第54章

Dumbfounded by his daughter's logic, Grandet turned pale and stamped and swore. When at last he found words, he cried: "Serpent! Cursed girl! Ah, deceitful creature! You know I love you, and you take advantage of it. She'd cut her father's throat! Good God! you've given our fortune to that ne'er-do-well,--that dandy with morocco boots! By the shears of my father! I can't disinherit you, but I curse you,--you and your cousin and your children! Nothing good will come of it! Do you hear? If it was to Charles--but, no; it's impossible. What! has that wretched fellow robbed me?--"He looked at his daughter, who continued cold and silent.

"She won't stir; she won't flinch! She's more Grandet than I'm Grandet! Ha! you have not given your gold for nothing? Come, speak the truth!"Eugenie looked at her father with a sarcastic expression that stung him.

"Eugenie, you are here, in my house,--in your father's house. If you wish to stay here, you must submit yourself to me. The priests tell you to obey me." Eugenie bowed her head. "You affront me in all I hold most dear. I will not see you again until you submit. Go to your chamber. You will stay there till I give you permission to leave it.

Nanon will bring you bread and water. You hear me--go!"Eugenie burst into tears and fled up to her mother. Grandet, after marching two or three times round the garden in the snow without heeding the cold, suddenly suspected that his daughter had gone to her mother; only too happy to find her disobedient to his orders, he climbed the stairs with the agility of a cat and appeared in Madame Grandet's room just as she was stroking Eugenie's hair, while the girl's face was hidden in her motherly bosom.

"Be comforted, my poor child," she was saying; "your father will get over it.""She has no father!" said the old man. "Can it be you and I, Madame Grandet, who have given birth to such a disobedient child? A fine education,--religious, too! Well! why are you not in your chamber?

Come, to prison, to prison, mademoiselle!"

"Would you deprive me of my daughter, monsieur?" said Madame Grandet, turning towards him a face that was now red with fever.

"If you want to keep her, carry her off! Clear out--out of my house, both of you! Thunder! where is the gold? what's become of the gold?"Eugenie rose, looked proudly at her father, and withdrew to her room.

Grandet turned the key of the door.

"Nanon," he cried, "put out the fire in the hall."Then he sat down in an armchair beside his wife's fire and said to her,--"Undoubtedly she has given the gold to that miserable seducer, Charles, who only wanted our money.""I knew nothing about it," she answered, turning to the other side of the bed, that she might escape the savage glances of her husband. "Isuffer so much from your violence that I shall never leave this room, if I trust my own presentiments, till I am carried out of it in my coffin. You ought to have spared me this suffering, monsieur,--you, to whom I have caused no pain; that is, I think so. Your daughter loves you. I believe her to be as innocent as the babe unborn. Do not make her wretched. Revoke your sentence. The cold is very severe; you may give her some serious illness.""I will not see her, neither will I speak to her. She shall stay in her room, on bread and water, until she submits to her father. What the devil! shouldn't a father know where the gold in his house has gone to? She owned the only rupees in France, perhaps, and the Dutch ducats and the /genovines/--""Monsieur, Eugenie is our only child; and even if she had thrown them into the water--""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.