Eugenie took the saucer which Grandet had put away and placed it on the table, looking calmly at her father as she did so. Most assuredly, the Parisian woman who held a silken ladder with her feeble arms to facilitate the flight of her lover, showed no greater courage than Eugenie displayed when she replaced the sugar upon the table. The lover rewarded his mistress when she proudly showed him her beautiful bruised arm, and bathed every swollen vein with tears and kisses till it was cured with happiness. Charles, on the other hand, never so much as knew the secret of the cruel agitation that shook and bruised the heart of his cousin, crushed as it was by the look of the old miser.
“You are not eating your breakfast, wife.”
The poor helot came forward with a piteous look, cut herself a piece of bread, and took a pear. Eugenie boldly offered her father some grapes, saying,—
“Taste my preserves, papa. My cousin, you will eat some, will you not? I went to get these pretty grapes expressly for you.”
“If no one stops them, they will pillage Saumur for you, nephew. When you have finished, we will go into the garden; I have something to tell you which can’t be sweetened.”
Eugenie and her mother cast a look on Charles whose meaning the young man could not mistake.
“What is it you mean, uncle? Since the death of my poor mother”—at these words his voice softened—“no other sorrow can touch me.”
“My nephew, who knows by what afflictions God is pleased to try us?” said his aunt.
“Ta, ta, ta, ta,” said Grandet, “there’s your nonsense beginning. I am sorry to see those white hands of yours, nephew”; and he showed the shoulder-of-mutton fists which Nature had put at the end of his own arms. “There’s a pair of hands made to pick up silver pieces. You’ve been brought up to put your feet in the kid out of which we make the purses we keep our money in. A bad look-out! Very bad!”
“What do you mean, uncle? I’ll be hanged if I understand a single word of what you are saying.”