CHAPTER XI
For several months the old wine-grower came constantly to his wife’s room at all hours of the day, without ever uttering his daughter’s name, or seeing her, or making the smallest allusion to her. Madame Grandet did not leave her chamber, and daily grew worse. Nothing softened the old man; he remained unmoved, harsh, and cold as a granite rock. He continued to go and come about his business as usual; but ceased to stutter, talked less, and was more obdurate in business transactions than ever before. Often he made mistakes in adding up his figures.
“Something is going on at the Grandets,” said the Grassinists and the Cruchotines.
“What has happened in the Grandet family?” became a fixed question which everybody asked everybody else at the little evening-parties of Saumur. Euge
