Previous  - next

"

At half-past eight in the evening the two card-tables were set out.
Madame des Grassins succeeded in putting her son beside Eugenie. The
actors in this scene, so full of interest, commonplace as it seems,
were provided with bits of pasteboard striped in many colors and
numbered, and with counters of blue glass, and they appeared to be
listening to the jokes of the notary, who never drew a number without
making a remark, while in fact they were all thinking of Monsieur
Grandet's millions. The old cooper, with inward self-conceit, was
contemplating the pink feathers and the fresh toilet of Madame des
Grassins, the martial head of the banker, the faces of Adolphe, the
president, the abbe, and the notary, saying to himself:--

"They are all after my money. Hey! neither the one nor the other shall
have my daughter; but they are useful--useful as harpoons to fish
with."

This family gaiety in the old gray room dimly lighted by two tallow
candles; this laughter, accompanied by the whirr of Nanon's
spinning-wheel, sincere only upon the lips of Eugenie or her mother;
this triviality mingled with important interests; this young girl, who,
like certain birds made victims of the price put upon them, was now
lured and trapped by proofs of friendship of which she was the dupe,
--all these things contributed to make the scene a melancholy comedy.
Is it not, moreover, a drama of all times and all places, though here
brought down to its simplest expression? 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; they could only estimate the things of life by the
glimmer of their pale ideas, and they neither valued nor despised
money, because they were accustomed to do without it. Their feelings,
bruised, though they did not know it, but ever-living, were the secret
spring of their existence, and made them curious exceptions in the
midst of these other people whose lives were purely material.
Frightful condition of the human race! there is no one of its joys
that does not come from some species of ignorance.

At the moment when Madame Grandet had won a loto of sixteen sous,--the
largest ever pooled in that house,--and while la Grande Nanon was
laughing with delight as she watched madame pocketing her riches, the
knocker resounded on the house-door with such a noise that the women
all jumped in their chairs.

"There is no man in Saumur who would knock like that," said the

Previous  - next