Source note

BONFONS (Eugenie Cruchot de), only daughter of M. and Mme. Felix Grandet; born at Saumur in 1796. Strictly reared by a mother gentle and devout, and by a father hard and avaricious. The single bright ray across her life was an absolutely platonic love for her cousin Charles Grandet. But, once away from her, this young man was forgetful of her; and, on his return from the Indies in 1827, a rich man, he married the young daughter of a nobleman. Upon this occurrence, Eugenie Grandet, now an orphan, settled in full with the creditors of Charles' father, and then bestowed her hand upon the President Cruchot de Bonfons, who had paid her court for nine years. At the age of thirty-six she was left a widow without having ceased to be a virgin, following her expressed wish. Sadly she secluded herself in the gloomy home of her childhood at Saumur, where she devoted the rest of her life to works of benevolence and charity. After her father's death, Eugenie was often alluded to, by the Cruchot faction, as Mlle. de Froidfond, from the name of one of her holdings. In 1832 an effort was made to induce Mme. de Bonfons to wed with Marquis de Froidfond, a bankrupt widower of fifty odd years and possessed of numerous progeny. [Eugenie Grandet.]