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her mother nor of Nanon, but was pricked by a poignant desire to look
after her cousin's room and concern herself with her cousin; to supply
what might be needed, to remedy any forgetfulness, to see that all was
done to make it, as far as possible, suitable and elegant; and, in
fact, she arrived in time to prove to her mother and Nanon that
everything still remained to be done. She put into Nanon's head the
notion of passing a warming-pan between the sheets. She herself
covered the old table with a cloth and requested Nanon to change it
every morning; she convinced her mother that it was necessary to light
a good fire, and persuaded Nanon to bring up a great pile of wood into
the corridor without saying anything to her father. She ran to get,
from one of the corner-shelves of the hall, a tray of old lacquer
which was part of the inheritance of the late Monsieur de la
Bertelliere, catching up at the same time a six-sided crystal goblet,
a little tarnished gilt spoon, an antique flask engraved with cupids,
all of which she put triumphantly on the corner of her cousin's
chimney-piece. More ideas surged through her head in one quarter of an
hour than she had ever had since she came into the world.

"Mamma," she said, "my cousin will never bear the smell of a tallow
candle; suppose we buy a wax one?" And she darted, swift as a bird, to
get the five-franc piece which she had just received for her monthly
expenses. "Here, Nanon," she cried, "quick!"

"What will your father say?" This terrible remonstrance was uttered by
Madame Grandet as she beheld her daughter armed with an old Sevres
sugar-basin which Grandet had brought home from the chateau of
Froidfond. "And where will you get the sugar? Are you crazy?"

"Mamma, Nanon can buy some sugar as well as the candle."

"But your father?"

"Surely his nephew ought not to go without a glass of _eau sucree_?
Besides, he will not notice it."

"Your father sees everything," said Madame Grandet, shaking her head.

Nanon hesitated; she knew her master.

"Come, Nanon, go,--because it is my birthday."

Nanon gave a loud laugh as she heard the first little jest her young
mistress had ever made, and then obeyed her.

While Eugenie and her mother were trying to embellish the bedroom
assigned by Monsieur Grandet for his nephew, Charles himself was the
object of Madame des Grassins' attentions; to all appearances she was
setting her cap at him.

"You are very courageous, monsieur," she said to the young dandy, "to
leave the pleasures of the capital at this season and take up your
abode in Saumur. But if we do not frighten you away, you will find
there are some amusements even here."

She threw him the ogling glance of the provinces, where women put so
much prudence and reserve into their eyes that they impart to them the
prudish concupiscence peculiar to certain ecclesiastics to whom all
pleasure is either a theft or an error.

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