he hid his feelings and his calculations. “Have you warmed yourself?” he said to him.
“Thoroughly, my dear uncle.”
“Well, where are the women?” said his uncle, already forgetting that his nephew was to sleep at the house. At this moment Eugenie and Madame Grandet returned.
“Is the room all ready?” said Grandet, recovering his composure.
“Yes, father.”
“Well then, my nephew, if you are tired, Nanon shall show you your room. It isn’t a dandy’s room; but you will excuse a poor wine-grower who never has a penny to spare. Taxes swallow up everything.”
“We do not wish to intrude, Grandet,” said the banker; “you may want to talk to your nephew, and therefore we will bid you good-night.”
At these words the assembly rose, and each made a parting bow in keeping with his or her own character. The old notary went to the door to fetch his lantern and came back to light it, offering to accompany the des Grassins on their way. Madame des Grassins had not foreseen the incident which brought the evening prematurely to an end, her servant therefore had not arrived.
“Will you do me the honor to take my arm, madame?” said the abbe.
“Thank you, monsieur l’abbe, but I have my son,” she answered dryly.
“Ladies cannot compromise themselves with me,” said the abbe.
“Take Monsieur Cruchot’s arm,” said her husband.
The abbe walked off with the pretty lady so quickly that they were soon some distance in advance of the caravan.
“That is a good-looking young man, madame,” he said, pressing her arm. “Good-by to the grapes, the vintage is done. It is all over with us. We may as well say adieu to Mademoiselle Grandet. Eugenie will belong to the dandy. Unless this cousin is enamoured of some Parisian woman, your son Adolphe will find another rival in — ”
“Not at all, monsieur l’abbe. This young man cannot fail to see that Eugenie is a little fool, — a girl without the least freshness. Did you notice her to-night? She was as yellow as a quince.”
“Perhaps you made the cousin notice it?”
“I did not take the trouble — ”
“Place yourself always beside Eugenie, madame, and you need never take the trouble to say anything to the young man against his cousin; he will make his own comparisons, which — ”
“Well, he has promised to dine with me the day after to-morrow.”
“Ah! if you only would, madame — ” said the abbe.
“What is it that you wish me to do, monsieur l’abbe? Do you mean to offer me bad advice? I have not reached the age of thirty-nine, without a stain upon my reputation, thank God! to compromise myself now, even for the empire of the Great Mogul. You and I are of an age when we both know the meaning of words. For an ecclesiastic, you certainly have ideas that are very incongruous. Fie! it is worthy of Faublas!”
“You have read Faublas?”
“No, monsieur l’abbe; I meant to say the Liaisons dangereuses.”
“Ah! that book is infinitely more moral,” said the abbe, laughing. “But you make me out as wicked as a young man of the present day; I only meant — ”
“Do you dare to tell me you were not thinking of putting wicked things into my head? Isn’t it perfectly clear? If this young man — who I admit is very good-looking — were to make love to me, he would not think of his cousin. In Paris, I know, good mothers do devote themselves in this way to the happiness and welfare of their children; but we live in the provinces, monsieur l’abbe.”
“Yes, madame.”
“And,” she continued, “I do not want, and Adolphe himself would not want, a hundred millions brought at such a price.”
“Madame, I said nothing about a hundred millions; that temptation might be too great for either of us to withstand. Only, I do think that an honest woman may permit herself, in all honor, certain harmless little coquetries, which are, in fact, part of her social duty and which — ”
“Do you think so?”
“Are we not bound, madame, to make ourselves agreeable to each other? — Permit me to blow my nose. — I assure you, madame,” he resumed, “that the young gentleman ogled
you through his glass in a more flattering manner than he put on when he looked at me; but I forgive him for doing homage to beauty in preference to old age — ”
“It is quite apparent,” said the president in his loud voice, “that Monsieur Grandet of Paris has sent his son to Saumur with extremely matrimonial intentions.”
“But in that case the cousin wouldn’t have fallen among us like a cannon-ball,” answered the notary.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” said Monsieur des Grassins; “the old miser is always making mysteries.”
