h it was
extinguished, without regard either to the chills of the early spring or
to those of a wintry autumn. A foot-warmer, filled with embers from the
kitchen fire, which la Grande Nanon contrived to save for them, enabled
Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet to bear the chilly mornings and evenings
of April and October. Mother and daughter took charge of the family
linen, and spent their days so conscientiously upon a labor properly
that of working-women, that if Eugenie wished to embroider a collar for
her mother she was forced to take the time from sleep, and deceive her
father to obtain the necessary light. For a long time the miser had
given out the tallow candle to his daughter and la Grande Nanon just as
he gave out every morning the bread and other necessaries for the daily
consumption.

La Grande Nanon was perhaps the only human being capable of accepting
willingly the despotism of her master. The whole town envied Monsieur
and Madame Grandet the possession of her. La Grande Nanon, so called on
account of her height, which was five feet eight inches, had lived with
Monsieur Grandet for thirty-five years. Though she received only sixty
francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the richest
serving-women in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating through
thirty-five years, had recently enabled her to invest four thousand
francs in an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her long and
persistent economy seemed gigantic. Every servant in the town, seeing
that the poor sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old age, was
jealous of her, and never thought of the hard slavery through which it
had been won.

At twenty-two years of age the poor girl had been unable to find a
situation, so repulsive was her face to almost every one. Yet the
feeling was certainly unjust: the face would have been much admired on
the shoulders of a grenadier of the guard; but all things, so they say,
should be in keeping. Forced to leave a farm where she kept the cows,
because the dwelling-house was burned down, she came to Saumur to find
a place, full of the robust courage that shrinks from no labor. Le Pere
Grandet was at that time thinking of marriage and about to set up his
household. He espied the girl, rejected as she was from door to door.
A good judge of corporeal strength in his trade as a cooper, he guessed
the work that might be got out of a female creature shaped like a
Hercules, as firm on her feet as an oak si