In the latter Mignon's feelings overcame him; he was carried away by them; they filled him with tender enthusiasm.
That damned Nana was simply stupefying him, and yet he thought he knew a thing or two.

Amid the downfall of the house and the servants' wild, wasteful race to destruction, massed-up riches still filled every gaping hole and overtopped every ruined wall.

And Mignon, as he viewed this lordly monument of wealth, began recalling to mind the various great works he had seen.

Near Marseilles they had shown him an aqueduct, the stone arches of which bestrode an abyss, a Cyclopean work which cost millions of money and ten years of intense labor.

At Cherbourg he had seen the new harbor with its enormous works, where hundreds of men sweated in the sun while cranes filled the sea with huge squares of rock and built up a wall where a workman now and again remained crushed into bloody pulp.