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[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small Print!" statement. We are planning on making some changes in our donation structure in 2000, so you might want to email me, hart@pobox.com beforehand. *END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com and Emma Dudding, emma_302@hotmail.com REPERTORY OF THE COMEDIE HUMAINE PART I, A — KTRANSLATOR'S PREFACE"Work crowned by the French Academy" is a significant line borne by the title-page of the original edition of Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe's monumental work. The motto indicates the high esteem in which the French authorities hold this very necessary adjunct to the great Balzacian structure. And even without this word of approval, the intelligent reader needs but a glance within the pages of the /Repertory of the Comedie Humaine/ to convince him at once of its utility. In brief, the purpose of the /Repertory/ is to give in alphabetical sequence the names of all the characters forming this Balzacian society, together with the salient points in their lives. It is, of course, well known that Balzac made his characters appear again and again, thus creating out of his distinct novels a miniature world. To cite a case in point, Rastignac, who comes as near being the hero of the /Comedie/ as any other single character, makes his first appearance in /Father Goriot/, as a student of law; then appearing and disappearing fitfully in a score of principal novels, he is finally made a minister and peer of France. Without the aid of the /Repertory/ it would be difficult for any save a reader of the entire /Comedie/ to trace out his career. But here it is arranged in temporal sequence, thus giving us a concrete view of the man and his relation to this society. In reading any separate story, when reference is made in passing to a character, the reader will find it helpful and interesting to turn to the /Repertory/ and find what manner of man it is that is under advisement. A little systematic reading of this nature will speedily render the reader a "confirmed Balzacian." A slight confusion may arise in the use of the /Repertory/ on account of the subdivision of titles. This is the fault neither of Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe nor of the translator, but of Balzac himself, who was continually changing titles, dividing and subdividing stories, and revamping and working other changes in his books. /Cousin Betty/ and /Cousin Pons/ were placed together by him under the general title of /Poor Relations/. Being separate stories, we have retained the separate titles. Similarly, the three divisions of /Lost Illusions/ were never published together until 1843—in the first complete edition of the /Comedie/; before assuming final shape its parts had received several different titles. In the present text the editor has deemed it best to retain two of the parts under /Lost Illusions/, while the third, which presents a separate Rubempre episode, is given as /A Distinguished Provincial at Paris/. The three parts of /The Thirteen/—/Ferragus/, /The Duchess of Langeais/, and /The Girl with the Golden Eyes/—are given under the general title. The fourth part of /Scenes from a Courtesan's Life/, /Vautrin's Last Avatar/, which until the Edition Definitive had been published separately, is here merged into its final place. But the three parts of /The Celibates/— /Pierrette/, /The Vicar of Tours/ and /A Bachelor's Establishment/, being detached, are given separately. Other minor instances occur, but should be readily cleared up by reference to the Indices, also to the General Introduction given elsewhere. In the preparation of this English text, great care has been exercised to gain accuracy—a quality not found in other versions now extant. In one or two instances, errors have been discovered in the original French, notably in dates—probably typographical errors—which have been corrected by means of foot-notes. A few unimportant elisions have been made for the sake of brevity and coherence. Many difficulties confront the translator in the preparation of material of this nature, involving names, dates and titles. Opportunities are constantly afforded for error, and the work must necessarily be painstaking in order to be successful. We desire here to express appreciation for the valuable assistance of Mr. Norman Hinsdale Pitman. To Balzac, more than to any other author, a Repertory of characters is applicable; for he it was who not only created an entire human society, but placed therein a multitude of personages so real, so distinct with vitality, that biographies of them seem no more than simple justice. We can do no more, then, than follow the advice of Balzac—to quote again from the original title-page—and "give a parallel to the civil register." J. WALKER McSPADDEN INTRODUCTIONAre you a confirmed /Balzacian/?—to employ a former expression of Gautier in /Jeune France/ on the morrow following the appearance of that mystic Rabelaisian epic, /The Magic Skin/. Have you experienced, while reading at school or clandestinely some stray volume of the /Comedie Humaine/, a sort of exaltation such as no other book had aroused hitherto, and few have caused since? Have you dreamed at an age when one plucks in advance all the fruit from the tree of life— yet in blossom—I repeat, have you dreamed of being a Daniel d'Arthez, and of covering yourself with glory by the force of your achievements, in order to be requited, some day, for all the sufferings of your poverty-stricken youth, by the sublime Diane, Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Princesse de Cadignan? Or, perchance, being more ambitious and less literary, you have desired to see—like a second Rastignac, the doors of high society opened to your eager gaze by means of the golden key suspended from Delphine de Nucingen's bracelet? Romancist, have you sighed for the angelic tenderness of a Henriette de Mortsauf, and realized in your dreams the innocent emotions excited by culling nosegays, by listening to tales of grief, by furtive hand- clasps on the banks of a narrow river, blue and placid, in a valley where your friendship flourishes like a fair, delicate lily, the ideal, the chaste flower? Misanthrope, have you caressed the chimera, to ward off the dark hours of advancing age, of a friendship equal to that with which the good Schmucke enveloped even the whims of his poor Pons? Have you appreciated the sovereign power of secret societies, and deliberated with yourself as to which of your acquaintances would be most worthy to enter The Thirteen? In your mind's eye has the map of France ever appeared to be divided into as many provinces as the /Comedie Humaine/ has stories? Has Tours stood for Birotteau, La Gamard, for the formidable Abbe Troubert; Douai, Claes; Limoges, Madame Graslin; Besancon, Savarus and his misguided love; Angouleme, Rubempre; Sancerre, Madame de la Baudraye; Alencon, that touching, artless old maid to whom her uncle, the Abbe de