After the Revolution, the epoch at which he first came
into notice, the good man stuttered in a wearisome way as soon as he
was required to speak at length or to maintain an argument. This
stammering, the incoherence of his language, the flux of words in
which he drowned his thought, his apparent lack of logic, attributed
to defects of education, were in reality assumed, and will be
sufficiently explained by certain events in the following history.
Four sentences, precise as algebraic formulas, sufficed him usually to
grasp and solve all difficulties of life and commerce: "I don't know;
I cannot; I will not; I will see about it." He never said yes, or no,
and never committed himself to writing. If people talked to him he
listened coldly, holding his chin in his right hand and resting his
right elbow in the back of his left hand, forming in his own mind
opinions on all matters, from which he never receded. He reflected
long before making any business agreement. When his opponent, after
careful conversation, avowed the secret of his own purposes, confident
that he had secured his listener's assent, Grandet answered: "I can
decide nothing without consulting my wife." His wife, whom he had
reduced to a state of helpless slavery, was a useful screen to him in
business. He went nowhere among friends; he neither gave nor accepted
dinners; he made no stir or noise, seeming to economize in everything,
even movement. He never disturbed or disarranged the things of other
people, out of respect for the rights of property.
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