Part 34

At half-past ten the whole family started to escort Charles to the diligence for Nantes. Nanon let loose the dog, locked the door, and insisted on carrying the young man’s carpet-bag. All the tradesmen in the tortuous old street were on the sill of their shop-doors to watch the procession, which was joined in the market-place by Maitre Cruchot.

“Eugenie, be sure you don’t cry,” said her mother.

“Nephew,” said Grandet, in the doorway of the inn from which the coach started, kissing Charles on both cheeks, “depart poor, return rich; you will find the honor of your father safe. I answer for that myself, I--Grandet; for it will only depend on you to--”

“Ah! my uncle, you soften the bitterness of my departure. Is it not the best gift that you could make me?”

Not understanding his uncle’s words which he had thus interrupted, Charles shed tears of gratitude upon the tanned cheeks of the old miser, while Eugenie pressed the hand of her cousin and that of her father with all her strength. The notary smiled, admiring the sly speech of the old man, which he alone had understood. The family stood about the coach until it started; then as it disappeared upon the bridge, and its rumble grew fainter in the distance, Grandet said:

“Good-by to you!”

Happily no one but Maitre Cruchot heard the exclamation. Eugenie and her mother had gone to a corner of the quay from which they could still see the diligence and wave their white handkerchiefs, to which Charles made answer by displaying his.

“Ah! mother, would that I had the power of God for a single moment,” said Eugenie, when she could no longer see her lover’s handkerchief.

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Not to interrupt the current of events which are about to take place in the bosom of the Grandet family, it is necessary to cast a forestalling eye upon the various operations which the goodman carried on in Paris by means of Monsieur des Grassins. A month after the latter’s departure from Saumur, Grandet, became possessed of a certificate of a hundred thousand francs a year from his investment in the Funds, bought at eighty francs net. The particulars revealed at his death by the inventory of his property threw no light upon the means which his suspicious nature took to remit the price of the investment and receive the certificate thereof. Maitre Cruchot was of opinion that Nanon, unknown to herself, was the trusty instrument by which the money was transported; for about this time she was absent five days, under a pretext of putting things to rights at Froidfond,--as if the goodman were capable of leaving anything lying about or out of order!

In all that concerned the business of the house of Guillaume Grandet the old cooper’s intentions were fulfilled to the letter. The Bank of France, as everybody knows, affords exact information about all the large fortunes in Paris and the provinces. The names of des Grassins and Felix Grandet of Saumur were well known there, and they enjoyed the esteem bestowed on financial celebrities whose wealth comes from immense and unencumbered territorial possessions. The arrival of the Saumur banker for the purpose, it was said, of honorably liquidating the affairs of Grandet of Paris, was enough to avert the shame of protested notes from the memory of the defunct merchant. The seals on the property were taken off in presence of the creditors, and the notary employed by Grandet went to work at once on the inventory of the assets. Soon after this, des Grassins called a meeting of the creditors, who unanimously elected him, conjointly with Francois Keller, the head of a rich banking-house and one of those principally interested in the affair, as liquidators, with full power to protect both the honor of the family and the interests of the claimants. The credit of Grandet of Saumur, the hopes he diffused by means of des Grassins in the minds of all concerned, facilitated the transactions. Not a single creditor proved recalcitrant; no one thought of passing his claim to his profit-and-loss account; each and all said confidently, “Grandet of Saumur will pay.”

Six months went by. The Parisians had redeemed the notes in circulation as they fell due, and held them under lock and key in their desks. First result aimed at by the old cooper! Nine months after this preliminary meeting, the two liquidators distributed forty-seven per cent to each creditor on his claim. This amount was obtained by the sale of the securities, property, and possessions of all kinds belonging to the late Guillaume Grandet, and was paid over with scrupulous fidelity. Unimpeachable integrity was shown in the transaction. The creditors gratefully acknowledged the remarkable and incontestable honor displayed by the Grandets. When these praises had circulated for a certain length of time, the creditors asked for the rest of their money. It became necessary to write a collective letter to Grandet of Saumur.

“Here it comes!” said the old man as he threw the letter into the fire. “Patience, my good friends!”