Sponde, remarked with gentle irony: "You have too much wit. You don't need so much to be happy"? Oh, sorcery of the most wonderful magician of letters the world has seen since Shakespeare! If you have come under the spell of his enchantments, be it only for an hour, here is a book that will delight you, a book that would have pleased Balzac himself—Balzac, who was more the victim of his work than his most fanatical readers, and whose dream was to compete with the civil records. This volume of nearly six hundred pages is really the civil record of all the characters in the /Comedie Humaine/, by which you may locate, detail by detail, the smallest adventures of the heroes who pass and repass through the various novels, and by which you can recall at a moment's notice the emotions once awakened by the perusal of such and such a masterpiece. More modestly, it is a kind of table of contents, of a unique type; a table of living contents! Many Balzacians have dreamed of compiling such a civil record. I myself have known of five or six who attempted this singular task. To cite only two names out of the many, the idea of this unusual Vapereau ran through the head of that keen and delicate critic, M. Henri Meilhac, and of that detective in continued stories, Emile Gaboriau. I believe that I also have among the papers of my eighteenth year some sheets covered with notes taken with the same intention. But the labor was too exhaustive. It demanded an infinite patience, combined with an inextinguishable ardor and enthusiasm. The two faithful disciples of the master who have conjoined their efforts to uprear this monument, could not perhaps have overcome the difficulties of the undertaking if they had not supported each other, bringing to the common work, M. Christophe his painstaking method, M. Cerfberr his accurate memory, his passionate faith in the genius of the great Honore, a faith that carried unshakingly whole mountains of documents. A pleasing chapter of literary gossip might be written about this collaboration; a melancholy chapter, since it brings with it the memory of a charming man, who first brought Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe together, and who has since died under mournful circumstances. His name was Albert Allenet, and he was chief editor of a courageous little review, /La Jeune France/, which he maintained for some years with a perseverance worthy of the Man of Business in the /Comedie Humaine/. I can see him yet, a feverish fellow, wan and haggard, but with his face always lit up by enthusiasm, stopping me in a theatre lobby to tell me about a plan of M. Cerfberr's; and almost immediately we discovered that the same plan had been conceived by M. Christophe. The latter had already prepared a cabinet of pigeon-holes, arranged and classified by the names of Balzacian characters. When two men encounter in the same enterprise as compilers, they will either hate each other or unite their efforts. Thanks to the excellent Allenet, the two confirmed Balzacians took to each other wonderfully. Poor Allenet! It was not long afterwards that we accompanied his body to the grave, one gloomy afternoon towards the end of autumn—all of us who had known and loved him. He is dead also, that other Balzacian who was so much interested in this work, and for whom the /Comedie Humaine/ was an absorbing thought, Honore Granoux. He was a merchant of Marseilles, with a wan aspect and already an invalid when I met him. But he became animated when speaking of Balzac; and with what a mysterious, conspiratorlike veneration did he pronounce these words: "The Vicomte"—meaning, of course, to the thirty-third degree Balzacolatrites, that incomparable bibliophile to whom we owe the history of the novelist's works, M. de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul!—"The Vicomte will approve—or disapprove." That was the unvarying formula for Granoux, who had devoted himself to the enormous task of collecting all the articles, small or great, published about Balzac since his entry as a writer. And just see what a fascination this /devil of a man/—as Theophile Gautier once called him—exercises over his followers; I am fully convinced that these little details of Balzacian mania will cause the reader to smile. As for me, I have found them, and still find them, as natural as Balzac's own remark to Jules Sandeau, who was telling him about a sick sister: "Let us go back to reality. Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?" Fascination! That is the only word that quite characterizes the sort of influence wielded by Balzac over those who really enjoy him; and it is not to-day that the phenomenon began. Vallies pointed it out long ago in an eloquent page of the /Refractaires/ concerning "book victims." Saint Beuve, who can scarcely be suspected of fondness towards the editor-in-chief of the /Revue Parisienne/, tells a story stranger and more significant than every other. At one time an entire social set in Venice, and the most aristocratic, decided to give out among its members different characters drawn from the /Comedie Humaine/; and some of these roles, the critic adds, mysteriously, were artistically carried out to the very end;—a dangerous experiment, for we are well aware that the heroes and heroines of Balzac often skirt the most treacherous abysses of the social Hell. All this happened about 1840. The present year is 1887, and there seems no prospect of the sorcery weakening. The work to which these notes serve as an introduction may be taken as proof. Indeed, somebody has said that the men of Balzac have appeared as much in literature as in life, especially since the death of the novelist. Balzac seems to have observed the society of his day less than he contributed to form a new one. Such and such personages are truer to life in 1860 than in 1835. When one considers a phenomenon of such range and intensity, it does not suffice to employ words like infatuation, fashion, mania. The attraction of an author becomes a psychological fact of prime importance and subject to analysis. I think I can see two reasons for this particular strength of Balzac's genius. One dwells in the special character of his vision, the other in the philosophical trend which he succeeded in giving to all his writing. As to the scope of his vision, this /Repertory/ alone will suffice to show. Turn over the leaves at random and estimate the number of fictitious deeds going to make up these two thousand biographies, each individual, each distinct, and most of them complete—that is to say, taking the character at his birth and leaving him only at his death. Balzac not only knows the date of birth or of death, he knows as well the local coloring of the time and the country and profession to which the man belongs. He is thoroughly conversant with questions of taxation and income and the agricultural conditions. He is not ignorant of the fact that Grandet cannot make his fortune by the same methods employed by Gobseck, his rival in avarice; nor Ferdinand du