Chapter 14 - Page 2

You
love God too truly not to find your salvation in the midst of his
world, of which you are noble ornament and to which you owe your
example."

At this moment Madame des Grassins was announced. She came incited by
vengeance and the sense of a great despair.

"Mademoiselle," she said--"Ah! here is monsieur le cure; I am silent.
I came to speak to you on business; but I see that you are conferring
with--"

"Madame," said the cure, "I leave the field to you."

"Oh! monsieur le cure," said Eugenie, "come back later; your support
is very necessary to me just now."

"Ah, yes, indeed, my poor child!" said Madame des Grassins.

"What do you mean?" asked Eugenie and the cure together.

"Don't I know about your cousin's return, and his marriage with
Mademoiselle d'Aubrion? A woman doesn't carry her wits in her pocket."

Eugenie blushed, and remained silent for a moment. From this day forth
she assumed the impassible countenance for which her father had been
so remarkable.

"Well, madame," she presently said, ironically, "no doubt I carry my
wits in my pocket, for I do not understand you. Speak, say what you
mean, before monsieur le cure; you know he is my director."

"Well, then, mademoiselle, here is what des Grassins writes me. Read
it."

Eugenie read the following letter:--

My dear Wife,--Charles Grandet has returned from the Indies and
has been in Paris about a month--

"A month!" thought Eugenie, her hand falling to her side. After a
pause she resumed the letter,--

I had to dance attendance before I was allowed to see the future
Vicomte d'Aubrion. Though all Paris is talking of his marriage and
the banns are published--

"He wrote to me after that!" thought Eugenie. She did not conclude the
thought; she did not cry out, as a Parisian woman would have done,
"The villain!" but though she said it not, contempt was none the less
present in her mind.

The marriage, however, will not come off. The Marquis d'Aubrion
will never give his daughter to the son of a bankrupt. I went to
tell Grandet of the steps his uncle and I took in his father's
business, and the clever manoeuvres by which we had managed to
keep the creditor's quiet until the present time. The insolent
fellow had the face to say to me--to me, who for five years have
devoted myself night and day to his interests and his honor!--that
_his father's affairs were not his_! A solicitor would have had
the right to demand fees amounting to thirty or forty thousand
francs, one per cent on the total of the debts. But