EBOOK EUGENIE GRANDET ***
Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
EUGENIE GRANDET
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Maria.
May your name, that of one whose portrait is the noblest ornament
of this work, lie on its opening pages like a branch of sacred
box, taken from an unknown tree, but sanctified by religion, and
kept ever fresh and green by pious hands to bless the house.
De Balzac.
EUGENIE GRANDET
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.
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