“Certainly not. We will make the broth of fowls; the farmers will bring them. I shall tell Cornoiller to shoot some crows; they make the best soup in the world.”
“Isn’t it true, monsieur, that crows eat the dead?”
“You are a fool, Nanon. They eat what they can get, like the rest of the world. Don’t we all live on the dead? What are legacies?”
Monsieur Grandet, having no further orders to give, drew out his watch, and seeing that he had half an hour to dispose of before breakfast, he took his hat, went and kissed his daughter, and said to her:
“Do you want to come for a walk in the fields, down by the Loire? I have something to do there.”
Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the father and daughter went down the winding street to the shore.
“Where are you going at this early hour?” said Cruchot, the notary, meeting them.
“To see something,” answered Grandet, not duped by the matutinal appearance of his friend.
When Pere Grandet went to “see something,” the notary knew by experience there was something to be got by going with him; so he went.
“Come, Cruchot,” said Grandet, “you are one of my friends. I’ll show you what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good ground.”