loves. She
envied Charles his small hands, his complexion, the freshness and
refinement of his features. In short,--if it is possible to sum up
the effect this elegant being produced upon an ignorant young girl
perpetually employed in darning stockings or in mending her father's
clothes, and whose life flowed on beneath these unclean rafters, seeing
none but occasional passers along the silent street,--this vision of
her cousin roused in her soul an emotion of delicate desire like that
inspired in a young man by the fanciful pictures of women drawn by
Westall for the English "Keepsakes," and that engraved by the Findens
with so clever a tool that we fear, as we breathe upon the paper, that
the celestial apparitions may be wafted away. Charles drew from his
pocket a handkerchief embroidered by the great lady now travelling in
Scotland. As Eugenie saw this pretty piece of work, done in the vacant
hours which were lost to love, she looked at her cousin to see if it
were possible that he meant to make use of it. The manners of the
young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up his eye-glass, his
affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance at the coffer which
had just given so much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he
evidently regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,--all these
things, which shocked the Cruchots and the des Grassins, pleased Eugenie
so deeply that before she slept she dreamed long dreams of her phoenix
cousin.

The loto-numbers were drawn very slowly, and presently the game came
suddenly to an end. La Grand Nanon entered and said aloud: "Madame, I
want the sheets for monsieur's bed."

Madame Grandet followed her out. Madame des Grassins said in a low
voice: "Let us keep our sous and stop playing." Each took his or her two
sous from the chipped saucer in which they had been put; then the party
moved in a body toward the fire.

"Have you finished your game?" said Grandet, without looking up from his
letter.

"Yes, yes!" replied Madame des Grassins, taking a seat near Charles.

Eugenie, prompted by a thought often born in the heart of a young girl
when sentiment enters it for the first time, left the room to go and
help her mother and Nanon. Had an able confessor then questioned her
she would, no doubt, have avowed to him that she thought neither of her
mother nor of Nanon, but was pricked by a poignant desire to look after
her cousin's room and concern herself with her cousin