Repertory of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z. Anatole Cerfberr
Listomere, the Marquise d'Espard and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. She was equally intimate with Grandlieu, and the General de Montriveau. Rastignac, then poor at the time of his start in the world, also received cards to her receptions. [Father Goriot. The Deserted Woman. Albert Savarus.]
BEAUSSIER, a bourgeois of Issoudun under the Restoration. Upon seeing Joseph Bridau in the diligence, while the artist and his mother were on a journey in 1822, he remarked that he would not care to meet him at night in the corner of a forest—he looked so much like a highwayman. That same evening Beaussier, accompanied by his wife, came to call at Hochon's in order to get a nearer view of the painter. [A Bachelor's Establishment.]
BEAUSSIER the younger, known as Beaussier the Great; son of the preceding and one of the Knights of Idlesse at Issoudun, commanded by Maxence Gilet, under the Restoration. [A Bachelor's Establishment.]
BEAUVISAGE, physician of the Convent des Carmelites at Blois, time of Louis XVIII. He was known by Louise de Chaulieu and by Renee de Maucombe, who were reared in the convent. According to Louise de Chaulieu, he certainly belied his name. [Letters of Two Brides.]
BEAUVISAGE, at one time tenant of the splendid farm of Bellache, pertaining to the Gondreville estate at Arcis-sur-Aube. The father of Phileas Beauvisage. Died about the beginning of the nineteenth century. [The Gondreville Mystery. The Member for Arcis.]
BEAUVISAGE (Madame), wife of the preceding. She survived him for quite a long period and helped her son Phileas win his success. [The Member for Arcis.]
BEAUVISAGE (Phileas), son of Beauvisage the farmer. Born in 1792. A hosier at Arcis-sur-Aube during the Restoration. Mayor of the town in 1839. After a preliminary defeat he was elected deputy at the time when Sallenauve sent in his resignation, in 1841. An ardent admirer of Crevel whose affectations he aped. A millionaire and very vain, he would have been able, according to Crevel, to advance Mme. Hulot, for a consideration, the two hundred thousand francs of which that unhappy lady stood in so dire a need about 1842. [Cousin Betty. The Member for Arcis.]
BEAUVISAGE (Madame), born Severine Grevin in 1795. Wife of Phileas Beauvisage, whom she kept in complete subjugation. Daughter of Grevin the notary of Arcis-sur-Aube, Senator Malin de Gondreville's intimate friend. She inherited her father's marvelous faculty of discretion; and, though diminutive in stature, reminded one forcibly, in her face and ways, of Mlle. Mars. [The Member for Arcis.]
BEAUVISAGE (Cecile-Renee), only daughter of Phileas Beauvisage and Severine Grevin. Born in 1820. Her natural father was the Vicomte Melchior de Chargeboeuf who was sub-prefect of Arcis-sur-Aube at the commencement of the Restoration. She looked exactly like him, besides having his aristocratic airs. [The Member for Arcis.]
BEAUVOIR (Charles-Felix-Theodore, Chevalier de), cousin of the Duchesse de Maille. A Chouan prisoner of the Republic in the chateau de l'Escarpe in 1799. The hero of a tale of marital revenge related by Lousteau, in 1836, to Mme. de la Baudraye, the story being obtained—so the narrator said—from Charles Nodier. [The Muse of the Department.]
BECANIERE (La), surname of Barbette Cibot. (See that name.)
BECKER (Edme), a student of medicine who dwelt in 1828 at number 22, rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve—the residence of the Marquis d'Espard. [The Commission in Lunacy.]
BEDEAU, office boy and roustabout for Maitre Bordin, attorney to the Chatelet in 1787. [A Start in Life.]
BEGA, surgeon in a French regiment of the Army of Spain in 1808. After having privately accouched a Spaniard under the espionage of her lover, he was assassinated by her husband, who surprised him in the telling of this clandestine operation. The foregoing adventure was told Mme. de la Baudraye, in 1836, by the Receiver of Finances, Gravier, former paymaster of the Army. [The Muse of the Department.]
BEGRAND (La), a dancer at the theatre of Porte-Sainte-Martin, Paris, in 1820.* Mariette, who made her debut at this time, also scored a success. [A Bachelor's Establishment.]
