God even more chaste than the Virgin Mary herself,--Grandet, struck
with pity, would say as he looked at her, "Poor Nanon!" The
exclamation was always followed by an undefinable look cast upon him
in return by the old servant. The words, uttered from time to time,
formed a chain of friendship that nothing ever parted, and to which
each exclamation added a link. Such compassion arising in the heart of
the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old spinster, had something
inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel pity, recalling, as it
did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old cooper, was for
Nanon the sum total of happiness. Who does not likewise say, "Poor
Nanon!" God will recognize his angels by the inflexions of their
voices and by their secret sighs.

There were very many households in Saumur where the servants were
better treated, but where the masters received far less satisfaction
in return. Thus it was often said: "What have the Grandets ever done
to make their Grande Nanon so attached to them? She would go through
fire and water for their sake!" Her kitchen, whose barred windows
looked into the court, was always clean, neat, cold,--a true miser's
kitchen, where nothing went to waste. When Nanon had washed her
dishes, locked up the remains of the dinner, and put out her fire, she
left the kitchen, which was separated by a passage from the
living-room, and went to spin hemp beside her masters. One tallow
candle sufficed the family for the evening. The servant slept at the
end of the passage in a species of closet lighted only by a fan-light.
Her robust health enabled her to live in this hole with impunity;
there she could hear the slightest noise through the deep silence
which reigned night and day in that dreary house. Like a watch-dog,
she slept with one ear open, and took her rest with a mind alert.