Repertory of The Comedie Humaine Part 35

[+] The Bourse temporarily occupied a building on rue Feydau, while the present palace was building.

MONGENOD (Madame Charlotte), wife of the preceding, in the year 1798 bore up bravely under her poverty, even selling her hair for twelve francs that her family might have bread. Wealthy, and a widow after 1827, Madame Mongenod remained the chief adviser and support of the bank, operated in Paris on rue de la Victoire, by her two sons, Frederic and Louis. [The Seamy Side of History.]

MONGENOD (Frederic), eldest of the preceding couple's three children, received from his thankful parents the given name of M. Alain and became, after 1827, the head of his father's banking-house on rue de la Victoire. His honesty is shown by the character of his patrons, among whom were the Marquis d'Espard, Charles Mignon de la Bastie, the Baronne de la Chanterie and G.o.defroid. [The Commission in Lunacy. The Seamy Side of History.]

MONGENOD (Louis), younger brother of the preceding, with whom he had business a.s.sociation on rue de la Victoire, where he was receiving the prudent advice of his mother, Madame Charlotte Mongenod, when G.o.defroid visited him in 1836. [The Seamy Side of History.]

MONGENOD (Mademoiselle), daughter of Frederic and Charlotte Mongenod, born in 1799; she was offered in marriage, January, 1816, to Frederic Alain, who would not accept this token of grat.i.tude from the wealthy Mongenods. Mademoiselle Mongenod married the Vicomte de Fontaine. [The Seamy Side of History.]

MONISTROL, native of Auvergne, a Parisian broker, towards the last years of Louis Phillippe's reign, successively on rue de Lappe and the new Beaumarchais boulevard. He was one of the pioneers in the curio business, along with the Popinots, Ponses, and the Remonencqs. This kind of business afterwards developed enormously. [Cousin Pons.]

MONTAURAN (Marquis Alophonse de), was, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, connected with nearly all of the well-known Royalist intrigues in France and elsewhere. He frequently visited, along with Flamet de la Billardiere and the Comte de Fontaine, the home of Ragon, the perfumer, who was proprietor of the "Reine des Roses," from which went forth the Royalist correspondence between the West and Paris. Too young to have been at Versailles, Alphonse de Montauran had not "the courtly manners for which Lauzun, Adhemar, Coigny, and so many others were noted." His education was incomplete.

Towards the autumn of 1799 he especially distinguished himself. His attractive appearance, his youth, and a mingled gallantry and authoritativeness, brought him to the notice of Louis XVIII., who appointed him governor of Bretagne, Normandie, Maine and Anjou. Under the name of Gras, having become commander of the Chouans, in September, the marquis conducted them in an attack against the Blues on the plateau of La Pelerine, which extends between Fougeres, Ille-et-Vilaine, and Ernee, Mayenne. Madame du Gua did not leave him even then. Alphonse de Montauran sought the hand of Mademoiselle d'Uxelles, after leaving this, the last mistress of Charette.

Nevertheless, he fell in love with Marie de Verneuil, the spy, who had entered Bretagne with the express intention of delivering him to the Blues. He married her in Fougeres, but the Republicans murdered him and his wife a few hours after their marriage. [Cesar Birotteau.

The Chouans.]

MONTAURAN (Marquise Alphonse de), wife of the preceding; born Marie-Nathalie de Verneuil at La Chanterie near Alencon, natural daughter of Mademoiselle Blanche de Casteran, who was abbess of Notre-Dame de Seez at the time of her death, and of Victor-Amedee, Duc de Verneuil, who owned her and left her an inheritance, at the expense of her legitimate brother. A lawsuit between brother and sister resulted. Marie-Nathalie lived then with her guardian, the Marechal Duc de Lenoncourt, and was supposed to be his mistress.

After vainly trying to bring him to the point of marriage she was cast off by him. She pa.s.sed through divers political and social paths during the Revolutionary period. After having shone in court circles she had Danton for a lover. During the autumn of 1799 Fouche hired Marie de Verneuil to betray Alphonse de Montauran, but the lovely spy and the chief of the Chouans fell in love with each other. They were united in marriage a few hours before their death towards the end of that year, 1799, in which Jacobites and Chouans fought on Bretagne soil. Madame de Montauran was attired in her husband's clothes when a Republican bullet killed her. [The Chouans.]

MONTAURAN (Marquis de), younger brother of Alphonse de Montauran, was in London, in 1799, when he received a letter from Colonel Hulot containing Alphonse's last wishes. Montauran complied with them; returned to France, but did not fight against his country. He kept his wealth through the intervention of Colonel Hulot and finally served the Bourbons in the gendarmerie, where he himself became a colonel.

