Mercy! what's there to fear for your copper sous?"

"Oh! nothing," said Pere Grandet.

"Besides, we shall go fast," added the man; "your farmers have picked
out their best horses."

"Very good. You did not tell them where I was going?"

"I didn't know where."

"Very good. Is the carriage strong?"

"Strong? hear to that, now! Why, it can carry three thousand weight. How
much does that old keg weigh?"

"Goodness!" exclaimed Nanon. "I ought to know! There's pretty nigh
eighteen hundred--"

"Will you hold your tongue, Nanon! You are to tell my wife I have gone
into the country. I shall be back to dinner. Drive fast, Cornoiller; I
must get to Angers before nine o'clock."

The carriage drove off. Nanon bolted the great door, let loose the dog,
and went off to bed with a bruised shoulder, no one in the neighborhood
suspecting either the departure of Grandet or the object of his journey.
The precautions of the old miser and his reticence were never relaxed.
No one had ever seen a penny in that house, filled as it was with gold.
Hearing in the morning, through the gossip of the port, that exchange
on gold had doubled in price in consequence of certain military
preparations undertaken at Nantes, and that speculators had arrived
at Angers to buy coin, the old wine-grower, by the simple process of
borrowing horses from his farmers, seized the chance of selling his gold
and of bringing back in the form of treasury notes the sum he intended
to put into the Funds, having swelled it considerably by the exchange.

VIII

"My father has gone," thought Eugenie, who heard all that took place
from the head of the stairs. Silence was restored in the house, and the
distant rumbling of the carriage, ceasing by degrees, no longer echoed
through the sleeping town. At this moment Eugenie heard in her heart,
before the sound caught her ears, a cry which pierced the partitions and
came from her cousin's chamber. A line of light, thin as the blade of
a sabre, shone through a chink in the door and fell horizontally on the
balusters of the rotten staircase.

"He suffers!" she said, springing up the stairs. A second moan brought
her to the landing near his room. The door was ajar, she pushed it open.
Charles was sleeping; his head hung over the side of the old armchair,
and his hand, from which the pen had fallen, nearly touched the
floor. The oppressed breathing caused by the strained posture suddenly
frightened Eugenie, who entere