thing should be wasted," answered Grandet, rousing himself from his
reverie. He saw a perspective of eight millions in three years, and he
was sailing along that sheet of gold. "Let us go to bed. I will bid
my nephew good-night for the rest of you, and see if he will take
anything."

Madame Grandet remained on the landing of the first storey to hear the
conversation that was about to take place between the goodman and his
nephew. Eugenie, bolder than her mother, went up two stairs.

"Well, nephew, you are in trouble. Yes, weep, that's natural. A father
is a father; but we must bear our troubles patiently. I am a good uncle
to you, remember that. Come, take courage! Will you have a little glass
of wine?" (Wine costs nothing in Saumur, and they offer it as tea is
offered in China.) "Why!" added Grandet, "you have got no light! That's
bad, very bad; you ought to see what you are about," and he walked to
the chimney-piece. "What's this?" he cried. "A wax candle! How the
devil did they filch a wax candle? The spendthrifts would tear down the
ceilings of my house to boil the fellow's eggs."

Hearing these words, mother and daughter slipped back into their rooms
and burrowed in their beds, with the celerity of frightened mice getting
back to their holes.

"Madame Grandet, have you found a mine?" said the man, coming into the
chamber of his wife.

"My friend, wait; I am saying my prayers," said the poor mother in a
trembling voice.

"The devil take your good God!" growled Grandet in reply.

Misers have no belief in a future life; the present is their all in all.
This thought casts a terrible light upon our present epoch, in which,
far more than at any former period, money sways the laws and politics
and morals. Institutions, books, men, and dogmas, all conspire to
undermine belief in a future life,--a belief upon which the social
edifice has rested for eighteen hundred years. The grave, as a means of
transition, is little feared in our day. The future, which once opened
to us beyond the requiems, has now been imported into the present. To
obtain _per fas et nefas_ a terrestrial paradise of luxury and earthly
enjoyment, to harden the heart and macerate the body for the sake of
fleeting possessions, as the martyrs once suffered all things to reach
eternal joys, this is now the universal thought--a thought written
everywhere, even in the very laws which ask of the legislator, "What do
you pay?" instead of asking him, "What