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EUGENIE GRANDET
EUGENIE GRANDET HONORE DE BALZAC I
There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires
melancholy akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters dreary
moorlands or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is
perhaps the silence of the cloister the barrenness of moors the
skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a
stranger might think them uninhabited were it not that he encounters
suddenly the pale cold glance of a motionless person whose half-
monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an
unaccustomed step.
Such elements of sadness formed the physiognomy as it were of a
dwelling-house in Saumur which stands at the end of the steep street
leading to the chateau in the upper part of the town. This street--now
little frequented hot in summer cold in winter dark in certain
sections--is remarkable for the resonance of its little pebbly
pavement always clean and dry for the narrowness of its tortuous
road-way for the peaceful stillness of its houses which belong to
the Old town and are over-topped by the ramparts. Houses three
centuries old are still solid though built of wood and their divers
aspects add to the originality which commends this portion of Saumur
to the attention of artists and antiquaries.
It is difficult to pass these houses without admiring the enormous
oaken beams their ends carved into fantastic figures which crown
with a black bas-relief the lower floor of most of them. In one place
these transverse timbers are covered with slate and mark a bluish line
along the frail wall of a dwelling covered by a roof /en colombage/
which bends beneath the weight of years and whose rotting shingles
are twisted by the alternate action of sun and rain. In another place
blackened worn-out window-sills with delicate sculptures now
scarcely discernible seem too weak to bear the brown clay pots from
which springs the heart's-ease or the rose-bush of some poor working-
woman. Farther on are doors studded with enormous nails where the
genius of our forefathers has traced domestic hieroglyphics of which
the meaning is now lost forever. Here a Protestant attested his
belief; there a Leaguer cursed Henry IV.; elsewhere some bourgeois has
carved the insignia of his /noblesse de cloches/ symbols of his long-
forgotten magisterial glory. The whole history of France is there.
Next to a tottering house with roughly plastered walls where an
artisan enshrines his tools rises the mansion of a country gentleman
on the stone arch of which above the door vestiges of armorial
bearings may still be seen battered by the many revolutions that have
shaken France since 1789. In this hilly street the ground-floors of
the merchants are neither shops nor warehouses; lovers of the Middle
Ages will here find the /ouvrouere/ of our forefathers in all its
naive simplicity. These low rooms which have no shop-frontage no
show-windows in fact no glass at all are deep and dark and without
interior or exterior decoration. Their doors open in two parts each
roughly iron-bound; the upper half is fastened back within the room
the lower half fitted with a spring-bell swings continually to and
fro. Air and light reach the damp den within either through the upper
half of the door or through an open space between the ceiling and a
low front wall breast-high which is closed by solid shutters that
are taken down every morning put up every evening and held in place
by heavy iron bars.
This wall serves as a counter for the merchandise. No delusive display
is there; only samples of the business whatever it may chance to be
--such for instance as three or four tubs full of codfish and salt
a few bundles of sail-cloth cordage copper wire hanging from the
joists above iron hoops for casks ranged along the wall or a few
pieces of cloth upon the shelves. Enter. A neat girl glowing with
youth wearing a white kerchief her arms red and bare drops her
knitting and calls her father or her mother one of whom comes forward
and sells you what you want phlegmatically civilly or arrogantly
according to his or her individual character whether it be a matter
of two sous' or twenty thousand francs' worth of merchandise. You may
see a cooper for instance sitting in his doorway and twirling his
thumbs as he talks with a neighbor. To all appearance he owns nothing
more than a few miserable boat-ribs and two or three bundles of laths;
but below in the port his teeming wood-yard supplies all the cooperage
trade of Anjou. He knows to a plank how many casks are needed if the
vintage is good. A hot season makes him rich a rainy season ruins
him; in a single morning puncheons worth eleven francs have been known
to drop to six. In this country as in Touraine atmospheric
vicissitudes control commercial life. Wine-growers proprietors wood-
merchants coopers inn-keepers mariners all keep watch of the sun.
They tremble when they go to bed lest they should hear in the morning
of a frost in the night; they dread rain wind drought and want
water heat and clouds to suit their fancy. A perpetual duel goes on
between the heavens and their terrestrial interests. The barometer
smooths saddens or makes merry their countenances turn and turn
about. From end to end of this street formerly the Grand'Rue de
Saumur the words: "Here's golden weather" are passed from door to
door; or each man calls to his neighbor: "It rains louis" knowing
well what a sunbeam or the opportune rainfall is bringing him.
