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Updated: August 3, 2024
He had bethought himself of Uncle Gradelle's treasure, and recalled La Normande's advice. So he made repeated calls upon Lisa's secretaire, being merely kept in check by the vague fear with which his sister-in-law's grave face inspired him. Never, thought he, could he have spent his money in a holier cause.
She consoled herself, however, with the story of the inheritance, no longer calling Lisa a strait-laced prude, but a thief who kept back her brother-in-law's money, and assumed sanctimonious airs to deceive people. Every evening, while Muche took his writing lesson, the conversation turned upon old Gradelle's treasure.
Then at the sudden thought of old Gradelle's fortune she again examined herself, and felt ready to throw the money into the river if such a course should be necessary to remove the blight which had fallen on the pork shop. No, she was not avaricious, she was sure she wasn't; it was no thought of money that had prompted her in what she had just done.
That was "politics," she said, with the superior air of one who knew what she was talking about. Madame Lecoeur felt quite ill. She already saw Florent and his accomplices hiding in the cellars, and rushing out during the night to set the markets in flames and sack Paris. "Ah! by the way," suddenly exclaimed the old maid, "now I think of it, there's all that money of old Gradelle's!
Even when he recognised that he was being gradually turned out of the house, his mind never for a moment dwelt upon his share in old Gradelle's fortune, or upon the accounts which Lisa had offered him.
She had discovered Uncle Gradelle's treasure at the bottom of a salting-tub. The heap of money made a deep impression in the softy downy bed. Lisa and Quenu evinced a quiet delight. They sat down on the edge of the bed, Lisa at the head and Quenu at the foot, on either side of the heap of coins, and they counted the money out upon the counterpane, so as to avoid making any noise.
At Gradelle's establishment Lisa went on leading the calm, methodical life which her exquisite smiles illumined. She had not accepted the pork butcher's offer at random.
I've given up dealing with them," said she. "I wouldn't buy a bit of black-pudding from them now on any account. They had a dead man in their kitchen, you know." Quenu wept with vexation. The story of Gradelle's death in the kitchen was clearly getting about; and his nephew began to blush before his customers when he saw them sniffing his wares too closely.
She closed the drawer and looked round the room, reflecting that it was she herself who had provided this man with a home that he slept between her sheets and used her furniture. And she was especially exasperated at his keeping his abominable infernal machine in that little deal table which she herself had used at Uncle Gradelle's before her marriage a perfectly innocent, rickety little table.
She brooded over this idea to such an extent, it obtained such a hold upon her, that she would have been willing to marry Florent simply in order to be able to go and demand old Gradelle's forty-two thousand five hundred francs.
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