Tillet, that jackal, with the same magnitude of operations worked out by that elephant of a Nucingen. He has outlined and measured the exact relation of each character to his environment in the same way he has outlined and measured the bonds uniting the various characters; so well that each individual is defined separately as to his personal and his social side, and in the same manner each family is defined. It is the skeleton of these individuals and of these families that is laid bare for your contemplation in these notes of Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe. But this structure of facts, dependent one upon another by a logic equal to that of life itself, is the smallest effort of Balzac's genius. Does a birth-certificate, a marriage-contract or an inventory of wealth represent a person? Certainly not. There is still lacking, for a bone covering, the flesh, the blood, the muscles and the nerves. A glance from Balzac, and all these tabulated facts become imbued with life; to this circumstantial view of the conditions of existence with certain beings is added as full a view of the beings themselves. And first of all he knows them physiologically. The inner workings of their corporeal mechanism is no mystery for him. Whether it is Birotteau's gout, or Mortsauf's nervousness, or Fraisier's skin trouble, or the secret reason for Rouget's subjugation by Flore, or Louis Lambert's catalepsy, he is as conversant with the case as though he were a physician; and he is as well informed, also, as a confessor concerning the spiritual mechanism which this animal machine supports. The slightest frailties of conscience are perceptible to him. From the portress Cibot to the Marquise d'Espard, not one of his women has an evil thought that he does not fathom. With what art, comparable to that of Stendhal, or Laclos, or the most subtle analysts, does he note —in /The Secrets of a Princess/—the transition from comedy to sincerity! He knows when a sentiment is simple and when it is complex, when the heart is a dupe of the mind and when of the senses. And through it all he hears his characters speak, he distinguishes their voices, and we ourselves distinguish them in the dialogue. The growling of Vautrin, the hissing of La Gamard, the melodious tones of Madame de Mortsauf still linger in our ears. For such intensity of evocation is as contagious as an enthusiasm or a panic. There is abundant testimony going to show that with Balzac this evocation is accomplished, as in the mystic arts by releasing it, so to speak, from the ordinary laws of life. Pray note in what terms M. le Docteur Fournier, the real mayor of Tours, relates incidents of the novelist's method of work, according to the report of a servant employed at the chateau of Sache: "Sometimes he would shut himself up in his room and stay there several days. Then it was that, plunged into a sort of ecstasy and armed with a crow quill, he would write night and day, abstaining from all food and merely contenting himself with decoctions of coffee which he himself prepared." [Brochure of M. le Docteur Fournier in regard to the statue of Balzac, that statue a piece of work to which M. Henry Renault—another devotee who had established /Le Balzac/—had given himself so ardently. In this brochure is found a very curious portrait of Balzac, after a sepia by Louis Boulanger belonging to M. le Baron Larrey.] In the opening pages of /Facino Cane/ this phenomenon is thus described: "With me observation had become intuitive from early youth. It penetrated the soul without neglecting the body, or rather it seized so completely the external details that it went beyond them. It gave me the faculty of living the life of the individual over whom it obtained control, and allowed me to substitute myself for him like the dervish in /Arabian Nights/ assumed the soul and the body of persons over whom he pronounced certain words." And he adds, after describing how he followed a workman and his wife along the street: "I could espouse their very life, I felt their rags on my back. I trod in their tattered shoes. Their desires, their needs, all passed into my soul, or my soul passed into them. It was the dream of a man awakened." One day while he and a friend of his were watching a beggar pass by, the friend was so astonished to see Balzac touch his own sleeve; he seemed to feel the rent which gaped at the elbow of the beggar. Am I wrong in connecting this sort of imagination with that which one witnesses in fanatics of religious faith? With such a faculty Balzac could not be, like Edgar Poe, merely a narrator of nightmares. He was preserved from the fantastic by another gift which seems contradictory to the first. This visionary was in reality a philosopher, that is to say, an experimenter and a manipulator of general ideas. Proof of this may be found in his biography, which shows him to us, during his college days at Vendome, plunged into a whirl of abstract reading. The entire theological and occult library which he discovered in the old Oratorian institution was absorbed by the child, till he had to quit school sick, his brain benumbed by this strange opium. The story of Louis Lambert is a monograph of his own mind. During his youth and in the moments snatched from his profession, to what did he turn his attention? Still to general ideas. We find him an interested onlooker at the quarrel of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier, troubling himself about the hypothesis of the unity of creation, and still dealing with mysticism; and, in fact, his romances abound in theories. There is not one of his works from which you cannot obtain abstract thoughts by the hundreds. If he describes, as in /The Vicar of Tours/, the woes of an old priest, he profits by the opportunity to exploit a theory concerning the development of sensibility, and a treatise on the future of Catholicism. If he describes, as in /The Firm of Nucingen/, a supper given to Parisian /blases/, he introduces a system of credit, reports of the Bank and Bureau of Finance, and—any number of other things! Speaking of Daniel d'Arthez, that one of his heroes who, with Albert Savarus and Raphael, most nearly resembles himself, he writes: "Daniel would not admit the existence of talent without profound metaphysical knowledge. At this moment he was in the act of despoiling both ancient and modern philosophy of all their wealth in order to assimilate it. He desired, like Moliere, to become a profound philosopher first of all, a writer of comedies afterwards." Some readers there are, indeed, who think that philosophy superabounds with Balzac, that the surplus of general hypotheses overflows at times, and that the novels are too prone to digressions. Be that as it may, it seems incontestible that this was his master faculty, the virtue and vice of his thought. Let us see, however, by what singular detour this power of generalization—the antithesis, one might say, of the creative power—increased in him the faculty of the poetic visionary. It is