On Saturdays after midday in the fine season not one sou's worth of
merchandise can be bought from these worthy traders. Each has his
vineyard his enclosure of fields and all spend two days in the
country. This being foreseen and purchases sales and profits
provided for the merchants have ten or twelve hours to spend in
parties of pleasure in making observations in criticisms and in
continual spying. A housewife cannot buy a partridge without the
neighbors asking the husband if it were cooked to a turn. A young girl
never puts her head near a window that she is not seen by idling
groups in the street. Consciences are held in the light; and the
houses dark silent impenetrable as they seem hide no mysteries.
Life is almost wholly in the open air; every household sits at its own
threshold breakfasts dines and quarrels there. No one can pass
along the street without being examined; in fact formerly when a
stranger entered a provincial town he was bantered and made game of
from door to door. From this came many good stories and the nickname
/copieux/ which was applied to the inhabitants of Angers who
excelled in such urban sarcasms.
The ancient mansions of the old town of Saumur are at the top of this
hilly street and were formerly occupied by the nobility of the
neighborhood. The melancholy dwelling where the events of the
following history took place is one of these mansions--venerable
relics of a century in which men and things bore the characteristics
of simplicity which French manners and customs are losing day by day.
Follow the windings of the picturesque thoroughfare whose
irregularities awaken recollections that plunge the mind mechanically
into reverie and you will see a somewhat dark recess in the centre
of which is hidden the door of the house of Monsieur Grandet. It is
impossible to understand the force of this provincial expression--the
house of Monsieur Grandet--without giving the biography of Monsieur
Grandet himself.
Monsieur Grandet enjoyed a reputation in Saumur whose causes and
effects can never be fully understood by those who have not at one
time or another lived in the provinces. In 1789 Monsieur Grandet--
still called by certain persons le Pere Grandet though the number of
such old persons has perceptibly diminished--was a master-cooper able
to read write and cipher. At the period when the French Republic
offered for sale the church property in the arrondissement of Saumur
the cooper then forty years of age had just married the daughter of
a rich wood-merchant. Supplied with the ready money of his own fortune
and his wife's /dot/ in all about two thousand louis-d'or Grandet
went to the newly established "district" where with the help of two
hundred double louis given by his father-in-law to the surly
republican who presided over the sales of the national domain he
obtained for a song legally if not legitimately one of the finest
vineyards in the arrondissement an old abbey and several farms. The
inhabitants of Saumur were so little revolutionary that they thought
Pere Grandet a bold man a republican and a patriot with a mind open
to all the new ideas; though in point of fact it was open only to
vineyards. He was appointed a member of the administration of Saumur
and his pacific influence made itself felt politically and
commercially. Politically he protected the ci-devant nobles and
prevented to the extent of his power the sale of the lands and
property of the /emigres/; commercially he furnished the Republican
armies with two or three thousand puncheons of white wine and took
his pay in splendid fields belonging to a community of women whose
lands had been reserved for the last lot.
Under the Consulate Grandet became mayor governed wisely and
harvested still better pickings. Under the Empire he was called
Monsieur Grandet. Napoleon however did not like republicans and
superseded Monsieur Grandet (who was supposed to have worn the
Phrygian cap) by a man of his own surroundings a future baron of the
Empire. Monsieur Grandet quitted office without regret. He had
constructed in the interests of the town certain fine roads which led
to his own property; his house and lands very advantageously
assessed paid moderate taxes; and since the registration of his
various estates the vineyards thanks to his constant care had
become the "head of the country"--a local term used to denote those
that produced the finest quality of wine. He might have asked for the
cross of the Legion of honor.
This event occurred in 1806. Monsieur Grandet was then fifty-seven
years of age his wife thirty-six and an only daughter the fruit of
their legitimate love was ten years old. Monsieur Grandet whom
Providence no doubt desired to compensate for the loss of his
municipal honors inherited three fortunes in the course of this year
--that of Madame de la Gaudiniere born de la Bertelliere the mother
of Madame Grandet; that of old Monsieur de la Bertelliere her
grandfather; and lastly that of Madame Gentillet her grandmother on
the mother's side: three inheritances whose amount was not known to
any one. The avarice of the deceased persons was so keen that for a
long time they had hoarded their money for the pleasure of secretly
looking at it. Old Monsieur de la Bertelliere called an investment an
extravagance and thought he got better interest from the sight of his
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