Nanon disappeared.
“Now listen, Eugenie; you must give me back your gold. You won’t refuse your father, my little girl, hein?”
The two women were dumb.
“I have no gold myself. I had some, but it is all gone. I’ll give you in return six thousand francs in livres, and you are to put them just where I tell you. You mustn’t think anything more about your ‘dozen.’ When I marry you (which will be soon) I shall get you a husband who can give you the finest ‘dozen’ ever seen in the provinces. Now attend to me, little girl. There’s a fine chance for you; you can put your six thousand francs into government funds, and you will receive every six months nearly two hundred francs interest, without taxes, or repairs, or frost, or hail, or floods, or anything else to swallow up the money. Perhaps you don’t like to part with your gold, hey, my girl? Never mind, bring it to me all the same. I’ll get you some more like it,—like those Dutch coins and the portugaises, the rupees of Mogul, and the genovines,—I’ll give you some more on your fete-days, and in three years you’ll have got back half your little treasure. What’s that you say? Look up, now. Come, go and get it, the precious metal. You ought to kiss me on the eyelids for telling you the secrets and the mysteries of the life and death of money. Yes, silver and gold live and swarm like men; they come, and go, and sweat, and multiply—”
Eugenie rose; but after making a few steps towards the door she turned abruptly, looked her father in the face, and said,—
“I have not got my gold.”
“You have not got your gold!” cried Grandet, starting up erect, like a horse that hears a cannon fired beside him.
“No, I have not got it.”
“You are mistaken, Eugenie.”
“No.”