important, first of all, to note that this power of the visionary could not be put directly into play. Balzac had not long enough to live. The list of his works, year by year, prepared by his sister, shows that from the moment he achieved his reputation till the day of his death he never took time for rest or observation or the study of mankind by daily and close contact, like Moliere or Saint- Simon. He cut his life in two, writing by night, sleeping by day, and after sparing not a single hour for calling, promenades or sentiment. Indeed, he would not admit this troublesome factor of sentiment, except at a distance and through letters—"because it forms one's style"! At any rate, that is the kind of love he most willingly admitted—unless an exception be made of the mysterious intimacies of which his correspondence has left traces. During his youth he had followed this same habit of heavy labor, and as a result the experience of this master of exact literature was reduced to a minimum; but this minimum sufficed for him, precisely because of the philosophical insight which he possessed to so high a degree. To this meagre number of positive faculties furnished by observation, he applied an analysis so intuitive that he discovered, behind the small facts amassed by him in no unusual quantity, the profound forces, the generative influences, so to speak. He himself describes—once more in connection with Daniel d'Arthez— the method pursued in this analytical and generalizing work. He calls it a "retrospective penetration." Probably he lays hold of the elements of experience and casts them into a seeming retort of reveries. Thanks to an alchemy somewhat analogous to that of Cuvier, he was enabled to reconstruct an entire temperament from the smallest detail, and an entire class from a single individual; but that which guided him in his work of reconstruction was always and everywhere the habitual process of philosophers: the quest and investigation of causes. It is due to this analysis that this dreamer has defined almost all the great principles of the psychological changes incident to our time. He saw clearly, while democracy was establishing itself with us on the ruins of the ancient regime, the novelty of the sentiments which these transfers from class to class were certain to produce. He fathomed every complication of heart and mind in the modern woman by an intuition of the laws which control her development. He divined the transformation in the lives of artists, keeping pace with the change in the national situation; and to this day the picture he has drawn of journalism in /Lost Illusions/ ("A Distinguished Provincial at Paris") remains strictly true. It seems to me that this same power of locating causes, which has brought about such a wealth of ideas in his work, has also brought about the magic of it all. While other novelists describe humanity from the outside, he has shown man to us both from within and without. The characters which crowd forth from his brain are sustained and impelled by the same social waves which sustain and impel us. The generative facts which created them are the same which are always in operation about us. If many young men have taken as a model a Rastignac, for instance, it is because the passions by which this ambitious pauper was consumed are the same which our age of unbridled greed multiplies around disinherited youth. Add to this that Balzac was not content merely to display the fruitful sources of a modern intellect, but that he cast upon them the glare of the most ardent imagination the world has ever known. By a rare combination this philosopher was also a man, like the story-tellers of the Orient, to whom solitude and the over-excitement of night-work had communicated a brilliant and unbroken hallucination. He was able to impart this fever to his readers, and to plunge them into a sort of /Arabian Nights/ country, where all the passions, all the desires of real life appear, but expanded to the point of fantasy, like the dreams brought on by laudanum or hasheesh. Why, then, should we not understand the reason that, for certain readers, this world of Balzac's is more real than the actual world, and that they devoted their energies to imitating it? It is possible that to-day the phenomenon is becoming rarer, and that Balzac, while no less admired, does not exercise the same fascinating influence. The cause for this is that the great social forces which he defined have almost ended their work. Other forces now shape the oncoming generations and prepare them for further sensitive influences. It is none the less a fact that, to penetrate the central portions of the nineteenth century in France, one must read and reread the /Comedie Humaine/. And we owe sincere thanks to Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe for this /Repertory/. Thanks to them, we shall the more easily traverse the long galleries, painted and frescoed, of this enormous palace,—a palace still unfinished, inasmuch as it lacks those Scenes of Military Life whose titles awaken dreams within us: /Forced Marches/; /The Battle of Austerlitz/; /After Dresden/. Incontestably, Tolstoy's /War and Peace/ is an admirable book, but how can we help regretting the loss of the painting of the Grand Army and of our Great Emperor, by Balzac, our Napoleon of letters? PAUL BOURGET.REPERTORY OF THE COMEDIE HUMAINEAABRAMKO, Polish Jew of gigantic strength, thoroughly devoted to the broker, Elie Magus, whose porter he was, and whose daughter and treasures he guarded with the aid of three fierce dogs, in 1844, in a old house on the Minimes road hard by the Palais Royale, Paris. Abramko had allowed himself to be compromised in the Polish insurrection and Magus was interested in saving him. [Cousin Pons.] ADELE, sturdy, good-hearted Briarde servant of Denis Rogron and his sister, Sylvie, from 1824 to 1827 at Provins. Contrary to her employers, she displayed much sympathy and pity for their youthful cousin, Pierrette Lorrain. [Pierrette.] ADELE, chambermaid of Madame du Val-Noble at the time when the latter was maintained so magnificently by the stockbroker, Jacques Falleix, who failed in 1929. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] ADOLPHE, slight, blonde young man employed at the shop of the shawl merchant, Fritot, in the Bourse quarter, Paris, at the time of the reign of Louis Philippe. [Gaudissart II.] ADOLPHUS, head of the banking firm of Adolphus & Company of Manheim, and father of the Baroness Wilhelmine d'Aldrigger. [The Firm of Nucingen.] AGATHE (Sister), nee Langeais, nun of the convent of Chelles, and, AIGLEMONT (General, Marquis Victor d'), heir of the Marquis d'Aiglemont and nephew of the dowager Comtesse de Listomere-Landon; born in 1783. After having been the lover of the Marechale de Carigliano, he married, in the latter part of 1813 (at which time he was one of the youngest and most dashing colonels of the French cavalry), Mlle. Julie de Chatillonest, his cousin, with whom he resided successively at Touraine, Paris and Versailles.