xty years old on its roots,
strong in the hips, square in the back, with the hands of a cartman and
an honesty as sound as her unblemished virtue. Neither the warts which
adorned her martial visage, nor the red-brick tints of her skin, nor the
sinewy arms, nor the ragged garments of la Grande Nanon, dismayed the
cooper, who was at that time still of an age when the heart shudders.
He fed, shod, and clothed the poor girl, gave her wages, and put her to
work without treating her too roughly. Seeing herself thus welcomed,
la Grande Nanon wept secretly tears of joy, and attached herself in all
sincerity to her master, who from that day ruled her and worked her with
feudal authority. Nanon did everything. She cooked, she made the lye,
she washed the linen in the Loire and brought it home on her shoulders;
she got up early, she went to bed late; she prepared the food of the
vine-dressers during the harvest, kept watch upon the market-people,
protected the property of her master like a faithful dog, and even, full
of blind confidence, obeyed without a murmur his most absurd exactions.

In the famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with
unheard-of difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old
watch,--the first present he had made her during twenty years of
service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her),
it is impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the
shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl
so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and
Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes
no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much
parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic benefits
derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no one was
ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed when
Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and toiled as he
did. What pleasant compensations there were in such equality! Never did
the master have occasion to find fault with the servant for pilfering
the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines eaten under the trees.
"Come, fall-to, Nanon!" he would say in years when the branches bent
under the fruit and the farmers were obliged to give it to the pigs.

To the poor peasant who in her youth had earned nothing but harsh
treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, Gra