Honoré de Balzac
translation: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

EUGENIE GRANDET
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IV

When the four relations were left alone, Monsieur Grandet said to his nephew,—

"We must go to bed. It is too late to talk about the matters which have brought you here; to-morrow we will take a suitable moment. We breakfast at eight o'clock; at midday we eat a little fruit or a bit of bread, and drink a glass of white wine; and we dine, like the Parisians, at five o'clock. That's the order of the day. If you like to go and see the town and the environs you are free to do so. You will excuse me if my occupations do not permit me to accompany you. You may perhaps hear people say that I am rich,—Monsieur Grandet this, Monsieur Grandet that. I let them talk; their gossip does not hurt my credit. But I have not a penny; I work in my old age like an apprentice whose worldly goods are a bad plane and two good arms. Perhaps you'll soon know yourself what a franc costs when you have got to sweat for it. Nanon, where are the candles?"

"I trust, my nephew, that you will find all you want," said Madame Grandet; "but if you should need anything else, you can call Nanon."

"My dear aunt, I shall need nothing; I have, I believe, brought everything with me. Permit me to bid you good-night, and my young cousin also."

Charles took a lighted wax candle from Nanon's hand,—an Anjou candle, very yellow in color, and so shopworn that it looked like tallow and deceived Monsieur Grandet, who, incapable of suspecting its presence under his roof, did not perceive this magnificence.

"I will show you the way," he said.

Instead of leaving the hall by the door which opened under the archway, Grandet ceremoniously went through the passage which divided the hall from the kitchen. A swing-door, furnished with a large oval pane of glass, shut this passage from the staircase, so as to fend off the cold air which rushed through it. But the north wind whistled none the less keenly in winter, and, in spite of the sand-bags at the bottom of the doors of the living-room, the temperature within could scarcely be kept at a proper height. Nanon went to bolt the outer door; then she closed the hall and let loose a wolf-dog, whose bark was so strangled that he seemed to have laryngitis. This animal, noted for his ferocity, recognized no one but Nanon; the two untutored children of the fields understood each other.

When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall of his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He fancied himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned an inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not guess the cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an expression of friendliness, which they answered by a smile that made him desperate.

"Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?" he said to himself.

When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted in Etruscan red and without (...)

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