rsting into a loud peal of laughter. "I can't make cream. Your
cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have seen
him in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He wears
linen as fine as the surplice of monsieur le cure."

"Nanon, please make us a _galette_."

"And who'll give me wood for the oven, and flour and butter for the
cakes?" said Nanon, who in her function of prime-minister to Grandet
assumed at times enormous importance in the eyes of Eugenie and her
mother. "Mustn't rob the master to feast the cousin. You ask him for
butter and flour and wood: he's your father, perhaps he'll give you
some. See! there he is now, coming to give out the provisions."

Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard the
staircase shaking under her father's step. Already she felt the effects
of that virgin modesty and that special consciousness of happiness which
lead us to fancy, not perhaps without reason, that our thoughts are
graven on our foreheads and are open to the eyes of all. Perceiving for
the first time the cold nakedness of her father's house, the poor
girl felt a sort of rage that she could not put it in harmony with her
cousin's elegance. She felt the need of doing something for him,--what,
she did not know. Ingenuous and truthful, she followed her angelic
nature without mistrusting her impressions or her feelings. The mere
sight of her cousin had wakened within her the natural yearnings of a
woman,--yearnings that were the more likely to develop ardently because,
having reached her twenty-third year, she was in the plenitude of her
intelligence and her desires. For the first time in her life her heart
was full of terror at the sight of her father; in him she saw the master
of the fate, and she fancied herself guilty of wrong-doing in hiding
from his knowledge certain thoughts. She walked with hasty steps,
surprised to breathe a purer air, to feel the sun's rays quickening her
pulses, to absorb from their heat a moral warmth and a new life. As
she turned over in her mind some stratagem by which to get the cake, a
quarrel--an event as rare as the sight of swallows in winter--broke out
between la Grande Nanon and Grandet. Armed with his keys, the master had
come to dole out provisions for the day's consumption.

"Is there any bread left from yesterday?" he said to Nanon.

"Not a crumb, monsieur."

Grandet took a large round loaf, well floured and moulded in one of