the month of April to the month of November. On the first day of the
latter month they took their winter station by the chimney. Not until
that day did Grandet permit a fire to be lighted; and on the
thirty-first of March it was extinguished, without regard either to
the chills of the early spring or to those of a wintry autumn. A
foot-warmer, filled with embers from the kitchen fire, which la Grande
Nanon contrived to save for them, enabled Madame and Mademoiselle
Grandet to bear the chilly mornings and evenings of April and October.
Mother and daughter took charge of the family linen, and spent their
days so conscientiously upon a labor properly that of working-women,
that if Eugenie wished to embroider a collar for her mother she was
forced to take the time from sleep, and deceive her father to obtain
the necessary light. For a long time the miser had given out the
tallow candle to his daughter and la Grande Nanon just as he gave out
every morning the bread and other necessaries for the daily
consumption.

La Grande Nanon was perhaps the only human being capable of accepting
willingly the despotism of her master. The whole town envied Monsieur
and Madame Grandet the possession of her. La Grande Nanon, so called
on account of her height, which was five feet eight inches, had lived
with Monsieur Grandet for thirty-five years. Though she received only
sixty francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the
richest serving-women in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating
through thirty-five years, had recently enabled her to invest four
thousand francs in an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her
long and persistent economy seemed gigantic. Every servant in the
town, seeing that the poor sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old
age, was jealous of her, and never thought of the hard slavery through
which it had been won.