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It lacked, no doubt,
the grace which a fitting dress can bestow; but to a connoisseur the
non-flexibility of her figure had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and
strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses;
but she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and
none but artists truly love. A painter seeking here below for a type
of Mary's celestial purity, searching womankind for those proud modest
eyes which Raphael divined, for those virgin lines, often due to
chances of conception, which the modesty of Christian life alone can
bestow or keep unchanged,--such a painter, in love with his ideal,
would have found in the face of Eugenie the innate nobleness that is
ignorant of itself; he would have seen beneath the calmness of that
brow a world of love; he would have felt, in the shape of the eyes, in
the fall of the eyelids, the presence of the nameless something that
we call divine. Her features, the contour of her head, which no
expression of pleasure had ever altered or wearied, were like the
lines of the horizon softly traced in the far distance across the
tranquil lakes. That calm and rosy countenance, margined with light
like a lovely full-blown flower, rested the mind, held the eye, and
imparted the charm of the conscience that was there reflected. Eugenie
was standing on the shore of life where young illusions flower, where
daisies are gathered with delights ere long to be unknown; and thus
she said, looking at her image in the glass, unconscious as yet of
love: "I am too ugly; he will not notice me."

Then she opened the door of her chamber which led to the staircase,
and stretched out her neck to listen for the household noises. "He is
not up," she thought, hearing Nanon's morning cough as the good soul
went and came, sweeping out the halls, lighting her fire, chaining the
dog, and speaking to the beasts in the stable. Eugenie at once went
down and ran to Nanon, who was milking the cow.

"Nanon, my good Nanon, make a little cream for my cousin's breakfast."

"Why, mademoiselle, you should have thought of that yesterday," said
Nanon, bursting into a loud peal of laughter. "I can't make cream.
Your cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have
seen him in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He
wears linen as fine as the surplice of monsieur le cure."

"Nanon, please make us a _galette_."

"And who'll give me wood for the oven, and flour and butter for the
cakes?" said Nanon, who in her function of prime-minister to Grandet
assumed at times enormous importance in the eyes of Eugenie and her
mother. "Mustn't rob the master to feast the cousin. You ask him for
butter and flour and wood: he's your father, perhaps he'll give you
some. See! there he is now, coming to give out the provisions."

Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard the

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