he tale of their own accord; only the simple facts
are wanting, their effect is already in the air.

And accordingly the story slips away from its beginning without
hesitation. In a sense it is a very slight story; there is scarcely
anything in it but Eugenie's quick flush of emotion, and then her
patient cherishing of its memory; and this simplicity may seem to
detract, perhaps, from the skilfulness of Balzac's preparation. Where
there is so little in the way of incident or clash of character to
provide for, where the people are so plain and perspicuous and next to
nothing happens to them, it should not be difficult to make an
expressive scene for the drama and its few facts. All that occurs in
the main line of the story is that Eugenie falls in love with her
cousin, bids him good-bye when he goes to make his fortune in the
Indies, trustfully awaits him for a number of years, and discovers his
faithlessness when he returns. Her mother's death, and then her
father's, are almost the only events in the long interval of Charles's
absence. Simple indeed, but this is exactly the kind of story which it
is most puzzling to handle. The material is scanty, and yet it covers
a good many years; and somehow the narrative must render the length of
the years without the help of positive and concrete stuff to fill
them. The whole point of the story is lost unless we are made to feel
the slow crawling of time, while Eugenie waited; but what is there in
her life to account for the time, to bridge the interval, to
illustrate its extent? Balzac has to make a long impression of
vacuity; Eugenie Grandet contains a decidedly tough subject.

In such a case I suppose the first instinct of almost any story-teller
would be to lengthen the narrative of her loneliness by elaborating
the picture of her state of mind, drawing out the record of expectancy
and patience and failing hope. If nothing befalls her from without, or
so little, the time must be filled with the long drama of her
experience within; the centre of the story would then be cast in her
consciousness, in which there would be reflected the gradual drop of
her emotion from glowing newness to the level of daily custom, and
thence again to the chill of disillusion. It is easy to imagine the
kind of form which the book would take. In order to assure its full
value to Eugenie's monotonous suffering, the story would be given from
her point of view, entirely from hers; the external facts of