"
Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the
father and daughter went down the winding street to the shore.
"Where are you going at this early hour?" said Cruchot, the notary,
meeting them.
"To see something," answered Grandet, not duped by the matutinal
appearance of his friend.
When Pere Grandet went to "see something," the notary knew by
experience there was something to be got by going with him; so he
went.
"Come, Cruchot," said Grandet, "you are one of my friends. I'll show
you what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good ground."
"Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for those
that were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?" said Maitre
Cruchot, opening his eyes with amazement. "What luck you have had! To
cut down your trees at the very time they ran short of white-wood at
Nantes, and to sell them at thirty francs!"
Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most solemn
moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to bring down
upon her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet had now reached
the magnificent fields which he owned on the banks of the Loire, where
thirty workmen were employed in clearing away, filling up, and
levelling the spots formerly occupied by the poplars.
"Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! Jean," he
cried to a laborer, "m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, b-both ways."
"Four times eight feet," said the man.
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