Chapter 5 - Page 2

easy-chair, just as a pretty
woman falls gracefully upon a sofa. Eugenie and her mother took
ordinary chairs and sat beside him, near the fire.

"Do you always live here?" said Charles, thinking the room uglier by
daylight than it had seemed the night before.

"Always," answered Eugenie, looking at him, "except during the
vintage. Then we go and help Nanon, and live at the Abbaye des
Noyers."

"Don't you ever take walks?"

"Sometimes on Sunday after vespers, when the weather is fine," said
Madame Grandet, "we walk on the bridge, or we go and watch the
haymakers."

"Have you a theatre?"

"Go to the theatre!" exclaimed Madame Grandet, "see a play! Why,
monsieur, don't you know it is a mortal sin?"

"See here, monsieur," said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, "here are your
chickens,--in the shell."

"Oh! fresh eggs," said Charles, who, like all people accustomed to
luxury, had already forgotten about his partridge, "that is delicious:
now, if you will give me the butter, my good girl."

"Butter! then you can't have the _galette_."

"Nanon, bring the butter," cried Eugenie.

The young girl watched her cousin as he cut his sippets, with as much
pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where innocence and virtue
triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming mother, improved, and
trained by a woman of fashion, had the elegant, dainty, foppish
movements of a coxcomb. The compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a
young girl possess a power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles,
finding himself the object of the attentions of his aunt and cousin,
could not escape the influence of feelings which flowed towards him,
as it were, and inundated him. He gave Eugenie a bright, caressing
look full of kindness,--a look which seemed itself a smile. He
perceived, as his eyes lingered upon her, the exquisite harmony of
features in the pure face, the grace of her innocent attitude, the
magic clearness of the eyes, where young love sparkled and desire
shone unconsciously.

"Ah! my dear cousin, if you were in full dress at the Opera, I assure
you my aunt's words would come true,--you would make the men commit
the mortal sin of envy, and the women the sin of jealousy."

The compliment went to Eugenie's heart and set it beating, though she
did not understand its meaning.

"Oh! cousin," she said, "you are laughing at a poor little country
girl."

"If you knew me, my cousin, you would know that I abhor ridicule; it
withers the heart and jars upon all my feelings." Here he