In the famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with
unheard-of difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old watch,
--the first present he had made her during twenty years of service.
Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), it is
impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the shoes
were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so
niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and
Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose
spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too
much parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic
benefits derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no
one was ever ill. Nanon was, in fact, one of the family; she laughed
when Grandet laughed, felt gloomy or chilly, warmed herself, and
toiled as he did. What pleasant compensations there were in such
equality! Never did the master have occasion to find fault with the
servant for pilfering the grapes, nor for the plums and nectarines
eaten under the trees. "Come, fall-to, Nanon!" he would say in years
when the branches bent under the fruit and the farmers were obliged to
give it to the pigs.

To the poor peasant who in her youth had earned nothing but harsh
treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, Grandet's
ambiguous laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon's simple heart and
narrow head could hold only one feeling and one idea. For thirty-five
years she had never ceased to see herself standing before the
wood-yard of Monsieur Grandet, ragged and barefooted, and to hear him
say: "What do you want, young one?" Her gratitude was ever new.
Sometimes Grandet, reflecting that the poor creature had never heard a
flattering word, that she was ignorant of all the tender sentiments
inspired by women, that she might some day appear before the throne of