Eugenie Grandet

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Eugenie Grandet


"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.

As she stood upon the threshold of the door, holding the candle in one
hand and the purse in the other, Charles woke, caught sight of her,
and remained speechless with surprise. Eugenie came forward, put the
candle on the table, and said in a quivering voice:

"My cousin, I must beg pardon for a wrong I have done you; but God
will pardon me--if you--will help me to wipe it out."

"What is it?" asked Charles, rubbing his eyes.

"I have read those letters."

Charles colored.

"How did it happen?" she continued; "how came I here? Truly, I do not
know. I am tempted not to regret too much that I have read them; they
have made me know your heart, your soul, and--"

"And what?" asked Charles.

"Your plans, your need of a sum--"

"My dear cousin--"

"Hush, hush! my cousin, not so loud; we must not wake others. See,"
she said, opening her purse, "here are the savings of a poor girl who
wants nothing. Charles, accept them! This morning I was ignorant of
the value of money; you have taught it to me. It is but a means, after
all. A cousin is almost a brother; you can surely borrow the purse of
your sister."

Eugenie, as much a woman as a young girl, never dreamed of refusal;
but her cousin remained silent.

"Oh! you will not refuse?" cried Eugenie, the beatings of whose heart
could be heard in the deep silence.

Her cousin's hesitation mortified her; but the sore need of his
position came clearer still to her mind, and she knelt down.

"I will never rise till you have taken that gold!" she said. "My
cousin, I implore you, answer me! let me know if you respect me, if
you are generous, if--"

As he heard this cry of noble distress the young man's tears fell upon
his cousin's hands, which he had caught in his own to keep her from
kneeling. As the warm tears touched her, Eugenie sprang to the purse
and poured its contents upon the table.

"Ah! yes, yes, you consent?" she said, weeping with joy. "Fear
nothing, my cousin, you will be rich. This gold will bring you
happiness; some day you shall bring it back to me,--are we not
partners? I will obey all conditions. But you should not attach such
value to the gift."

Charles was at last able to express his feelings.

"Yes, Eugenie; my soul would be small indeed if I did not accept. And
yet,--gift for gift, confidence for confidence."

"What do you mean?" she said, frightened.

"Listen, dear cousin; I have here--" He interrupted himself to point
out a square box covered with an outer case of leather which was on
the drawers. "There," he continued, "is something as precious to me as
life itself. This box was a present from my mother. All day I have
been thinking that if she could rise from her grave, she would herself
sell the gold which her love for me lavished on this dressing-case;
but were I to do so, the act would seem to me a sacrilege." Eugenie
pressed his hand as she heard these last words. "No," he added, after
a slight pause, during which a liquid glance of tenderness passed
between them, "no, I will neither sell it nor risk its safety on my
journey. Dear Eugenie, you shall be its guardian. Never did friend
commit anything more sacred to another. Let me show it to you."

He went to the box, took it from its outer coverings, opened it, and
showed his delighted cousin a dressing-case where the rich workmanship
gave to the gold ornaments a value far above their weight.

"What you admire there is nothing," he said, pushing a secret spring
which opened a hidden drawer. "Here is something which to me is worth
the whole world." He drew out two portraits, masterpieces of Madame
Mirbel, richly set with pearls.

"Oh, how beautiful! Is it the lady to whom you wrote that--"

"No," he said, smiling; "this is my mother, and here is my father,
your aunt and uncle. Eugenie, I beg you on my knees, keep my treasure
safely. If I die and your little fortune is lost, this gold and these
pearls will repay you. To you alone could I leave these portraits; you
are worthy to keep them. But destroy them at last, so that they may
pass into no other hands." Eugenie was silent. "Ah, yes, say yes! You
consent?" he added with winning grace.

Hearing the very words she had just used to her cousin now addressed
to herself, she turned upon him a look of love, her first look of
loving womanhood,--a glance in which there is nearly as much of
coquetry as of inmost depth. He took her hand and kissed it.

"Angel of purity! between us two money is nothing, never can be
anything. Feeling, sentiment, must be all henceforth."