he said,
proving by these last words that Christianity must always be the
religion of misers.

* * * * *

Eugenie Grandet was now alone in the world in that gray house, with none
but Nanon to whom she could turn with the certainty of being heard and
understood,--Nanon the sole being who loved her for herself and with
whom she could speak of her sorrows. La Grande Nanon was a providence
for Eugenie. She was not a servant, but a humble friend. After her
father's death Eugenie learned from Maitre Cruchot that she possessed
an income of three hundred thousand francs from landed and personal
property in the arrondissement of Saumur; also six millions invested at
three per cent in the Funds (bought at sixty, and now worth seventy-six
francs); also two millions in gold coin, and a hundred thousand francs
in silver crown-pieces, besides all the interest which was still to be
collected. The sum total of her property reached seventeen millions.

"Where is my cousin?" was her one thought.

The day on which Maitre Cruchot handed in to his client a clear and
exact schedule of the whole inheritance, Eugenie remained alone with
Nanon, sitting beside the fireplace in the vacant hall, where all was
now a memory, from the chair on castors which her mother had sat in, to
the glass from which her cousin drank.

"Nanon, we are alone--"

"Yes, mademoiselle; and if I knew where he was, the darling, I'd go on
foot to find him."

"The ocean is between us," she said.

While the poor heiress wept in company of an old servant, in that cold
dark house, which was to her the universe, the whole province rang, from
Nantes to Orleans, with the seventeen millions of Mademoiselle Grandet.
Among her first acts she had settled an annuity of twelve hundred francs
on Nanon, who, already possessed of six hundred more, became a rich and
enviable match. In less than a month that good soul passed from single
to wedded life under the protection of Antoine Cornoiller, who
was appointed keeper of all Mademoiselle Grandet's estates. Madame
Cornoiller possessed one striking advantage over her contemporaries.
Although she was fifty-nine years of age, she did not look more than
forty. Her strong features had resisted the ravages of time. Thanks to
the healthy customs of her semi-conventual life, she laughed at old age
from the vantage-ground of a rosy skin and an iron constitution. Perhaps
she never looked as well in her life as