* He took part in the great struggle of the Empire; but the Restoration freed him from his oath to Napoleon, restored his titles, entrusted to him a station in the Body Guard, which gave him the rank of general, and later made him a peer of France. Gradually he forsook his wife, whom he deceived on account of Madame de Serizy. In 1817 the Marquis d'Aiglemont became the father of a daughter (See Helene d'Aiglemont) who was his image physically and morally; his last three children came into the world during a /liaison/ between the Marquise d'Aiglemont and the brilliant diplomat, Charles de Vandenesse. In 1827 the general, as well as his protege and cousin, Godefroid de Beaudenord, was hurt by the fraudulent failure of the Baron de Nucingen. Moreover, he sank a million in the Wortschin mines where he had been speculating with hypothecated securities of his wife's. This completed his ruin. He went to America, whence he returned, six years later, with a new fortune. The Marquis d'Aiglemont died, overcome by his exertions, in 1833.** [At the Sign of the Cat and Racket. The Firm of Nucingen. A Woman of Thirty.] * It appears that the residence of the Marquis d'Aiglemont at ** Given erroneously in the original as 1835. AIGLEMONT (Generale, Marquise Julie d'), wife of the preceding; born in 1792. Her father, M. de Chatillonest, advised her against, but gave her in marriage to her cousin, the attractive Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, in 1813. Quickly disillusioned and attacked from another source by an "inflammation very often fatal, and which is spoken of by women only in confidence," she sank into a profound melancholy. The death of the Comtesse de Listomere-Landon, her aunt by marriage, deprived her of valuable protection and advice. Shortly thereafter she became a mother and found, in the realization of her new duties, strength to resist the mutual attachment between herself and the young and romantic Englishman, Lord Arthur Ormond Grenville, a student of medicine who had nursed her and healed her bodily ailments, and who died rather than compromise her. Heart-broken, the marquise withdrew to the solitude of an old chateau situated between Moret and Montereau in the midst of a neglected waste. She remained a recluse for almost a year, given over utterly to her grief, refusing the consolations of the Church offered her by the old cure of the village of Saint-Lange. Then she re-entered society at Paris. There, at the age of about thirty, she yielded to the genuine passion of the Marquis de Vandenesse. A child, christened Charles, was born of this union, but he perished at an early age under very tragic circumstances. Two other children, Moina and Abel, were also the result of this love union. They were favored by their mother above the two eldest children, Helene and Gustave, the only ones really belonging to the Marquis d'Aiglemont. Madame d'Aiglemont, when nearly fifty, a widow, and having none of her children remaining alive save her daughter Moina, sacrificed all her own fortune for a dower in order to marry the latter to M. de Saint-Hereen, heir of one of the most famous families of France. She then went to live with her son-in-law in a magnificent mansion overlooking the Esplanade des Invalides. But her daughter gave her slight return for her love. Ruffled one day by some remarks made to her by Madame d'Aiglemont concerning the suspicious devotion of the Marquis de Vandenesse, Moina went so far as to fling back at her mother the remembrance of the latter's own guilty relations with the young man's father. Terribly overcome by this attack, the poor woman, who was a physical wreck, deaf and subject to heart disease, died in 1844. [A Woman of Thirty.] AIGLEMONT (Helene d'), eldest daughter of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont; born in 1817. She and her brother Gustave were neglected by her mother for Charles, Abel and Moina. On this account Helene became jealous and defiant. When about eight years old, in a paroxysm of ferocious hate, she pushed her brother Charles into the Bievre, where he was drowned. This childish crime always passed for a terrible accident. When a young woman—one Christmas night—Helene eloped with a mysterious adventurer who was being tracked by justice and who was, for the time being, in hiding at the home of the Marquis Victor d'Aiglemont, at Versailles. Her despairing father sought her vainly. He saw her no more till seven years later, and then only once, when on his return from America to France. The ship on which he returned was captured by pirates, whose captain, "The Parisian," the veritable abductor of Helene, protected the marquis and his fortune. The two lovers had four beautiful children and lived together in the most perfect happiness, sharing the same perils. Helene refused to follow her father. In 1835, some months after the death of her husband, Madame d'Aiglemont, while taking the youthful Moina to a Pyrenees watering-place, was asked to aid a poor sufferer. It was her daughter, Helene, who had just escaped shipwreck, saving only one child. Both presently succumbed before the eyes of Madame d'Aiglemont. [A Woman of Thirty.] AIGLEMONT (Gustave d'), second child of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont, and born under the Restoration. His first appearance is while still a child, about 1827 or 1828, when returning in company with his father and his sister Helene from the presentation of a gloomy melodrama at the Gaite theatre. He was obliged to flee hastily from a scene, which violently agitated Helene, because it recalled the circumstances surrounding the death of his brother, some two or three years earlier. Gustave d'Aiglemont is next found in the drawing-room at Versailles, where the family is assembled, on the same evening of the abduction of Helene. He died at an early age of cholera, leaving a widow and children for whom the Dowager Marquise d'Aiglemont showed little love. [A Woman of Thirty.] AIGLEMONT (Charles d'), third child of the Marquis and the Marquise d'Aiglemont, born at the time of the intimacy of Madame d'Aiglemont with the Marquis de Vandenesse. He appears but a single time, one spring morning about 1824 or 1825, then being four years old. He was out walking with his sister Helene, his mother and the Marquis de Vandenesse. In a sudden outburst of jealous hate, Helene pushed the little Charles into the Bievre, where he was drowned. [A Woman of Thirty.] AIGLEMONT (Moina d'), fourth child and second daughter of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont. (See Comtesse de Saint-Hereen.) [A Woman of Thirty.] AIGLEMONT (Abel d'), fifth and last child of the Marquis and Marquise AJUDA-PINTO (Marquis Miguel d'), Portuguese belonging to a very old and wealthy family, the oldest branch of which was connected with the Bragance and the Grandlieu houses. In 1819 he was enrolled among the most distinguished dandies who graced Parisian society. At this same period he began to forsake Claire de Bourgogne, Vicomtesse de Beauseant, with whom he had been intimate for three years. After having caused her much uneasiness concerning his real intentions, he returned her letters, on the intervention of Eugene de Rastignac, and married Mlle. Berthe de Rochefide. [Father Goriot. Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] In 1832 he was present at one of Madame d'Espard's receptions, where every one there joined in slandering the Princesse de Cadignan before Daniel d'Arthez, then violently enamored of her. [The Secrets of a Princess.] Towards 1840, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, then a widower, married again—this time Mlle. Josephine de Grandlieu, third daughter of the last duke of this name. Shortly thereafter, the marquis was accomplice in a plot hatched by the friends of the Duchesse de Grandlieu and Madame du Guenic to rescue Calyste du Guenic from the clutches of the Marquise de Rochefide. [Beatrix.] AJUDA-PINTO (Marquise Berthe d'), nee Rochefide. Married to the AJUDA-PINTO (Marquise Josephine d'), daughter of the Duc and Duchesse ALAIN (Frederic), born about 1767. He was clerk in the office of Bordin, procureur of Chatelet. In 1798 he lent one hundred crowns in gold to Monegod his life-long friend. This sum not being repaid, M. Alain found himself almost insolvent, and was obliged to take an insignificant position at the Mont-de-Piete. In addition to this he kept the books of Cesar Birotteau, the well-known perfumer. Monegod became wealthy in 1816, and he forced M. Alain to accept a hundred and fifty thousand francs in payment of the loan of the hundred crowns. The good man then devoted his unlooked-for fortune to philanthropies in concert with Judge Popinot. Later, at the close of 1825, he became one of the most active aides of Madame de la Chanterie and her charitable association. It was M. Alain who introduced Godefroid into the Brotherhood of the Consolation. [The Seamy Side of History.] ALBERTINE, Madame de Bargeton's chambermaid, between the years 1821 and 1824. [Lost Illusions.] ALBON (Marquis d'), court councillor and ministerial deputy under the Restoration. Born in 1777. In September, 1819, he went hunting in the edge of the forest of l'Isle-Adam with his friend Philippe de Sucy, who suddenly fell senseless at the sight of a poor madwoman whom he recognized as a former mistress, Stephanie de Vandieres. The Marquis d'Albon, assisted by two passers by, M. and Mme. de Granville, resuscitated M. de Sucy. Then the marquis returned, at his friend's entreaty, to the home of Stephanie, where he learned from the uncle of this unfortunate one the sad story of the love of his friend and Madame de Vandieres. [Farewell.] ALBRIZZI (Comtesse), a friend, in 1820, at Venice, of the celebrated melomaniac, Capraja. [Massimilla Doni.] ALDRIGGER (Jean-Baptiste, Baron d'), born in Alsace in 1764. In 1800 a banker at Strasbourg, where he was at the apogee of a fortune made during the Revolution, he wedded, partly through ambition, partly through inclination, the heiress of the Adolphuses of Manheim. The young daughter was idolized by every one in her family and naturally inherited all their fortune after some ten years. Aldrigger, created baron by the Emperor, was passionately devoted to the great man who had bestowed upon him his title, and he ruined himself, between 1814 and 1815, by believing too deeply in "the sun of Austerlitz." At the time of the invasion, the trustworthy Alsatian continued to pay on demand and closed up his bank, thus meriting the remark of Nucingen, his former head-clerk: "Honest, but stoobid." The Baron d'Aldrigger went at once to Paris. There still remained to him an income of forty- four thousand francs, reduced at his death, in 1823, by more than half on account of the expenditures and carelessness of his wife. The latter was left a widow with two daughters, Malvina and Isaure. [The Firm of Nucingen.] ALDRIGGER (Theodora-Marguerite-Wilhelmine, Baronne d'), nee Adolphus. Daughter of the banker Adolphus of Manheim, greatly spoiled by her parents. In 1800 she married the Strasbourg banker, Aldrigger, who spoiled her as badly as they had done and as later did the two daughters whom she had by her husband. She was superficial, incapable, egotistic, coquettish and pretty. At forty years of age she still preserved almost all her freshness and could be called "the little Shepherdess of the Alps." In 1823, when the baron died, she came near following him through her violent grief. The following morning at breakfast she was served with small pease, of which she was very fond, and these small pease averted the crisis. She resided in the rue Joubert, Paris, where she held receptions until the marriage of her younger daughter. [The Firm of Nucingen.] ALDRIGGER (Malvina d'), elder daughter of the Baron and Baroness d'Aldrigger, born at Strasbourg in 1801, at the time when the family was most wealthy. Dignified, slender, swarthy, sensuous, she was a good type of the woman "you have seen at Barcelona." Intelligent, haughty, whole-souled, sentimental and sympathetic, she was nevertheless smitten by the dry Ferdinand du Tillet, who sought her hand in marriage at one time, but forsook her when he learned of the bankruptcy of the Aldrigger family. The lawyer Desroches also considered asking the hand of Malvina, but he too gave up the idea. The young girl was counseled by Eugene de Rastignac, who took it upon himself to see that she got married. Nevertheless, she ended by being an old maid, withering day by day, giving piano lessons, living rather meagrely with her mother in a modest flat on the third floor, in the rue du Mont-Thabor. [The Firm of Nucingen.] ALDRIGGER (Isaure d'), second daughter of the Baron and Baronne d'Aldrigger, married to Godefroid de Beaudenord (See that name.) [The Firm of Nucingen.] ALINE, a young Auvergne chambermaid in the service of Madame Veronique Graslin, to whom she was devoted body and soul. She was probably the only one to whom was confided all the terrible secrets pertaining to the life of Madame Graslin. [The Country Parson.] ALLEGRAIN* (Christophe-Gabriel), French sculptor, born in 1710. With * To the sculptor Allegrain who died in 1795, the Louvre Museum is ALPHONSE, a friend of the ruined orphan, Charles Grandet, tarrying temporarily at Saumur. In 1819 he acquitted himself most creditably of a mission entrusted to him by that young man. He wound up Charles' business at Paris, paying all his debts by a single little sale. [Eugenie Grandet.] AL-SARTCHILD, name of a German banking-house, where Gedeon Brunner was compelled to deposit the funds belonging to his son Frederic and inherited from his mother. [Cousin Pons.] ALTHOR (Jacob), a Hambourg banker, who opened up a business at Havre in 1815. He had a son, whom in 1829 M. and Mme. Mignon desired for a son-in-law. [Modeste Mignon.] ALTHOR (Francisque), son of Jacob Althor. Francisque was the dandy of Havre in 1829. He wished to marry Modeste Mignon but forsook her quickly enough when he found out that her family was bankrupt. Not long afterwards he married