she did on her marriage-day. She
had all the benefits of her ugliness, and was big and fat and strong,
with a look of happiness on her indestructible features which made a
good many people envy Cornoiller.

"Fast colors!" said the draper.

"Quite likely to have children," said the salt merchant. "She's pickled
in brine, saving your presence."

"She is rich, and that fellow Cornoiller has done a good thing for
himself," said a third man.

When she came forth from the old house on her way to the parish church,
Nanon, who was loved by all the neighborhood, received many compliments
as she walked down the tortuous street. Eugenie had given her three
dozen silver forks and spoons as a wedding present. Cornoiller, amazed
at such magnificence, spoke of his mistress with tears in his eyes;
he would willingly have been hacked in pieces in her behalf. Madame
Cornoiller, appointed housekeeper to Mademoiselle Grandet, got as much
happiness out of her new position as she did from the possession of
a husband. She took charge of the weekly accounts; she locked up the
provisions and gave them out daily, after the manner of her defunct
master; she ruled over two servants,--a cook, and a maid whose business
it was to mend the house-linen and make mademoiselle's dresses.
Cornoiller combined the functions of keeper and bailiff. It is
unnecessary to say that the women-servants selected by Nanon were
"perfect treasures." Mademoiselle Grandet thus had four servants, whose
devotion was unbounded. The farmers perceived no change after Monsieur
Grandet's death; the usages and customs he had sternly established were
scrupulously carried out by Monsieur and Madame Cornoiller.

At thirty years of age Eugenie knew none of the joys of life. Her
pale, sad childhood had glided on beside a mother whose heart, always
misunderstood and wounded, had known only suffering. Leaving this life
joyfully, the mother pitied the daughter because she still must live;
and she left in her child's soul some fugitive remorse and many lasting
regrets. Eugenie's first and only love was a wellspring of sadness
within her. Meeting her lover for a few brief days, she had given him
her heart between two kisses furtively exchanged; then he had left her,
and a whole world lay between them. This love, cursed by her father, had
cost the life of her mother and brought her only sorrow, mingled with a
few frail hopes. Thus her upward spring towards happiness had wasted her
str