ndet's ambiguous
laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon's simple heart and narrow head
could hold only one feeling and one idea. For thirty-five years she had
never ceased to see herself standing before the wood-yard of Monsieur
Grandet, ragged and barefooted, and to hear him say: "What do you want,
young one?" Her gratitude was ever new. Sometimes Grandet, reflecting
that the poor creature had never heard a flattering word, that she was
ignorant of all the tender sentiments inspired by women, that she might
some day appear before the throne of God even more chaste than the
Virgin Mary herself,--Grandet, struck with pity, would say as he
looked at her, "Poor Nanon!" The exclamation was always followed by an
undefinable look cast upon him in return by the old servant. The words,
uttered from time to time, formed a chain of friendship that nothing
ever parted, and to which each exclamation added a link. Such compassion
arising in the heart of the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old
spinster, had something inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel
pity, recalling, as it did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old
cooper, was for Nanon the sum total of happiness. Who does not likewise
say, "Poor Nanon!" God will recognize his angels by the inflexions of
their voices and by their secret sighs.

There were very many households in Saumur where the servants were better
treated, but where the masters received far less satisfaction in return.
Thus it was often said: "What have the Grandets ever done to make their
Grande Nanon so attached to them? She would go through fire and water
for their sake!" Her kitchen, whose barred windows looked into the
court, was always clean, neat, cold,--a true miser's kitchen, where
nothing went to waste. When Nanon had washed her dishes, locked up the
remains of the dinner, and put out her fire, she left the kitchen, which
was separated by a passage from the living-room, and went to spin
hemp beside her masters. One tallow candle sufficed the family for the
evening. The servant slept at the end of the passage in a species of
closet lighted only by a fan-light. Her robust health enabled her to
live in this hole with impunity; there she could hear the slightest
noise through the deep silence which reigned night and day in that
dreary house. Like a watch-dog, she slept with one ear open, and took
her rest with a mind alert.

A description of the other parts of the dwelling will be f