“Des Grassins, my friend, I have invited the young man to dinner. You must go and ask Monsieur and Madame de Larsonniere and the du Hautoys, with the beautiful demoiselle du Hautoy, of course. I hope she will be properly dressed; that jealous mother of hers does make such a fright of her! Gentlemen, I trust that you will all do us the honor to come,” she added, stopping the procession to address the two Cruchots.
“Here you are at home, madame,” said the notary.
After bowing to the three des Grassins, the three Cruchots returned home, applying their provincial genius for analysis to studying, under all its aspects, the great event of the evening, which undoubtedly changed the respective positions of Grassinists and Cruchotines. The admirable common-sense which guided all the actions of these great machinators made each side feel the necessity of a momentary alliance against a common enemy. Must they not mutually hinder Eugenie from loving her cousin, and the cousin from thinking of Eugenie? Could the Parisian resist the influence of treacherous insinuations, soft-spoken calumnies, slanders full of faint praise and artless denials, which should be made to circle incessantly about him and deceive him?
IV
When the four relations were left alone, Monsieur Grandet said to his nephew, —
“We must go to bed. It is too late to talk about the matters which have brought you here; to-morrow we will take a suitable moment. We breakfast at eight o’clock; at midday we eat a little fruit or a bit of bread, and drink a glass of white wine; and we dine, like the Parisians, at five o’clock. That’s the order of the day. If you like to go and see the town and the environs you are free to do so. You will excuse me if my occupations do not permit me to accompany you. You may perhaps hear people say that I am rich, — Monsieur Grandet this, Monsieur Grandet that. I let them talk; their gossip does not hurt my credit. But I have not a penny; I work in my old age like an apprentice whose worldly goods are a bad plane and two good arms. Perhaps you’ll soon know yourself what a franc costs when you have got to sweat for it. Nanon, where are the candles?”
“I trust, my nephew, that you will find all you want,” said Madame Grandet; “but if you should need anything else, you can call Nanon.”
“My dear aunt, I shall need nothing; I have, I believe, brought everything with me. Permit me to bid you good-night, and my young cousin also.”
Charles took a lighted wax candle from Nanon’s hand, — an Anjou candle, very yellow in color, and so shopworn that it looked like tallow and deceived Monsieur Grandet, who, incapable of suspecting its presence under his roof, did not perceive this magnificence.
“I will show you the way,” he said.
Instead of leaving the hall by the door which opened under the archway, Grandet ceremoniously went through the passage which divided the hall from the kitchen. A swing-door, furnished with a large oval pane of glass, shut this passage from the staircase, so as to fend off the cold air which rushed through it. But the north wind whistled none the less keenly in winter, and, in spite of the sand-bags at the bottom of the doors of the living-room, the temperature within could scarcely be kept at a proper height. Nanon went to bolt the outer door; then she closed the hall and let loose a wolf-dog, whose bark was so strangled that he seemed to have laryngitis. This animal, noted for his ferocity, recognized no one but Nanon; the two untutored children of the fields understood each other.
When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall of his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He fancied himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned an inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not guess the cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an expression of friendliness, which they answered by a smile that made him desperate.
“Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?” he said to himself.
When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted in Etruscan red and without casings, — doors sunk in the dusty walls and provided with iron bars, which in fact were bolts, each ending with the pattern of a flame, as did both ends of the long sheath of the lock. The first door at the top of the staircase, which opened into a room directly above the kitchen, was evidently walled up. In fact, the only entrance to that room was through Grandet’s bedchamber; the room itself was his office. The single window which lighted it, on the side of the court, was protected by a lattice of strong iron bars. No one, not even Madame Grandet, had permission to enter it. The old man chose to be alone, like an alchemist in his laboratory. There, no doubt, some hiding-place had been ingeniously constructed; there the title-deeds of property were stored; there hung the scales on which to weigh the louis; there were devised, by night and secretly, the estimates, the profits, the receipts, so that business men, finding Grandet prepared at all points, imagined that he got his cue from fairies or demons; there, no doubt, while Nanon’s loud snoring shook the rafters, while the wolf-dog watched and yawned in the courtyard, while Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet were quietly sleeping, came the old cooper to cuddle, to con over, to caress and clutch and clasp his gold. The walls were thick, the screens sure. He alone had the key of this laboratory, where — so people declared — he studied the maps on which his fruit-trees were marked, and calculated his profits to a vine, and almost to a twig.
