“I offer myself to you again,” he wrote, “with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death; I have loved none but you.”

To such a declaration there could be but one answer; and soon Frederick Wentworth and Anne Elliot were exchanging again those feelings and those promises which once before had seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many years of division and estrangement.

This time there was no opposition to the engagement.  Captain Wentworth’s wealth, personal appearance, and well-sounding name enabled Sir Walter to prepare his pen, with a very good grace, for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour.

As for Mr. Elliot, the news of his cousin Anne’s engagement burst on him with unexpected suddenness.  He soon quitted Bath; and on Mrs. Clay’s leaving it shortly afterwards and being next heard of as established under his protection in London, it was evident how double a game he had been playing, and how determined he was to save himself at all events from being cut out by one artful woman at least.

* * * * *

HONORE DE BALZAC

Eugenie Grandet

Honore de Balzac was born May 20, 1799, at Tours, in France, and died at Paris, Aug. 18, 1850.  His early life was filled with hard work and oppressed by poverty.  He attained success by the publication of “Les Derniers Chouans” in 1829, and he soon established his fame as the leader of realistic fiction.  In spite of frequent coarseness, he stands for all time as a great writer by reason of his powers of character analysis.  “Eugenie Grandet” is, justly, one of the most famous of Balzac’s novels.  As a study of avarice, in the character of old Grandet, it is superb, and the picture of manners in the country town of Saumur is painted as only a supreme artist like Balzac could paint it.  The pathos of Eugenie’s wasted life, the long suffering of Mme. Grandet, the craft and cunning of the Des Grassins and the Cruchots, the fidelity of Nanon, and the frank egotism of Charles Grandet—­all these things combine to make the book a masterpiece of French fiction.  “Eugenie Grandet” was written in the full vigour of Balzac’s genius in 1833, and was published in the first volume of “Scenes of Provincial Life” in 1834, and finally included in the “Human Comedy” in 1843.

I.—­The Rich Miser of Saumur

The town of Saumur is old-fashioned and in every way “provincial.”  Its houses are dark within, its shops, undecorated, recall the workshops of the Middle Ages.  Its inhabitants gossip freely, according to the fashion of country towns, and the arrival of a stranger in the town is an important item of news.  The trade of Saumur depends upon the vineyards of the district.  The prosperity of landowners, vinegrowers, coopers, and innkeepers rises or falls according to whether the season is good or bad for the grapes.