Eugénie Grandet

“ 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." ”

“ Madame Grandet for all answer raised her eyes to heaven. Nanon put on her hood and went off. Eugenie got out some clean table-linen, and went to fetch a few bunches of grapes which she had amused herself by hanging on a string across the attic; she walked softly along the corridor, so as not to waken her cousin, and she could not help listening at the door to his quiet breathing.
"Sorrow is watching while he sleeps," she thought. ”

“ Her generous instincts, slumbering and long repressed but now suddenly and for the first time awakened, were galled at every turn. The evening passed to all appearance like a thousand other evenings of their monotonous life, yet it was certainly the most horrible. Eugenie sewed without raising her head, and did not use the workbox which Charles had despised the night before. Madame Grandet knitted her sleeves. Grandet twirled his thumbs for four hours, absorbed in calculations whose results were on the morrow to astonish Saumur. No one came to visit the family that day. ”

“ Madame Grandet called to her husband as soon as she heard him stirring in his chamber, and said,—
"Grandet, will you let Nanon light a fire here for me? The cold is so sharp that I am freezing under the bedclothes. At my age I need some comforts. Besides," she added, after a slight pause, "Eugenie shall come and dress here; the poor child might get an illness from dressing in her cold room in such weather. Then we will go and wish you a happy New Year beside the fire in the hall." ”

“ The manners of the young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up his eye-glass, his affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance at the coffer which had just given so much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he evidently regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,—all these things, which shocked the Cruchots and the des Grassins, pleased Eugenie so deeply that before she slept she dreamed long dreams of her phoenix cousin. ”

“ Fatal reverie for Eugenie! As soon as he came in, the two women wished him a happy New Year,—his daughter by putting her arms round his neck and caressing him; Madame Grandet gravely and with dignity.
“Ha! ha! my child,” he said, kissing his daughter on both cheeks. “I work for you, don’t you see? I think of your happiness. Must have money to be happy. Without money there’s not a particle of happiness. Here! there’s a new napoleon for you. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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!" ”

“ The whole countenance showed a dangerous cunning, an integrity without warmth, the egotism of a man long used to concentrate every feeling upon the enjoyments of avarice and upon the only human being who was anything whatever to him,—his daughter and sole heiress, Eugenie. Attitude, manners, bearing, everything about him, in short, testified to that belief in himself which the habit of succeeding in all enterprises never fails to give to a man.
Thus, though his manners were unctuous and soft outwardly, Monsieur Grandet's nature was of iron. His dress never varied ”

“ 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 ”

“ The figure of Grandet, playing his own game with the false friendship of the two families and getting enormous profits from it, dominates the scene and throws light upon it. The modern god,—the only god in whom faith is preserved,—money, is here, in all its power, manifested in a single countenance. The tender sentiments of life hold here but a secondary place; only the three pure, simple hearts of Nanon, of Eugenie, and of her mother were inspired by them. And how much of ignorance there was in the simplicity of these poor women! Eugenie and her mother knew nothing of Grandet's wealth ”

“ Claiming the right of relationship, Eugenie began to fold the linen and put in order the toilet articles which Charles had brought; thus she could marvel at her ease over each luxurious bauble and the various knick-knacks of silver or chased gold, which she held long in her hand under a pretext of examining them. Charles could not see without emotion the generous interest his aunt and cousin felt in him; he knew society in Paris well enough to feel assured that, placed as he now was, he would find all hearts indifferent or cold. ”

“ Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and none but artists truly love. A painter seeking here below for a type of Mary's celestial purity, searching womankind for those proud modest eyes which Raphael divined, for those virgin lines, often due to chances of conception, which the modesty of Christian life alone can bestow or keep unchanged,—such a painter, in love with his ideal, would have found in the face of Eugenie the innate nobleness that is ignorant of itself ”

“ You won't give these away, will you, Eugenie, hein?"
Madame Grandet and her daughter looked at each other in astonishment.
"Take back your money, father; we ask for nothing but your affection."
"Well, well, that's right!" he said, pocketing the coins; "let's be good friends! We will all go down to dinner to-day, and we'll play loto every evening for two sous. You shall both be happy. Hey, wife?"
"Alas! I wish I could, if it would give you pleasure," said the dying woman; "but I cannot rise from my bed."
"Poor mother," said Grandet, "you don't know how I love you! and you too, my daughter!" ”

