SOURCE: "Eugénie Grandet," in The Critic, New York, Vol. VI, No. 134, July 24, 1886, pp. 40-1.

In the following excerpt, the critic summarizes the plot of Eugénie Grandet in the course of recommending "the sweetest and saddest" of Balzac's idylls.

Eugénie Grandet, if not the greatest, is the tenderest of Balzac's confessions, the sweetest and saddest of his idylls. There are such malignities and benignities in it, such pathos and cruelty, such gentleness and diablerie, such contrasts of light and shade, such flashes of light and darkness. There is no more marvellous juxtaposition in fiction than the contrasted groups of the two Grandet families—of the young Parisian dandy flung like a meteor across Eugenie's path and Eugénie herself, of the beautiful simplicity and refinement of Eugénie and her mother over against the infernal wickedness of Père Grandet. And the scene where Eugénie...