These three Cruchots, backed by a
goodly number of cousins, and allied to twenty families in the town,
formed a party, like the Medici in Florence; like the Medici, the
Cruchots had their Pazzi.
Madame des Grassins, mother of a son twenty-three years of age, came
assiduously to play cards with Madame Grandet, hoping to marry her
dear Adolphe to Mademoiselle Eugenie. Monsieur des Grassins, the
banker, vigorously promoted the schemes of his wife by means of secret
services constantly rendered to the old miser, and always arrived in
time upon the field of battle. The three des Grassins likewise had
their adherents, their cousins, their faithful allies. On the Cruchot
side the abbe, the Talleyrand of the family, well backed-up by his
brother the notary, sharply contested every inch of ground with his
female adversary, and tried to obtain the rich heiress for his nephew
the president.
This secret warfare between the Cruchots and des Grassins, the prize
thereof being the hand in marriage of Eugenie Grandet, kept the
various social circles of Saumur in violent agitation. Would
Mademoiselle Grandet marry Monsieur le president or Monsieur Adolphe
des Grassins? To this problem some replied that Monsieur Grandet would
never give his daughter to the one or to the other. The old cooper,
eaten up with ambition, was looking, they said, for a peer of France,
to whom an income of three hundred thousand francs would make all the
past, present, and future casks of the Grandets acceptable.
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