“Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for those that were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?” said Maitre Cruchot, opening his eyes with amazement. “What luck you have had! To cut down your trees at the very time they ran short of white-wood at Nantes, and to sell them at thirty francs!”
Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most solemn moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to bring down upon her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet had now reached the magnificent fields which he owned on the banks of the Loire, where thirty workmen were employed in clearing away, filling up, and levelling the spots formerly occupied by the poplars.
“Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! Jean,” he cried to a laborer, “m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, b-both ways.”
“Four times eight feet,” said the man.
“Thirty-two feet lost,” said Grandet to Cruchot. “I had three hundred poplars in this one line, isn’t that so? Well, then, three h-h-hundred times thir-thirty-two lost m-m-me five hundred in h-h-hay; add twice as much for the side rows,—fifteen hundred; the middle rows as much more. So we may c-c-call it a th-thousand b-b-bales of h-h-hay—”
“Very good,” said Cruchot, to help out his friend; “a thousand bales are worth about six hundred francs.”
“Say t-t-twelve hundred, be-c-cause there’s three or four hundred francs on the second crop. Well, then, c-c-calculate that t-twelve thousand francs a year for f-f-forty years with interest c-c-comes to—”
“Say sixty thousand francs,” said the notary.
“I am willing; c-c-comes t-t-to sixty th-th-thousand. Very good,” continued Grandet, without stuttering: “two thousand poplars forty years old will only yield me fifty thousand francs. There’s a loss. I have found that myself,” said Grandet, getting on his high horse. “Jean, fill up all the holes except those at the bank of the river; there you are to plant the poplars I have bought. Plant ‘em there, and they’ll get nourishment from the government,” he said, turning to Cruchot, and giving a slight motion to the wen on his nose, which expressed more than the most ironical of smiles.
“True enough; poplars should only be planted on poor soil,” said Cruchot, amazed at Grandet’s calculations.