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The pasture of misers is compounded of money and disdain. During the
night Grandet's ideas had taken another course, which was the reason
of his sudden clemency. He had hatched a plot by which to trick the
Parisians, to decoy and dupe and snare them, to drive them into a
trap, and make them go and come and sweat and hope and turn pale,--a
plot by which to amuse himself, the old provincial cooper, sitting
there beneath his gloomy rafters, or passing up and down the rotten
staircase of his house in Saumur. His nephew filled his mind. He
wished to save the honor of his dead brother without the cost of a
penny to the son or to himself. His own funds he was about to invest
for three years; he had therefore nothing further to do than to manage
his property in Saumur. He needed some nutriment for his malicious
activity, and he found it suddenly in his brother's failure. Feeling
nothing to squeeze between his own paws, he resolved to crush the
Parisians in behalf of Charles, and to play the part of a good brother
on the cheapest terms. The honor of the family counted for so little
in this scheme that his good intentions might be likened to the
interest a gambler takes in seeing a game well played in which he has
no stake. The Cruchots were a necessary part of his plan; but he would
not seek them,--he resolved to make them come to him, and to lead up
that very evening to a comedy whose plot he had just conceived, which
should make him on the morrow an object of admiration to the whole
town without its costing him a single penny.

In her father's absence Eugenie had the happiness of busying herself
openly with her much-loved cousin, of spending upon him fearlessly the
treasures of her pity,--woman's sublime superiority, the sole she
desires to have recognized, the sole she pardons man for letting her
assume. Three or four times the young girl went to listen to her
cousin's breathing, to know if he were sleeping or awake; then, when
he had risen, she turned her thoughts to the cream, the eggs, the
fruits, the plates, the glasses,--all that was a part of his breakfast
became the object of some special care. At length she ran lightly up
the old staircase to listen to the noise her cousin made. Was he
dressing? Did he still weep? She reached the door.

"My cousin!"

"Yes, cousin."

"Will you breakfast downstairs, or in your room?"

"Where you like."

"How do you feel?"

"Dear cousin, I am ashamed of being hungry."

This conversation, held through the closed door, was like an episode
in a poem to Eugenie.

"Well, then, we will bring your breakfast to your own room, so as not
to annoy my father."

She ran to the kitchen with the swiftness and lightness of a bird.

"Nanon, go and do his room!"

That staircase, so often traversed, which echoed to the slightest
noise, now lost its decaying aspect in the eyes of Eugenie. It grew
luminous; it had a voice and spoke to her; it was young like herself,

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