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Nanon opened the door, and the light from the hearth, reflected on the ceiling, enabled the three Cruchots to find their way into the room. "Ha! you've come a-greeting," said Nanon, smelling the flowers. "Excuse me, messieurs," cried Grandet, recognizing their voices; "I'll be with you in a moment. I'm not proud; I am patching up a step on my staircase."
The Cruchots were a necessary part of his plan; but he would not seek them, he resolved to make them come to him, and to lead up that very evening to a comedy whose plot he had just conceived, which should make him on the morrow an object of admiration to the whole town without its costing him a single penny.
The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that while they listened they unconsciously made faces and moved their lips, as if pronouncing the words over which he was hesitating and stuttering at will.
"It is too late," said Eugenie in a broken, hollow voice. "To-morrow morning we must go and wish him a happy New Year in his chamber." "But, my daughter, why should I not consult the Cruchots?" "No, no; it would be delivering me up to them, and putting ourselves in their power. Besides, I have chosen my course. I have done right, I repent of nothing. God will protect me. His will be done!
"Yes, my dear, generous master; it has been killed two days." "Come, Nanon, bestir yourself," said Grandet; "take these things, they'll do for dinner. I have invited the two Cruchots." Nanon opened her eyes, stupid with amazement, and looked at everybody in the room. "Well!" she said, "and how am I to get the lard and the spices?"
"I have promised to say good-evening to Mademoiselle de Gribeaucourt, and we will go there first, if my uncle is willing." "Farewell for the present!" said Madame des Grassins. When the Cruchots were a few steps off, Adolphe remarked to his father, "Are not they fuming, hein?" "Hold your tongue, my son!" said his mother; "they might hear you.
The goodman did not stammer over the last words. "Eh!" cried Madame des Grassins, "why it is a pleasure to go to Paris. I would willingly pay to go myself." She made a sign to her husband, as if to encourage him in cutting the enemy out of the commission, coute que coute; then she glanced ironically at the two Cruchots, who looked chap-fallen.
One or another would remark that in seven years he had largely increased his fortune, that Bonfons brought in at least ten thousand francs a year, and was surrounded, like the other possessions of the Cruchots, by the vast domains of the heiress. "Do you know, mademoiselle," said an habitual visitor, "that the Cruchots have an income of forty thousand francs among them!"
The magistrate protected those who called him Monsieur le president, but he favored with gracious smiles those who addressed him as Monsieur de Bonfons. These three Cruchots, backed by a goodly number of cousins, and allied to twenty families in the town, formed a party, like the Medici in Florence; like the Medici, the Cruchots had their Pazzi.
The pack were still pursuing Eugenie and her millions; but the hounds, more in number, lay better on the scent, and beset the prey more unitedly. If Charles could have dropped from the Indian Isles, he would have found the same people and the same interests. Madame des Grassins, to whom Eugenie was full of kindness and courtesy, still persisted in tormenting the Cruchots.
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