In answer to the proposals contained in the letter, Grandet of Saumur demanded that all vouchers for claims against the estate of his brother should be deposited with a notary, together with acquittances for the forty-seven per cent already paid; he made this demand under pretence of sifting the accounts and finding out the exact condition of the estate. It roused at once a variety of difficulties. Generally speaking, the creditor is a species of maniac, ready to agree to anything one day, on the next breathing fire and slaughter; later on, he grows amicable and easy-going. To-day his wife is good-humored, his last baby has cut its first tooth, all is well at home, and he is determined not to lose a sou; on the morrow it rains, he can’t go out, he is gloomy, he says yes to any proposal that is made to him, so long as it will put an end to the affair; on the third day he declares he must have guarantees; by the end of the month he wants his debtor’s head, and becomes at heart an executioner. The creditor is a good deal like the sparrow on whose tail confiding children are invited to put salt,--with this difference, that he applies the image to his claim, the proceeds of which he is never able to lay hold of. Grandet had studied the atmospheric variations of creditors, and the creditors of his brother justified all his calculations. Some were angry, and flatly refused to give in their vouchers.

“Very good; so much the better,” said Grandet, rubbing his hands over the letter in which des Grassins announced the fact.

Others agreed to the demand, but only on condition that their rights should be fully guaranteed; they renounced none, and even reserved the power of ultimately compelling a failure. On this began a long correspondence, which ended in Grandet of Saumur agreeing to all conditions. By means of this concession the placable creditors were able to bring the dissatisfied creditors to reason. The deposit was then made, but not without sundry complaints.

“Your goodman,” they said to des Grassins, “is tricking us.”

Twenty-three months after the death of Guillaume Grandet many of the creditors, carried away by more pressing business in the markets of Paris, had forgotten their Grandet claims, or only thought of them to say:

“I begin to believe that forty-seven per cent is all I shall ever get out of that affair.”

The old cooper had calculated on the power of time, which, as he used to say, is a pretty good devil after all. By the end of the third year des Grassins wrote to Grandet that he had brought the creditors to agree to give up their claims for ten per cent on the two million four hundred thousand francs still due by the house of Grandet. Grandet answered that the notary and the broker whose shameful failures had caused the death of his brother were still living, that they might now have recovered their credit, and that they ought to be sued, so as to get something out of them towards lessening the total of the deficit.

By the end of the fourth year the liabilities were definitely estimated at a sum of twelve hundred thousand francs. Many negotiations, lasting over six months, took place between the creditors and the liquidators, and between the liquidators and Grandet. To make a long story short, Grandet of Saumur, anxious by this time to get out of the affair, told the liquidators, about the ninth month of the fourth year, that his nephew had made a fortune in the Indies and was disposed to pay his father’s debts in full; he therefore could not take upon himself to make any settlement without previously consulting him; he had written to him, and was expecting an answer. The creditors were held in check until the middle of the fifth year by the words, “payment in full,” which the wily old miser threw out from time to time as he laughed in his beard, saying with a smile and an oath, “Those Parisians!”

But the creditors were reserved for a fate unexampled in the annals of commerce. When the events of this history bring them once more into notice, they will be found still in the position Grandet had resolved to force them into from the first.

As soon as the Funds reached a hundred and fifteen, Pere Grandet sold out his interests and withdrew two million four hundred thousand francs in gold, to which he added, in his coffers, the six hundred thousand francs compound interest which he had derived from the capital. Des Grassins now lived in Paris. In the first place he had been made a deputy; then he became infatuated (father of a family as he was, though horribly bored by the provincial life of Saumur) with a pretty actress at the Theatre de Madame, known as Florine, and he presently relapsed into the old habits of his army life. It is useless to speak of his conduct; Saumur considered it profoundly immoral. His wife was fortunate in the fact of her property being settled upon herself, and in having sufficient ability to keep up the banking-house in Saumur, which was managed in her name and repaired the breach in her fortune caused by the extravagance of her husband. The Cruchotines made so much talk about the false position of the quasi-widow that she married her daughter very badly, and was forced to give up all hope of an alliance between Eugenie Grandet and her son. Adolphe joined his father in Paris and became, it was said, a worthless fellow. The Cruchots triumphed.

“Your husband hasn’t common sense,” said Grandet as he lent Madame des Grassins some money on a note securely endorsed. “I am very sorry for you, for you are a good little woman.”

“Ah, monsieur,” said the poor lady, “who could have believed that when he left Saumur to go to Paris on your business he was going to his ruin?”

“Heaven is my witness, madame, that up to the last moment I did all I could to prevent him from going. Monsieur le president was most anxious to take his place; but he was determined to go, and now we all see why.”

In this way Grandet made it quite plain that he was under no obligation to des Grassins.

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