Mlle. Vilquin the elder. [Modeste Mignon.] AMANDA, Parisian modiste at the time of Louis Philippe. Among her customers was Marguerite Turquet, known as Malaga, who was slow in paying bills. [A Man of Business.] AMAURY (Madame), owner, in 1829, of a pavilion at Sauvic, near AMBERMESNIL (Comtesse de l') went in 1819, when about thirty-six years old, to board with the widow, Mme. Vauquer, rue Nueve Sainte- Genevieve, now Tournefort, Paris. Mme. de l'Ambermesnil gave it out that she was awaiting the settlement of a pension which was due her on account of being the widow of a general killed "on the battlefield." Mme. Vauquer gave her every attention, confiding all her own affairs to her. The comtesse vanished at the end of six months, leaving a board bill unsettled. Mme. Vauquer sought her eagerly, but was never able to obtain a trace of this adventuress. [Father Goriot.] AMEDEE, nickname bestowed on Felix de Vandenesse by Lady Dudley when she thought she saw a rival in Madame de Mortsauf. [The Lily of the Valley.] ANCHISE (Pere), a surname given by La Palferine to a little Savoyard of ten years who worked for him without pay. "I have never seen such silliness coupled with such intelligence," the Prince of Bohemia said of this child; "he would go through fire for me, he understands everything, and yet he does not see that I cannot help him." [A Prince of Bohemia.] ANGARD—At Paris, in 1840, the "professor" Angard was consulted, in connection with the Doctors Bianchon and Larabit, on account of Mme. Hector Hulot, who it was feared was losing her reason. [Cousin Betty.] ANGELIQUE (Sister), nun of the Carmelite convent at Blois under Louis ANICETTE, chambermaid of the Princesse de Cadignan in 1839. The artful and pretty Champagne girl was sought by the sub-prefect of Arcis-sur- Aube, by Maxime de Trailles, and by Mme. Beauvisage, the mayor's wife, each trying to bribe and enlist her on the side of one of the various candidates for deputy. [The Member for Arcis.] ANNETTE, Christian name of a young woman of the Parisian world, under the Restoration. She had been brought up at Ecouen, where she had received the practical counsels of Mme. Campan. Mistress of Charles Grandet before his father's death. Towards the close of 1819, a prey to suspicion, she must needs sacrifice her happiness for the time being, so she made a weary journey with her husband into Scotland. She made her lover effeminate and materialistic, advising with him about everything. He returned from the Indies in 1827, when she quickly brought about his engagement with Mlle. d'Aubrion. [Eugenie Grandet.] ANNETTE, maid servant of Rigou at Blangy, Burgundy. She was nineteen years old, in 1823, and had held this place for more than three years, although Gregoire Rigou never kept servants for a longer period than this, however much he might and did favor them. Annette, sweet, blonde, delicate, a true masterpiece of dainty, piquant loveliness, worthy to wear a duchess' coronet, earned nevertheless only thirty francs a year. She kept company with Jean-Louis Tonsard without letting her master once suspect it; ambition had prompted this young woman to flatter her employer as a means of hoodwinking this lynx. [The Peasantry.] ANSELME, Jesuit, living in rue des Postes (now rue Lhomond). Celebrated mathematician. Had some dealings with Felix Phellion, whom he tried to convert to his religious belief. This rather meagre information concerning him was furnished by a certain Madame Komorn. [The Middle Classes.] ANTOINE, born in the village of Echelles, Savoy. In 1824 he had served longest as clerk in the Bureau of Finance, where he had secured positions, still more modest than his own, for a couple of his nephews, Laurent and Gabriel, both of whom were married to lace laundresses. Antoine meddled with every act of the administration. He elbowed, criticised, scolded and toadied to Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx and other office-holders. He doubtless lived with his nephews. [The Government Clerks.] ANTOINE, old servant of the Marquise Beatrix de Rochefide, in 1840, on the rue de Chartes-du-Roule, near Monceau Park, Paris. [Beatrix.] ANTONIA—see Chocardelle, Mlle. AQUILINA, a Parisian courtesan of the time of the Restoration and Louis Philippe. She claimed to be a Piedmontese. Of her true name she was ignorant. She had appropriated this /nom de guerre/ from a character in the well-known tragedy by Otway, "Venice Preserved," that she had chanced to read. At sixteen, pure and beautiful, at the time of her downfall, she had met Castanier, Nucingen's cashier, who resolved to save her from evil for his own gain, and live maritally with her in the rue Richter. Aquilina then took the name of Madame de la Garde. At the same time of her relations with Castanier, she had for a lover a certain Leon, a petty officer in a regiment of infantry, and none other than one of the sergeants of Rochelle to be executed on the Place de Greve in 1822. Before this execution, in the reign of Louis XVIII., she attended a performance of "Le Comedien d'Etampes," one evening at the Gymnase, when she laughed immoderately at the comical part played by Perlet. At the same time, Castanier, also present at this mirthful scene, but harassed by Melmoth, was experiencing the insufferable doom of a cruel hidden drama. [Melmoth Reconciled.] Her next appearance is at a famous orgy at the home of Frederic Taillefer, rue Joubert, in company with Emile Blondet, Rastignac, Bixiou and Raphael de Valentin. She was a magnificent girl of good figure, superb carriage, and striking though irregular features. Her glance and smile startled one. She always included some red trinket in her attire, in memory of her executed lover. [The Magic Skin.] ARCOS (Comte d'), a Spanish grandee living in the Peninsula at the time of the expedition of Napoleon I. He would probably have married Maria-Pepita-Juana Marana de Mancini, had it not been for the peculiar incidents which brought about her marriage with the French officer, Francois Diard. [The Maranas.] ARGAIOLO (Duc d'), a very rich and well-born Italian, the respected though aged husband of her who later became the Duchesse de Rhetore, to the perpetual grief of Albert Savarus. Argaiolo died, almost an octogenarian, in 1835. [Albert Savarus.] ARGAIOLO (Duchesse d'), nee Soderini, wife of the Duc d'Argaiolo. She became a widow in 1835, and took as her second husband the Duc de Rhetore. (See Duchesse de Rhetore.) [Albert Savarus.] ARRACHELAINE, surname of the rogue, Ruffard. (See that name.) [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] ARTHEZ (Daniel d'), one of the most illustrious authors of the nineteenth century, and one of those rare men who display "the unity of excellent talent and excellent character." Born about 1794 or 1796. A Picard gentleman. In 1821, when about twenty-five, he was poverty- stricken and dwelt on the fifth floor of a dismal house in the rue des Quatre-Vents, Paris, where had also resided the illustrious surgeon Desplein, in his youth. There he fraternized