“ In spite of Grandet's fervent wishes for the health of his wife, whose death threatened more than death to him; in spite of the consideration he now showed on all occasions for the least wish of his astonished wife and daughter; in spite of the tender care which Eugenie lavished upon her mother,—Madame Grandet rapidly approached her end. Every day she grew weaker and wasted visibly, as women of her age when attacked by serious illness are wont to do. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The desire of having plenty of time for dressing carefully had led her to get up too early. Ignorant of the art of retouching every curl and studying every effect, Eugenie simply crossed her arms, sat down by the window, and looked at the court-yard, the narrow garden, and the high terraced walls that over-topped it: a dismal, hedged-in prospect, yet not wholly devoid of those mysterious beauties which belong to solitary or uncultivated nature. ”

“ If light is the first love of life, is not love a light to the heart? The moment to see within the veil of earthly things had come for Eugenie.
An early riser, like all provincial girls, she was up betimes and said her prayers, and then began the business of dressing,—a business which henceforth was to have a meaning. First she brushed and smoothed her chestnut hair and twisted its heavy masses to the top of her head with the utmost care, preventing the loose tresses from straying, and giving to her head a symmetry which heightened the timid candor of her face ”

“ It’s a theft,” cried Grandet, his voice going up in a crescendo which gradually echoed through the house. “What! here, in my own home, under my very eyes, somebody has taken your gold!—the only gold we have!—and I’m not to know who has got it! Gold is a precious thing. Virtuous girls go wrong sometimes, and give—I don’t know what; they do it among the great people, and even among the bourgeoisie. But give their gold!—for you have given it to some one, hein?—”
Eugenie was silent and impassive.
“Was there ever such a daughter? Is it possible that I am your father? ”

“ There! we’ve made up—haven’t we, little one? No more dry bread; you shall have all you want—Ah, she opens her eyes! Well, mother, little mother, come! See, I’m kissing Eugenie! She loves her cousin, and she may marry him if she wants to; she may keep his case. But don’t die, mother; live a long time yet, my poor wife! Come, try to move! Listen! you shall have the finest altar that ever was made in Saumur.”
“Oh, how can you treat your wife and daughter so!” said Madame Grandet in a feeble voice. ”

“ One deep grief silenced all others. Her mother, that gentle, tender creature, made beautiful by the light which shone from the inner to the outer as she approached the tomb,—her mother was perishing from day to day. Eugenie often reproached herself as the innocent cause of the slow, cruel malady that was wasting her away. This remorse, though her mother soothed it, bound her still closer to her love. Every morning, as soon as her father left the house, she went to the bedside of her mother, and there Nanon brought her breakfast. ”

“ I am silent. I came to speak to you on business; but I see that you are conferring with—"
"Madame," said the cure, "I leave the field to you."
"Oh! monsieur le cure," said Eugenie, "come back later; your support is very necessary to me just now."
"Ah, yes, indeed, my poor child!" said Madame des Grassins.
"What do you mean?" asked Eugenie and the cure together.
"Don't I know about your cousin's return, and his marriage with Mademoiselle d'Aubrion? A woman doesn't carry her wits in her pocket." ”

“ This domestic life, once so monotonous, was now quickened with the intense interest of a secret that bound these women intimately together. For them Charles lived and moved beneath the grim gray rafters of the hall. Night and morning Eugenie opened the dressing-case and gazed at the portrait of her aunt. One Sunday morning her mother surprised her as she stood absorbed in finding her cousin's features in his mother's face. Madame Grandet was then for the first time admitted into the terrible secret of the exchange made by Charles against her daughter's treasure. ”

“ Eugénie caught up a knife, and her cry brought Nanon on the scene.
"Father, if you cut away a single piece of gold, I shall stab myself. You are killing my mother, and you will kill me, too."
Old Grandet for once was frightened. He tried to make it up with his wife, he kissed Eugénie, and even promised that Eugénie should marry her cousin if she wanted to.
Mme. Grandet lingered till October, and then died. "There is no happiness to be had except in heaven; some day you will understand that," she said to her daughter just before she passed away. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ Eugénie made no resistance, and, pressed to his heart, received her lover's kiss.
"Dear Eugénie, a cousin is better than a brother; he can marry you," said Charles.
Thus the lovers vowed themselves to each other. Then came the terrible hour of parting, and Charles Grandet sailed from Nantes for the Indies; and the old house at Saumur suddenly seemed to Eugénie to have become very empty and bare indeed.
III.--M. Grandet's Discovery
Grandet, on the advice of M. Cruchot, the notary, saved the honour of his dead brother. There was no act of bankruptcy. ”