onths."

As he replaced the candlestick beside the clock, Grandet, who never
forgot his own jokes, and repeated them to satiety when he thought them
funny, said,--

"As this is Eugenie's birthday let us illuminate."

He carefully took off the branches of the candelabra, put a socket on
each pedestal, took from Nanon a new tallow candle with paper twisted
round the end of it, put it into the hollow, made it firm, lit it, and
then sat down beside his wife, looking alternately at his friends, his
daughter, and the two candles. The Abbe Cruchot, a plump, puffy little
man, with a red wig plastered down and a face like an old female
gambler, said as he stretched out his feet, well shod in stout shoes
with silver buckles: "The des Grassins have not come?"

"Not yet," said Grandet.

"But are they coming?" asked the old notary, twisting his face, which
had as many holes as a collander, into a queer grimace.

"I think so," answered Madame Grandet.

"Are your vintages all finished?" said Monsieur de Bonfons to Grandet.

"Yes, all of them," said the old man, rising to walk up and down the
room, his chest swelling with pride as he said the words, "all of them."
Through the door of the passage which led to the kitchen he saw la
Grande Nanon sitting beside her fire with a candle and preparing to spin
there, so as not to intrude among the guests.

"Nanon," he said, going into the passage, "put out that fire and that
candle, and come and sit with us. Pardieu! the hall is big enough for
all."

"But monsieur, you are to have the great people."

"Are not you as good as they? They are descended from Adam, and so are
you."

Grandet came back to the president and said,--

"Have you sold your vintage?"

"No, not I; I shall keep it. If the wine is good this year, it will
be better two years hence. The proprietors, you know, have made an
agreement to keep up the price; and this year the Belgians won't get the
better of us. Suppose they are sent off empty-handed for once, faith!
they'll come back."

"Yes, but let us mind what we are about," said Grandet in a tone which
made the president tremble.

"Is he driving some bargain?" thought Cruchot.

At this moment the knocker announced the des Grassins family, and
their arrival interrupted a conversation which had begun between Madame
Grandet and the abbe.

Madame des Grassins was one of those lively, plump little women, with
pink-and-white skins, who, thanks to the claustral c