FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144  
145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   >>  
of angelic gentleness and melancholy. Her imprisonment and the condemnation of her father were as nothing to her. Had she not a map of the world, the little bench, the garden, the angle of the wall? Did she not taste upon her lips the honey that love's kisses left there? She was ignorant for a time that the town talked about her, just as Grandet himself was ignorant of it. Pious and pure in heart before God, her conscience and her love helped her to suffer patiently the wrath and vengeance of her father. One deep grief silenced all others. Her mother, that gentle, tender creature, made beautiful by the light which shone from the inner to the outer as she approached the tomb,--her mother was perishing from day to day. Eugenie often reproached herself as the innocent cause of the slow, cruel malady that was wasting her away. This remorse, though her mother soothed it, bound her still closer to her love. Every morning, as soon as her father left the house, she went to the bedside of her mother, and there Nanon brought her breakfast. The poor girl, sad, and suffering through the sufferings of her mother, would turn her face to the old servant with a mute gesture, weeping, and yet not daring to speak of her cousin. It was Madame Grandet who first found courage to say,-- "Where is _he_? Why does _he_ not write?" "Let us think about him, mother, but not speak of him. You are ill--you, before all." "All" meant "him." "My child," said Madame Grandet, "I do not wish to live. God protects me and enables me to look with joy to the end of my misery." Every utterance of this woman was unfalteringly pious and Christian. Sometimes, during the first months of the year, when her husband came to breakfast with her and tramped up and down the room, she would say to him a few religious words, always spoken with angelic sweetness, yet with the firmness of a woman to whom approaching death lends a courage she had lacked in life. "Monsieur, I thank you for the interest you take in my health," she would answer when he made some commonplace inquiry; "but if you really desire to render my last moments less bitter and to ease my grief, take back your daughter: be a Christian, a husband, and a father." When he heard these words, Grandet would sit down by the bed with the air of a man who sees the rain coming and quietly gets under the shelter of a gateway till it is over. When these touching, tender, and religious supplications ha
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144  
145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   >>  



Top keywords:
mother
 

father

 

Grandet

 
breakfast
 

husband

 

religious

 

Christian

 

tender

 

courage

 

ignorant


Madame

 
angelic
 

unfalteringly

 
tramped
 
months
 

Sometimes

 

protects

 

enables

 

utterance

 

misery


Monsieur

 

daughter

 

bitter

 

touching

 

supplications

 
gateway
 

shelter

 

coming

 

quietly

 

moments


approaching

 

lacked

 
firmness
 

spoken

 

sweetness

 

inquiry

 

desire

 

render

 

commonplace

 

interest


health
 
answer
 

suffer

 

helped

 

patiently

 
vengeance
 

conscience

 
beautiful
 
silenced
 

gentle