Chapter 6

About four o'clock an abrupt knock at the door struck sharply on the
heart of Madame Grandet.

"What can have happened to your father?" she said to her daughter.

Grandet entered joyously. After taking off his gloves, he rubbed his
hands hard enough to take off their skin as well, if his epidermis had
not been tanned and cured like Russia leather,--saving, of course, the
perfume of larch-trees and incense. Presently his secret escaped him.

"Wife," he said, without stuttering, "I've trapped them all! Our wine
is sold! The Dutch and the Belgians have gone. I walked about the
market-place in front of their inn, pretending to be doing nothing.
That Belgian fellow--you know who I mean--came up to me. The owners of
all the good vineyards have kept back their vintages, intending to
wait; well, I didn't hinder them. The Belgian was in despair; I saw
that. In a minute the bargain was made. He takes my vintage at two
hundred francs the puncheon, half down. He paid me in gold; the notes
are drawn. Here are six louis for you. In three months wines will have
fallen."

These words, uttered in a quiet tone of voice, were nevertheless so
bitterly sarcastic that the inhabitants of Saumur, grouped at this
moment in the market-place and overwhelmed by the news of the sale
Grandet had just effected, would have shuddered had they heard them.
Their panic would have brought the price of wines down fifty per cent
at once.

"Did you have a thousand puncheons this year, father?"

"Yes, little one."

That term applied to his daughter was the superlative expression of
the old miser's joy.

"Then that makes two hundred thousand pieces of twenty sous each?"

"Yes, Mademoiselle Grandet."

"Then, father, you can easily help Charles."

The amazement, the anger, the stupefaction of Belshazzar when he saw
the _Mene-Tekel-Upharsin_ before his eyes is not to be compared with
the cold rage of Grandet, who, having forgotten his nephew, now found
him enshrined in the heart and calculations of his daughter.

"What's this? Ever since that dandy put foot in _my_ house everything
goes wrong! You behave as if you had the right to buy sugar-plums and
make feasts and weddings. I won't have that sort of thing. I hope I
know my duty at my time of life! I certainly sha'n't take lessons from
my daughter, or from anybody else. I shall do for my nephew what it is
proper to do, and you have no need to poke your nose into it. As for
you, Eugenie," he added, facing her, "don't speak of this again, or
I'll send you to the Abbaye des Noyers with Nanon, see if I don't; and
no later than to-morrow either, if you