Eugénie Grandet quotes

In some country towns there are houses more depressing to the sight than the dimmest cloister, the most melancholy ruins, or the dreariest stretch of sandy waste.

Perhaps such houses as these combine the characteristics of all the three, and to the dumb silence of the monastery they unite the gauntness and grimness of the ruin, and the arid desolation of the waste.

His famous vintage in the year 1811 discreetly held, and sold only as good opportunities offered, had been worth two hundred and forty thousand livres to him.

In matters financial M. Grandet might be described as combining the characteristics of the Bengal tiger and the boa constrictor.

He could lie low and wait, crouching, watching for his prey, and make his spring, unerringly at last;

Laffitte, the good people in Saumur would ask if any of those persons were as rich as M. Grandet? And if the Parisian should answer in the affirmative with a pitying smile, they looked at one another incredulously and flung up their heads.

So great a fortune was like a golden mantle; it covered its owner and all that he did.

At one time some of the eccentricities of his mode of life gave rise to laughter at his expense; but the satire and the laughter had died out, and M.

Others retorted that the Abbé Cruchot had the most insinuating manner in the world, and that with a churchman on one side and a woman on the other the chances were about even.

“It is gown against cassock,” said a local wit.

Those whose memories went further back, said that the Grandets were too prudent to let all that property go out of the family. Mlle. Eugénie Grandet of Saumur would be married one of these days to the son of the other M.

it was a cold-blooded pity that stirred the cooper’s heart; it was a luxury that cost him nothing. But for Nanon it meant the height of happiness! Who will not likewise say, “Poor Nanon!”

God will one day know His angels by the tones of their voices and by the sorrow hidden in their hearts.

There were plenty of households in Saumur where servants were better treated, but where their employers, nevertheless, enjoyed small comfort in return. Wherefore people asked, “What have the Grandets done to that big Nanon of theirs that she should be so attached to them?

Old Grandet towered above the other actors, turning all this sham affection to his own account, and reaping a rich harvest from this simulated friendship.

His face hovered above the scene like the interpretation of an evil dream.

He was like the incarnation of the one god who yet finds worshipers in modern times, of Money and the power of wealth.

Old Grandet towered above the other actors, turning all this sham affection to his own account, and reaping a rich harvest from this simulated friendship. His face hovered above the scene like the interpretation of an evil dream.

He was like the incarnation of the one god who yet finds worshipers in modern times, of Money and the power of wealth.

With him the gentler and sweeter impulses of human life only occupied the second place; but they so filled three purer hearts there, that there was no room in them for other thoughts—the hearts of Nanon, and of Eugénie and her mother.

Nor were they conscious of an uncongenial atmosphere; the strength of their feelings, their inner life, made of them a strange exception in this gathering, wholly intent upon material interests.

Appalling is the condition of man; there is no drop of happiness in his lot but has its source in ignorance.

Just as Mme.

“I did not speak to you, Nanon! Hold your tongue.”

In that moment Eugénie learned that a woman who loves must dissemble her feelings.

She was silent.

“Oh, is your name Charles?” said Eugénie. “It is a nice name.”

Evil forebodings are seldom vain.

Just at that moment Mme. Grandet, Eugénie, and Nanon, who could not think of the cooper’s return without shuddering, heard the familiar knock at the door.

“Aha! you are making a fête for your nephew. Good, very good, oh! very good, indeed!” he said, without stammering.

“When the cat is away, the mice may play.”

“Fête?” thought Charles, who had not the remotest conception of the state of affairs in the Grandet household.

“What is that to me. Where is my father? … my father!” The sound of his sobbing filled the little garden, reverberated in ghastly echoes from the walls.

Tears are as infectious as laughter; the three women wept with pity for him.

Charles broke from his uncle without waiting to hear more, and sprang into the yard, found the staircase, and fled to his own room, where he flung himself across the bed and buried his face in the bedclothes, that he might give way to his …

People trusted Guillaume Grandet with their goods, confiding in his character for fair-dealing and honesty; he has taken all they have, and left them nothing but the eyes in their heads to cry over their losses with.

A bankrupt is worse than a highwayman; a highwayman sets upon you, and you have a chance to defend yourself; he risks his life besides, while the other⁠—Charles is disgraced in fact.

”

“What can have brought your father back?” she said to her daughter.

The vinegrower came in in high good humor.

He rubbed his hands so energetically that nothing but a skin like leather could have borne it, and indeed his hands were tanned like Russia leather, though the fragrant pine-rosin and incense had been omitted in the process.

“It is so much saved,” was her master’s comment.

“Pooh! he will not keep on crying forever. Hunger drives the wolf from the wood.”

Dinner was a strangely silent meal. When the cloth had been removed, Mme. Grandet spoke to her husband.

“What!” he cried, “a wax candle! Where the devil have they fished that from? I believe the wenches would pull up the floor of my house to cook eggs for that boy.”

Mother and daughter, hearing these words, fled to their rooms, and crept into their beds like frightened mice.

“Mme. Grandet, you have a lot of money somewhere, it seems,” said the vinegrower, walking into his wife’s rooms.

This thought can be read at large; it is stamped upon our age, which asks of the voter—the man who makes the laws—not “What do you think?” but “What can you pay?”—

And what will become of us when this doctrine has been handed down from the bourgeoisie to the people?

“Mme. Grandet, have you finished?” asked the cooper.

“Very well, good night. Tomorrow morning I shall have something to say to you.”

Poor woman! she betook herself to sleep like a schoolboy who has not learned his lessons, and sees before him the angry face of the master when he wakes.

