“Into the water!” cried her husband; “into the water! You are crazy, Madame Grandet! What I have said is said; you know that well enough. If you want peace in this household, make your daughter confess, pump it out of her. Women understand how to do that better than we do. Whatever she has done, I sha’n’t eat her. Is she afraid of me? Even if she has plastered Charles with gold from head to foot, he is on the high seas, and nobody can get at him, hein!”
“But, monsieur—” Excited by the nervous crisis through which she had passed, and by the fate of her daughter, which brought forth all her tenderness and all her powers of mind, Madame Grandet suddenly observed a frightful movement of her husband’s wen, and, in the very act of replying, she changed her speech without changing the tones of her voice,—“But, monsieur, I have not more influence over her than you have. She has said nothing to me; she takes after you.”
“Tut, tut! Your tongue is hung in the middle this morning. Ta, ta, ta, ta! You are setting me at defiance, I do believe. I daresay you are in league with her.”
He looked fixedly at his wife.
“Monsieur Grandet, if you wish to kill me, you have only to go on like this. I tell you, monsieur,—and if it were to cost me my life, I would say it,—you do wrong by your daughter; she is more in the right than you are. That money belonged to her; she is incapable of making any but a good use of it, and God alone has the right to know our good deeds. Monsieur, I implore you, take Eugenie back into favor; forgive her. If you will do this you will lessen the injury your anger has done me; perhaps you will save my life. My daughter! oh, monsieur, give me back my daughter!”
“I shall decamp,” he said; “the house is not habitable. A mother and daughter talking and arguing like that! Broooouh! Pouah! A fine New Year’s present you’ve made me, Eugenie,” he called out. “Yes, yes, cry away! What you’ve done will bring you remorse, do you hear? What’s the good of taking the sacrament six times every three months, if you give away your father’s gold secretly to an idle fellow who’ll eat your heart out when you’ve nothing else to give him? You’ll find out some day what your Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and supercilious airs. He has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to carry off a young girl’s treasure without the consent of her parents.”
When the street-door was shut, Eugenie came out of her room and went to her mother.
“What courage you have had for your daughter’s sake!” she said.
“Ah! my child, see where forbidden things may lead us. You forced me to tell a lie.”
“I will ask God to punish only me.”