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Updated: May 27, 2025
Henriette Borel, and last, but not least, the beloved Anna herself, the only child, on whom Madame Hanska lavished the most passionate love, were a small party in the chateau; and besides two Polish relations, Mlles Denise and Severine Wylezynska, who generally inhabited the summer-house, christened by Balzac "La Demoiselliere," they were the only civilised people in the midst of a huge waste populated by peasants.
This double resemblance, both moral and physical, was not observed by the inhabitants of Arcis, for the viscount never returned to that town. Severine made her husband happy in his own way.
Grevin was then over fifty; he feared to die, and saw no chance of marrying his daughter as he wished under the Restoration for her, he had had ambition. Under these circumstances he was shrewd enough to make Phileas ask her in marriage. Severine Grevin, a well-trained young lady and handsome, was considered at that time the best match in Arcis.
Severine was devoted to her father; she and her daughter allowed no one but themselves to take charge of his linen; they knitted his socks for him, and gave the most minute care to his comfort.
By calling to mind the most charming Celimene that the Theatre-Francais ever had, an excellent idea of Severine Grevin's appearance will be obtained.
Grevin, a widower, knew the fortune of Madame Beauvisage, the mother, and he believed in the energy and capacity of a young man bold enough to have turned the campaign of 1814 to his profit. Severine Grevin had her mother's fortune of sixty thousand francs for her dower.
Since 1832, he had substituted for his business occupations a daily visit to his father-in-law, a promenade about the town, or visits to his friends. In all weather he wore boots, blue coat and trousers, and a white waistcoat, the style of dress exacted by his wife. His linen was remarkable for its fineness and purity, owing to the fact that Severine obliged him to change it daily.
As the son of a farmer, however, Phileas was not without a certain commercial good sense, and he was also kind and tender, and would often weep at a moving tale. It was this native goodness of heart which made him respect his wife, whose superiority had always caused him the deepest admiration. Severine, a woman of ideas, knew all things, so Phileas believed.
Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its axis the beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most remarkable woman in the arrondissement. When Severine heard of what she called her husband's "freak" as to the election, she said to him on the morning of the meeting at Madame Marion's:
As a matter of policy Severine encouraged her husband to continue his trade in hosiery, which any other man but himself would have long renounced; and she sent him to Paris, and about the country, on business connected with it. Up to the year 1830 Phileas, who was thus enabled to exercise his bump of "acquisitiveness," earned every year a sum equivalent to his expenses.
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