The door of Eugenie’s chamber was opposite to the walled-up entrance to this room. At the other end of the landing were the appartements of the married pair, which occupied the whole front of the house. Madame Grandet had a room next to that of Eugenie, which was entered through a glass door. The master’s chamber was separated from that of his wife by a partition, and from the mysterious strong-room by a thick wall. Pere Grandet lodged his nephew on the second floor, in the high mansarde attic which was above his own bedroom, so that he might hear him if the young man took it into his head to go and come. When Eugenie and her mother reached the middle of the landing they kissed each other for good-night; then with a few words of adieu to Charles, cold upon the lips, but certainly very warm in the heart of the young girl, they withdrew into their own chambers.
“Here you are in your room, my nephew,” said Pere Grandet as he opened the door. “If you need to go out, call Nanon; without her, beware! the dog would eat you up without a word. Sleep well. Good-night. Ha! why, they have made you a fire!” he cried.
At this moment Nanon appeared with the warming pan.
“Here’s something more!” said Monsieur Grandet. “Do you take my nephew for a lying-in woman? Carry off your brazier, Nanon!”
“But, monsieur, the sheets are damp, and this gentleman is as delicate as a woman.”
“Well, go on, as you’ve taken it into your head,” said Grandet, pushing her by the shoulders; “but don’t set things on fire.” So saying, the miser went down-stairs, grumbling indistinct sentences.
Charles stood aghast in the midst of his trunks. After casting his eyes on the attic-walls covered with that yellow paper sprinkled with bouquets so well known in dance-houses, on the fireplace of ribbed stone whose very look was chilling, on the chairs of yellow wood with varnished cane seats that seemed to have more than the usual four angles, on the open night-table capacious enough to hold a small sergeant-at-arms, on the meagre bit of rag-carpet beside the bed, on the tester whose cloth valance shook as if, devoured by moths, it was about to fall, he turned gravely to la Grande Nanon and said, —
>
“Look here! my dear woman, just tell me, am I in the house of Monsieur Grandet, formerly mayor of Saumur, and brother to Monsieur Grandet of Paris?”
“Yes, monsieur; and a very good, a very kind, a very perfect gentleman. Shall I help you to unpack your trunks?”
“Faith! yes, if you will, my old trooper. Didn’t you serve in the marines of the Imperial Guard?”
“Ho, ho, ho!” laughed Nanon. “What’s that, — the marines of the guard? Is it salt? Does it go in the water?”
“Here, get me my dressing-gown out of that valise; there’s the key.”
Nanon was wonder-struck by the sight of a dressing-gown made of green silk, brocaded with gold flowers of an antique design.
“Are you going to put that on to go to bed with?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Holy Virgin! what a beautiful altar-cloth it would make for the parish church! My dear darling monsieur, give it to the church, and you’ll save your soul; if you don’t, you’ll lose it. Oh, how nice you look in it! I must call mademoiselle to see you.”
“Come, Nanon, if Nanon you are, hold your tongue; let me go to bed. I’ll arrange my things to-morrow. If my dressing-gown pleases you so much, you shall save your soul. I’m too good a Christian not to give it to you when I go away, and you can do what you like with it.”
Nanon stood rooted to the ground, gazing at Charles and unable to put faith into his words.
“Good night, Nanon.”
“What in the world have I come here for?” thought Charles as he went to sleep. “My father is not a fool; my journey must have some object. Pshaw! put off serious thought till the morrow, as some Greek idiot said.”
“Blessed Virgin! how charming he is, my cousin!” Eugenie was saying, interrupting her prayers, which that night at least were never finished.
Madame Grandet had no thoughts at all as she went to bed. She heard the miser walking up and down his room through the door of communication which was in the middle of the partition. Like all timid women, she had studied the character of her lord. Just as the petrel foresees the storm, she knew by imperceptible signs when an inward tempest shook her husband; and at such times, to use an expression of her own, she “feigned dead.”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 325
