Chapter 7 - Page 2

le p-p-president, you said t-t-that b-b-bankruptcy--"

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. Here it may be well to give the history of this
impediment of the speech and hearing of Monsieur Grandet. No one in
Anjou heard better, or could pronounce more crisply the French
language (with an Angevin accent) than the wily old cooper. Some years
earlier, in spite of his shrewdness, he had been taken in by an
Israelite, who in the course of the discussion held his hand behind
his ear to catch sounds, and mangled his meaning so thoroughly in
trying to utter his words that Grandet fell a victim to his humanity
and was compelled to prompt the wily Jew with the words and ideas he
seemed to seek, to complete himself the arguments of the said Jew, to
say what that cursed Jew ought to have said for himself; in short, to
be the Jew instead of being Grandet. When the cooper came out of this
curious encounter he had concluded the only bargain of which in the
course of a long commercial life he ever had occasion to complain. But
if he lost at the time pecuniarily, he gained morally a valuable
lesson; later, he gathered its fruits. Indeed, the goodman ended by
blessing that Jew for having taught him the art of irritating his
commercial antagonist and leading him to forget his own thoughts in
his impatience to suggest those over which his tormentor was
stuttering. No affair had ever needed the assistance of deafness,
impediments of speech, and all the incomprehensible circumlocutions
with which Grandet enveloped his ideas, as much as the affair now in
hand. In the first place, he did not mean to shoulder the
responsibility of his own scheme; in the next, he was determined to
remain master of the conversation and to leave his real intentions in
doubt.

"M-m-monsieur de B-B-Bonfons,"--for the second time in three years
Grandet called the Cruchot nephew Monsieur de Bonfons; the president
felt he might consider himself the artful old fellow's son-in-law,
--"you-ou said th-th-that b-b-bankruptcy c-c-could, in some c-c-cases,
b-b-be p-p-prevented b-b-by--"

"By the courts of commerce themselves. It is done constantly," said
Monsieur C. de Bonfons, bestriding Grandet's meaning, or thinking he
guessed it, and kindly wishing to help him out with it. "Listen."

"Y-yes," said Grandet