“So long as he could open his eyes, where the last sparks of life seemed to linger, they used to turn at once to the door of the room where all his treasures lay, and he would say to his daughter, in tones that seemed to thrill with a panic of fear:
“‘Are they there still?’
“‘Yes, father.’
“‘Keep watch over the gold!... Let me see the gold.’
“Then Eugenie used to spread out the louis on a table before him, and he would sit for whole hours with his eyes fixed on the louis in an unseeing stare, like that of a child who begins to see for the first time; and sometimes a weak infantine smile, painful to see, would steal across his features.
“‘That warms me!’ he muttered more than once, and his face expressed a perfect content.
“When the curé came to administer the sacrament, all the life seemed to have died out of the miser’s eyes, but they lit up for the first time for many hours at the sight of the silver crucifix, the candlesticks, and holy water vessel, all of silver; he fixed his gaze on the precious metal, and the wen on his face twitched for the last time.
“As the priest held the gilded crucifix above him that the image of Christ might be laid to his lips, he made a frightful effort to clutch it—a last effort which cost him his life. He called Eugenie, who saw nothing; she was kneeling beside him, bathing in tears the hand that was growing cold already. ‘Give me your blessing, father,’ she entreated. ‘Be very careful!’ the last words came from him; ‘one day you will render an account to me of everything here below.’ Which utterance clearly shows that a miser should adopt Christianity as his religion.”
Then follows the long waiting of Eugenie; the dastardly letter sent by Charles after his return; the noble dignity with which she releases him and pays his father’s creditors to preserve the honor of one who is quite careless of it himself, and then resigns herself to her hopeless destiny.
“Eugenie Grandet” is a consummate work of art.