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Updated: June 2, 2025
If he goes on at this rate his fifty thousand francs will last him barely four months. And yet it took old Gradelle forty years to put his fortune together!" "It's all your own fault!" cried Quenu. "There was no occasion for you to say anything to him about the money." Lisa gave her husband a severe glance. "It is his own," she said; "and he is entitled to take it all.
They got on wonderfully well together, discussing all sorts of subjects, generally cookery, and then Uncle Gradelle and the neighbours. Lisa also amused the young man with stories, just as though he were a child. She knew some very pretty ones some miraculous legends, full of lambs and little angels, which she narrated in a piping voice, with all her wonted seriousness.
For a week Lisa lived alone in the Rue Cuvier; it was there that Gradelle came in search of her. He had become acquainted with her by often seeing her with her mistress when the latter called on him in the Rue Pirouette; and at the funeral she had struck him as having grown so handsome and sturdy that he had followed the hearse all the way to the cemetery, though he had not intended to do so.
Gradelle had sold the scanty furniture of the room in the Rue Royer Collard and retained possession of the proceeds some forty francs or so in order, said he, to prevent the foolish lad, Quenu, from making ducks and drakes of the cash. After a time, however, he allowed his nephew six francs a month a pocket-money.
Gradelle, moreover, made full use of his nephew's acquirements, employed him to cook the dinners sent out to certain customers, and placed all the broiling, and the preparation of pork chops garnished with gherkins in his special charge. As the young man was of real service to him, he grew fond of him after his own fashion, and would nip his plump arms when he was in a good humour.
"There!" at last exclaimed Lisa, after having carefully verified a whole page of calculations. "Listen to me now; we have an account to render to you, my dear Florent." It was the first time that she had so addressed him. However, taking up the page of figures, she continued: "Your Uncle Gradelle died without leaving a will. Consequently you and your brother are his sole heirs.
Gradelle, when his wife died, had been obliged to engage a girl to attend to the shop, and had taken care to choose a healthy and attractive one, knowing that a good-looking girl would set off his viands and help to tempt custom.
They had a relation in Paris, a brother of their mother's, one Gradelle, who was in business as a pork butcher in the Rue Pirouette, near the central markets. He was a fat, hard-hearted, miserly fellow, and received his nephews as though they were starving paupers the first time they paid him a visit. They seldom went to see him afterwards.
"Ah!" resumed Florent with a laugh, "if Uncle Gradelle could hear you, I think he'd come back and take the money away again. I was never a favourite of his, you know." "Well, no," muttered Quenu, no longer able to keep still, "he certainly wasn't over fond of you." Lisa, however, still pressed the matter.
"Now, one day a young man named Monsieur de Gradelle, who had been invited for the shooting, eloped with the young girl. "Monsieur de Santeze remained calm as if nothing had happened, but one morning he was found hanging in the kennels, among his dogs.
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