Monsieur Grandet thus obtained that modern title of nobility which our
mania for equality can never rub out. He became the most imposing
personage in the arrondissement. He worked a hundred acres of
vineyard, which in fruitful years yielded seven or eight hundred
hogsheads of wine. He owned thirteen farms, an old abbey, whose
windows and arches he had walled up for the sake of economy,--a
measure which preserved them,--also a hundred and twenty-seven acres
of meadow-land, where three thousand poplars, planted in 1793, grew
and flourished; and finally, the house in which he lived. Such was his
visible estate; as to his other property, only two persons could give
even a vague guess at its value: one was Monsieur Cruchot, a notary
employed in the usurious investments of Monsieur Grandet; the other
was Monsieur des Grassins, the richest banker in Saumur, in whose
profits Grandet had a certain covenanted and secret share.

Although old Cruchot and Monsieur des Grassins were both gifted with
the deep discretion which wealth and trust beget in the provinces,
they publicly testified so much respect to Monsieur Grandet that
observers estimated the amount of his property by the obsequious
attention which they bestowed upon him. In all Saumur there was no one
not persuaded that Monsieur Grandet had a private treasure, some
hiding-place full of louis, where he nightly took ineffable delight in
gazing upon great masses of gold. Avaricious people gathered proof of
this when they looked at the eyes of the good man, to which the yellow
metal seemed to have conveyed its tints. The glance of a man
accustomed to draw enormous interest from his capital acquires, like
that of the libertine, the gambler, or the sycophant, certain
indefinable habits,--furtive, eager, mysterious movements, which never
escape the notice of his co-religionists. This secret language is in a
certain way the freemasonry of the passions. Monsieur Grandet inspired