umber without making
a remark, while in fact they were all thinking of Monsieur Grandet's
millions. The old cooper, with inward self-conceit, was contemplating
the pink feathers and the fresh toilet of Madame des Grassins, the
martial head of the banker, the faces of Adolphe, the president, the
abbe, and the notary, saying to himself:--

"They are all after my money. Hey! neither the one nor the other shall
have my daughter; but they are useful--useful as harpoons to fish with."

This family gaiety in the old gray room dimly lighted by two
tallow candles; this laughter, accompanied by the whirr of Nanon's
spinning-wheel, sincere only upon the lips of Eugenie or her mother;
this triviality mingled with important interests; this young girl, who,
like certain birds made victims of the price put upon them, was
now lured and trapped by proofs of friendship of which she was the
dupe,--all these things contributed to make the scene a melancholy
comedy. Is it not, moreover, a drama of all times and all places, though
here brought down to its simplest expression? The figure of Grandet,
playing his own game with the false friendship of the two families and
getting enormous profits from it, dominates the scene and throws
light upon it. The modern god,--the only god in whom faith is
preserved,--money, is here, in all its power, manifested in a single
countenance. The tender sentiments of life hold here but a secondary
place; only the three pure, simple hearts of Nanon, of Eugenie, and of
her mother were inspired by them. And how much of ignorance there was in
the simplicity of these poor women! Eugenie and her mother knew nothing
of Grandet's wealth; they could only estimate the things of life by the
glimmer of their pale ideas, and they neither valued nor despised money,
because they were accustomed to do without it. Their feelings, bruised,
though they did not know it, but ever-living, were the secret spring of
their existence, and made them curious exceptions in the midst of these
other people whose lives were purely material. Frightful condition of
the human race! there is no one of its joys that does not come from some
species of ignorance.

At the moment when Madame Grandet had won a loto of sixteen sous,--the
largest ever pooled in that house,--and while la Grande Nanon was
laughing with delight as she watched madame pocketing her riches, the
knocker resounded on the house-door with such a noise that the women all
jumped