with: Horace Bianchon, then house-physician at Hotel-Dieu; Leon Giraud, the profound philosopher; Joseph Bridau, the painter who later achieved so much renown; Fulgence Ridal, comic poet of great sprightliness; Meyraux, the eminent physiologist who died young; lastly, Louis Lambert and Michel Chrestien, the Federalist Republican, both of whom were cut off in their prime. To these men of heart and of talent Lucien de Rubempre, the poet, sought to attach himself. He was introduced by Daniel d'Arthez, their recognized leader. This society had taken the name of the "Cenacle." D'Arthez and his friends advised and aided, when in need, Lucien the "Distinguished Provincial at Paris" who ended so tragically. Moreover, with a truly remarkable disinterestedness d'Arthez corrected and revised "The Archer of Charles IX.," written by Lucien, and the work became a superb book, in his hands. Another glimpse of d'Arthez is as the unselfish friend of Marie Gaston, a young poet of his stamp, but "effeminate." D'Arthez was swarthy, with long locks, rather small and bearing some resemblance to Bonaparte. He might be called the rival of Rousseau, "the Aquatic," since he was very temperate, very pure, and drank water only. For a long time he ate at Flicoteaux's in the Latin Quarter. He had grown famous in 1832, besides enjoying an income of thirty thousand francs bequeathed by an uncle who had left him a prey to the most biting poverty so long as the author was unknown. D'Arthez then resided in a pretty house of his own in the rue de Bellefond, where he lived in other respects as formerly, in the rigor of work. He was a deputy sitting on the right and upholding the Royalist platform of Divine Right. When he had acquired a competence, he had a most vulgar and incomprehensible /liaison/ with a woman tolerably pretty, but belonging to a lower society and without either education or breeding. D'Arthez maintained her, nevertheless, carefully concealing her from sight; but, far from being a pleasurable manner of life, it became odious to him. It was at this time that he was invited to the home of Diane de Maufrigneuse, Princesse de Cadignan, who was then thirty-six, but did not look it. The famous "great coquette" told him her (so-called) "secrets," offered herself outright to this man whom she treated as a "famous simpleton," and whom she made her lover. After that day there was no doubt about the relations of the princesse and Daniel d'Arthez. The great author, whose works became very rare, appeared only during some of the winter months at the Chamber of Deputies. [A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. Letters of Two Brides. The Member for Arcis. The Secrets of a Princess.] ASIE, one of the pseudonyms of Jacqueline Collin. (see that name.) ATHALIE, cook for Mme. Schontz in 1836. According to her mistress, she was specially gifted in preparing venison. [The Muse of the Department.] AUBRION (Marquis d'), a gentleman-in-waiting of the Bedchamber, under Charles X. He was of the house of Aubrion de Buch, whose last head died before 1789. He was silly enough to wed a woman of fashion, though he was already an old man of but twenty thousand francs income, a sum hardly sufficient in Paris. He tried to marry his daughter without a dowry to some man who was intoxicated with nobility. In 1827, to quote Mme. d'Aubrion, this ancient wreck was madly devoted to the Duchesse de Chaulieu [Eugenie Grandet.] AUBRION (Marquise d'), wife of the preceding. Born in 1789. At thirty- eight she was still pretty, and, having always been somewhat aspiring, she endeavored (in 1827), by hook or by crook, to entangle Charles Grandet, lately returned from the Indies. She wished to make a son-in- law out of him, and she succeeded. [Eugenie Grandet.] AUBRION (Mathilde d') daughter of the Marquis and Marquise d'Aubrion; born in 1808; married to Charles Grandet. (See that name.) [Eugenie Grandet.] AUBRION (Comte d'), the title acquired by Charles Grandet after his marriage to the daughter of the Marquis d'Aubrion. [The Firm of Nucingen.] AUFFRAY, grocer at Provins, in the period of Louis XV., Louis XVI. and the Revolution. M. Auffray married the first time when eighteen, the second time at sixty-nine. By his first wife he had a rather ugly daughter who married, at sixteen, a landlord of Provins, Rogron by name. Auffray had another daughter, by his second marriage, a charming girl, this time, who married a Breton captain in the Imperial Guard. Pierrette Lorrain was the daughter of this officer. The old grocer Auffray died at the time of the Empire without having had time enough to make his will. The inheritance was so skillfully manipulated by Rogron, the first son-in-law of the deceased, that almost nothing was left for the goodman's widow, then only about thirty-eight years old. [Pierrette.] AUFFRAY (Madame), wife of the preceding. (See Neraud, Mme.) AUFFRAY, a notary of Provins in 1827. Husband of Mme. Guenee's third daughter. Great-grand-nephew of the old grocer, Auffray. Appointed a guardian of Pierrette Lorrain. On account of the ill-treatment to which this young girl was subjected at the home of her guardian, Denis Rogron, she was removed, an invalid, to the home of the notary Auffray, a designated guardian, where she died, although tenderly cared for. [Pierrette.] AUFFRAY (Madame), born Guenee. Wife of the preceding. The third daughter of Mme. Guenee, born Tiphaine. She exhibited the greatest kindness for Pierrette Lorrain, and nursed her tenderly in her last illness. [Pierrette.] AUGUSTE, name borne by Boislaurier, as chief of "brigands," in the uprisings of the West under the Republic and under the Empire. [The Seamy Side of History.] AUGUSTE, /valet de chambre/ of the General Marquis Armand de Montriveau, under the Restoration, at the time when the latter dwelt in the rue de Seine hard by the Chamber of Peers, and was intimate with the Duchesse Antoinette de Langeais. [The Thirteen.] AUGUSTE, notorious assassin, executed in the first years of the Restoration. He left a mistress, surnamed Rousse, to whom Jacques Collin had faithfully remitted (in 1819) some twenty odd thousands of francs, on behalf of her lover after his execution. This woman was married in 1821, by Jacques Collin's sister, to the head clerk of a rich, wholesale hardware merchant. Nevertheless, though once more in respectable society, she remained bound, by a secret compact, to the terrible Vautrin and his sister. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] AUGUSTE (Madame), dressmaker of Esther Gobseck, and her creditor in the time of Louis XVIII. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] AUGUSTIN, /valet de chambre/ of M. de Serizy in 1822. [A Start in AURELIE, a Parisian courtesan, under Louis Philippe, at the time when AURELIE (La Petite), one of the nicknames of Josephine Schiltz, also called Schontz, who became, later, Mme. Fabien du Ronceret. [Beatrix.] AUVERGNAT (L'), one of the assumed names of the rogue Selerier, alias |
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