* She shone for more than sixty years as a famous choreographical
artist in the boulevards.
BELLEFEUILLE (Mademoiselle de), assumed name of Caroline Crochard.
BELLEJAMBE, servant of Lieutenant-Colonel Husson in 1837. [A Start in Life.]
BELOR (Mademoiselle de), young girl of Bordeaux living there about 1822. She was always in search of a husband, whom, for some cause or other, she never found. Probably intimate with Evangelista. [A Marriage Settlement.]
BEMBONI (Monsignor), attache to the Secretary of State at Rome, who was entrusted with the transmission to the Duc de Soria at Madrid of the letters of Baron de Macumer his brother, a Spanish refugee at Paris in 1823, 1824. [Letters of Two Brides.]
BENARD (Pieri). After corresponding with a German for two years, he discovered an engraving by Muller entitled the "Virgin of Dresden." It was on Chinese paper and made before printing was discovered. It cost Cesar Birotteau fifteen hundred francs. The perfumer destined this engraving for the savant Vauquelin, to whom he was under obligations. [Cesar Birotteau.]
BENASSIS (Doctor), born about 1779 in a little town of Languedoc. He received his early training at the College of Soreze, Tarn, which was managed by the Oratorians. After that he pursued his medical studies at Paris, residing in the Latin quarter. When twenty-two he lost his father, who left him a large fortune; and he deserted a young girl by whom he had had a son, in order to give himself over to the most foolish dissipations. This young girl, who was thoroughly well meant and devoted to him, died two years after the desertion despite the most tender care of her now contrite lover. Later Benassis sought marriage with another young girl belonging to a Jansenist family. At first the affair was settled, but he was thrown over when the secret of his past life, hitherto concealed, was made known. He then devoted his whole life to his son, but the child died in his youth. After wavering between suicide and the monastery of Grande-Chartreuse, Doctor Benassis stopped by chance in the poor village of l'Isere, five leagues from Grenoble. He remained there until he had transformed the squalid settlement, inhabited by good-for-nothing Cretins, into the chief place of the Canton, bustling and prosperous. Benassis died in 1829, mayor of the town. All the populace mourned the benefactor and man of genius. [The Country Doctor.]
BENEDETTO, an Italian living at Rome in the first third of the nineteenth century. A tolerable musician, and a police spy, "on the side." Ugly, small and a drunkard, he was nevertheless the lucky husband of Luigia, whose marvelous beauty was his continual boast. After an evening spent by him over the wine-cups, his wife in loathing lighted a brasier of charcoal, after carefully closing all the exits of the bedchamber. The neighbors rushing in succeeded in saving her alone; Benedetto was dead. [The Member for Arcis.]
BERENICE, chambermaid and cousin of Coralie the actress of the Panorama and Gymnase Dramatique. A large Norman woman, as ugly as her mistress was pretty, but tender and sympathetic in direct proportion to her corpulence. She had been Coralie's childhood playmate and was absolutely bound up in her. In October, 1822, she gave Lucien de Rubempre, then entirely penniless, four five-franc pieces which she undoubtedly owed to the generosity of chance lovers met on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. This sum enabled the unfortunate poet to return to Angouleme. [Lost Illusions. A Distinguished Provincial at Paris.]
BERGERIN was the best doctor at Saumur during the Restoration. He attended Felix Grandet in his last illness. [Eugenie Grandet.]
BERGMANN (Monsieur and Madame), Swiss. Venerable gardeners of a certain Comte Borromeo, tending his parks located on the two famous isles in Lake Major. In 1823 they owned a house at Gersau, near Quatre-Canton Lake, in the Canton of Lucerne. For a year back they had let one floor of this house to the Prince and Princesse Gandolphini—personages of a novel entitled, "L'Ambitieux par Amour," published by Albert Savarus in the Revue de l'Est, in 1834. [Albert Savarus.]
BERNARD. (See Baron de Bourlac.)
BERNUS, diligence messenger carrying the passengers, freight, and perhaps, the letters of Saint-Nazaire to Guerande, during the time of Charles X. and Louis Philippe. [Beatrix.]
BERQUET, workman of Besancon who erected an elevated kiosk in the garden