His preliminary picture included the representation of time, secured
the sense of it so thoroughly that there is no necessity for recurring
to it again. The routine of the Maison Grandet is too clearly known to
be forgotten; the sight of the girl and her mother, leading their
sequestered lives in the shadow of their old tyrant's obsession, is a
sensation that persists to the end of their story. Their dreary days
accumulate and fill the year with hardly a break in its monotony; the
next year and the next are the same, except that old Grandet's
meanness is accentuated as his wealth increases; the present is like
the past, the future will prolong the present. In such a scene
Eugenie's patient acquiescence in middle age becomes a visible fact,
is divined and accepted at once, without further insistence; it is
latent in the scene from the beginning, even at the time of the small
romance of her youth. To dwell upon the shades of her long
disappointment is needless, for her power of endurance and her
fidelity are fully created in the book before they are put to the
test. "Five years went by," says Balzac; but before he says it we
already see them opening and closing upon the girl, bearing down upon
her solitude, exhausting her freshness but not the dumb resignation in
which she sits and waits. The endlessness, the sameness, the silence,
which another writer would have to tackle somehow after disposing of
the brief episode of Charles's visit, Balzac has it all in hand, he
can finish off his book without long delay.
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