Sheer terror led her to wrap the sheets about her head to shut out all sounds, but just at that moment she felt a kiss on her forehead;

Hence perhaps the prodigious interest which a miser excites when cleverly put upon the stage. What man is utterly without ambition? And what social ambition can be obtained without money?

Everyone has something in common with this being; he is a personification of humanity, and yet is revolting to all the feelings of humanity.

Grandet really “had something on his mind,” as his wife used to say.

indeed, this was the secret of that constant success which was the admiration of Saumur.

Time and patience combined will effect most things, and the man who accomplishes much is the man with the strong will who can wait.

The miser’s life is a constant exercise of every human faculty in the service of a personality.

Perhaps, too, this trouble had brought them nearer in other ways. Charles was no longer the rich and handsome young man who lived in a sphere far beyond her ken; he was a kinsman in deep and terrible distress, and sorrow is a great leveler.

Woman has this in common with the angels⁠—all suffering creatures are under her protection.

Charles and Eugénie understood each other without a word being spoken on either side. The poor dandy of yesterday, fallen from his high estate, today was an orphan, who sat in a corner of the room, quiet, composed, and proud;

There is that in the French character which is readily excited to fury or to passionate enthusiasm by any meteor that appears above their horizon, that is captivated by the bravery of a blatant fact.

Can it be that collectively men have no memories?

As soon as Grandet had bolted the house door he called to Nanon.

their lover shines transfigured before them in reflected glory, radiant with fair colors from love’s magic fires, and endowed with noble thoughts which perhaps in truth are none of his.

Women’s errors spring, for the most part, from a belief in goodness, and a confidence in truth.

In Eugénie’s heart the words, “My dear Annette—my beloved,” echoed like the fairest language of love; they stirred her soul like organ music—like the divine notes of the “Venite adoremus” falling upon her ears in childhood.

one example will serve to plumb the depths of the cooper’s mind. When he had finished his cordial, he looked pensively at the glass, and thus delivered himself—

“You have no sooner set your lips to a glass than it is empty! Such is life. You cannot have your cake and eat it too, and you can’t turn over your money and keep it in your purse; if you could only do that, life would be too glorious.”

He was not only jocose, he was good-natured, so that when Nanon came in with her spinning-wheel—“You must be tired,” he said; “let the hemp alone.”

“Poor Nanon! would you like some cordial?”

“Cordial? Oh! I don’t say no. Madame makes it much better than the apothecaries do. The stuff they sell is like physic.”

“They spoil the flavor with putting too much sugar in it,” said the goodman.

Is he not also eager to outstrip Time, and to live in the future?

Love is the soul’s second transformation.

Love and childhood were almost the same thing for Charles and Eugénie; the dawn of love and its childish beginnings were all the sweeter because their hearts were full of gloom;

his arms went round her waist, Eugénie resisted no longer, and leaning against her lover she received and gave the purest, sweetest, and most perfect of all kisses.

“Dear Eugénie, a cousin is better than a brother; he can marry you,” said Charles.

“Amen, so be it!” cried Nanon, opening the door behind them, and emerging from her den. Her voice startled the two lovers, who fled into the dining-room, where Eugénie took up her sewing, and Charles seized on Mme.

“Eh! they are only coppers,” said the vinegrower.

“Silver, he means,” said the porter in a low voice.

“Keep a still tongue in your head, if you want me to bear you in mind,” said the goodman as he opened the door.

“It must be something very unsatisfactory, Mlle. Grandet, if you cannot tell your own father about it.”

“It is perfectly satisfactory, and I cannot tell my father about it.”

“Tell me, at any rate, when you parted with your gold.”

“She is her mother’s heiress.”

“Then what is the good of having children? Oh! my wife, I love my wife; luckily she has a sound constitution; she is a La Bertellière.”

“She has not a month to live.”

She trembled at the thought of this lamb, spotless as she herself was, left alone in the world among selfish beings who sought to despoil her of her fleece, her treasure.

“There is no happiness save in heaven,” she said just before she died; “you will know that one day, my child.”

On the morrow after her mother’s death, it seemed to Eugénie that she had yet one more reason for clinging fondly to the old house where she had been born, and where she had found life so hard of late—it became for her the place …

and sometimes a weak infantine smile, painful to see, would steal across his features.

“That warms me!” he muttered more than once, and his face expressed a perfect content.

When the curé came to administer the sacrament, all the life seemed to have died out of the miser’s eyes, but they lit up for the first time for many hours at the sight of the silver crucifix, the candlesticks, and holy water vessel, all …

it had nearly cost her her mother’s life; it had brought her pain and sorrow and a few faint hopes. She had striven towards her happiness till her own forces had failed her, and another had not come to her aid.

Our souls live by giving and receiving; we have need of another soul; whatever it gives us we make our own, and give back again in overflowing measure.

This is as vitally necessary for our inner life as breathing is for our corporeal existence. Without that wonderful physical process we perish; the heart suffers from lack of air, and ceases to beat. Eugénie was beginning to suffer.

In fact, but for the number of those assembled, and the substitution of whist for loto, and the absence of M. and Mme. Grandet, the scene was scarcely changed; it might almost have been that first evening on which this story began.

The pack was still in pursuit of Eugénie’s millions; it was a more numerous pack now; they gave tongue together, and hunted down their prey more systematically.

If Charles had come back from the far-off Indies, he would have found the same motives at work and almost the same people. Mme. des Grassins, for whom Eugénie had nothing but kindness and pity, still remained to vex the Cruchots.