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a scene is feared, a punishment expected,--a feeling so natural that
even domestic animals possess it, and whine at the slightest pain of
punishment, though they make no outcry when they inadvertently hurt
themselves. The goodman came down; but he spoke to his wife with an
absent manner, kissed Eugenie, and sat down to table without appearing
to remember his threats of the night before.
"What has become of my nephew? The lad gives no trouble."
"Monsieur, he is asleep," answered Nanon.
"So much the better; he won't want a wax candle," said Grandet in a
jeering tone.
This unusual clemency, this bitter gaiety, struck Madame Grandet with
amazement, and she looked at her husband attentively. The goodman
--here it may be well to explain that in Touraine, Anjou, Pitou, and
Bretagne the word "goodman," already used to designate Grandet, is
bestowed as often upon harsh and cruel men as upon those of kindly
temperament, when either have reached a certain age; the title means
nothing on the score of individual gentleness--the goodman took his
hat and gloves, saying as he went out,--
"I am going to loiter about the market-place and find Cruchot."
"Eugenie, your father certainly has something on his mind."
Grandet, who was a poor sleeper, employed half his nights in the
preliminary calculations which gave such astonishing accuracy to his
views and observations and schemes, and secured to them the unfailing
success at sight of which his townsmen stood amazed. All human power
is a compound of time and patience. Powerful beings will and wait. The
life of a miser is the constant exercise of human power put to the
service of self. It rests on two sentiments only,--self-love and
self-interest; but self-interest being to a certain extent compact and
intelligent self-love, the visible sign of real superiority, it
follows that self-love and self-interest are two parts of the same
whole,--egotism. From this arises, perhaps, the excessive curiosity
shown in the habits of a miser's life whenever they are put before the
world. Every nature holds by a thread to those beings who challenge
all human sentiments by concentrating all in one passion. Where is the
man without desire? and what social desire can be satisfied without
money?
Grandet unquestionably "had something on his mind," to use his wife's
expression. There was in him, as in all misers, a persistent craving
to play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally.
To impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual
proof that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who
suffer themselves to be preyed upon in this world. Oh! who has ever
truly understood the lamb lying peacefully at the feet of God?
--touching emblem of all terrestrial victims, myth of their future,
suffering and weakness glorified! This lamb it is which the miser
fattens, puts in his fold, slaughters, cooks, eats, and then despises.
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