r marriage that
your father has given a dinner."

* * * * *

About four o'clock, just as Eugenie and her mother had finished setting
the table for six persons, and after the master of the house had brought
up a few bottles of the exquisite wine which provincials cherish with
true affection, Charles came down into the hall. The young fellow was
pale; his gestures, the expression of his face, his glance, and the
tones of his voice, all had a sadness which was full of grace. He was
not pretending grief, he truly suffered; and the veil of pain cast over
his features gave him an interesting air dear to the heart of women.
Eugenie loved him the more for it. Perhaps she felt that sorrow drew him
nearer to her. Charles was no longer the rich and distinguished young
man placed in a sphere far above her, but a relation plunged into
frightful misery. Misery begets equality. Women have this in common with
the angels,--suffering humanity belongs to them. Charles and Eugenie
understood each other and spoke only with their eyes; for the poor
fallen dandy, orphaned and impoverished, sat apart in a corner of the
room, and was proudly calm and silent. Yet, from time to time, the
gentle and caressing glance of the young girl shone upon him and
constrained him away from his sad thoughts, drawing him with her into
the fields of hope and of futurity, where she loved to hold him at her
side.

VII

At this moment the town of Saumur was more excited about the dinner
given by Grandet to the Cruchots than it had been the night before at
the sale of his vintage, though that constituted a crime of high-treason
against the whole wine-growing community. If the politic old miser had
given his dinner from the same idea that cost the dog of Alcibiades his
tail, he might perhaps have been called a great man; but the fact is,
considering himself superior to a community which he could trick on all
occasions, he paid very little heed to what Saumur might say.

The des Grassins soon learned the facts of the failure and the violent
death of Guillaume Grandet, and they determined to go to their client's
house that very evening to commiserate his misfortune and show him some
marks of friendship, with a view of ascertaining the motives which had
led him to invite the Cruchots to dinner. At precisely five o'clock
Monsieur C. de Bonfons and his uncle the notary arrived in their
Sunday clothes. The party sat down to table a