When Louis Philippe came to the throne, Montauran believed an absolute retirement necessary. Under the name of M. Nicolas, he became one of the Brothers of Consolation, who met in Madame de la Chanterie's home on rue Chanoinesse. He saved M. Auguste de Mergi from being prosecuted. In 1841 Montauran was seen on rue du Montparna.s.se, where he a.s.sisted at the funeral of the elder Hulot. [The Chouans. The Seamy Side of History. Cousin Betty.]

MONTBAURON (Marquise de), Raphael de Valentin's aunt, died on the scaffold during the Revolution. [The Magic Skin.]

MONTCORNET (Marechal, Comte de), Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, Commander of Saint-Louis, born in 1774, son of a cabinet-maker in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, "child of Paris," mingled in almost all of the wars in the latter part of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. He commanded in Spain and in Pomerania, and was colonel of cuira.s.siers in the Imperial Guard. He took the place of his friend, Martial de la Roche-Hugon in the affections of Madame de Vaudremont. The Comte de Montcornet was in intimate relations with Madame or Mademoiselle Fortin, mother of Valerie Crevel. Towards 1815, Montcornet bought, for about a hundred thousand francs, the Aigues, Sophie Laguerre's old estate, situated between Conches and Blangy, near Soulanges and Ville-aux-Fayes. The Restoration allured him. He wished to have his origin overlooked, to gain position under the new regime, to efface all memory of the expressive nick-name received from the Bourgogne peasantry, who called him the "Upholsterer." In the early part of 1819 he married Virginie de Troisville. His property, increased by an income of sixty thousand francs, allowed him to live in state. In winter he occupied his beautiful Parisian mansion on rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, now called rue des Mathurins, and visited many places, especially the homes of Raoul Nathan and of Esther Gobseck.

During the summer the count, then mayor of Blangy, lived at Aigues.

His unpopularity and the hatred of the Gaubertins, Rigous, Sibilets, Soudrys, Tonsards, and Fourchons rendered his sojourn there unbearable, and he decided to dispose of the estate. Montcornet, although of violent disposition and weak character, could not avoid being a subordinate in his own family. The monarchy of 1830 overwhelmed Montcornet, then lieutenant-general unattached, with gifts, and gave a division of the army into his command. The count, now become marshal, was a frequent visitor at the Vaudeville.[*]

Montcornet died in 1837. He never acknowledged his daughter, Valerie Crevel, and left her nothing. He is probably buried in Pere-Lachaise cemetery, where a monument was to be raised for him under W.

Steinbock's supervision. Marechal de Montcornet's motto was: "Sound the Charge." [Domestic Peace. Lost Illusions. A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. The Peasantry. A Man of Business. Cousin Betty.]

[*] A Parisian theatre, situated until 1838 on rue de Chartres. Rue de Chartres, which also disappeared, although later, was located between the Palais-Royal square and the Place du Carrousel.

MONTCORNET (Comtesse de.) (See Blondet, Madame Emile.)

MONTEFIORE, Italian of the celebrated Milanese family of Montefiore, commissary in the Sixth of the line under the Empire; one of the finest fellows in the army; marquis, but unable under the laws of the kingdom of Italy to use his t.i.tle. Thrown by his disposition into the "mould of the Rizzios," he barely escaped being a.s.sa.s.sinated in 1808 in the city of Tarragone by La Marana, who surprised him in company with her daughter, Juana-Pepita-Maria de Mancini, afterwards Francois Diard's wife. Later, Montefiore himself married a celebrated Englishwoman. In 1823 he was killed and plundered in a deserted alley in Bordeaux by Diard, who found him, after being away many years, in a gambling-house at a watering-place. [The Maranas.]

MONTES DE MONTEJANOS (Baron), a rich Brazilian of wild and primitive disposition; towards 1840, when very young, was one of the first lovers of Valerie Fortin, who became in turn Madame Marneffe and Madame Celestin Crevel. He saw her again at the Faubourg Saint-Germain and at the Place or Pate des Italiens, and had occasion for being envious of Hector Hulot, W. Steinbock and still others. He had revenge on his mistress by communicating to her a mysterious disease from which she died in the same manner as Celestin Crevel. [Cousin Betty.]

MONTPERSAN (Comte de), nephew of a canon of Saint-Denis, upon whom he called frequently; an aspiring rustic, grown sour on account of disappointment and deceit; married, and head of a family. At the beginning of the Restoration he owned the Chateau de Montpersan, eight leagues from Moulins in Allier, where he lived. In 1819 he received a call from a young stranger who came to inform him of the death of Madame de Montpersan's lover. [The Message.]

MONTPERSAN (Comtesse Juliette de), wife of the preceding, born about 1781, lived at Montpersan with her family, and while there learned from her lover's fellow-traveler of the former's death as a result of an overturned carriage. The countess rewarded the messenger of misfortune in a delicate manner. [The Message.]

MONTPERSAN (Mademoiselle de), daughter of the preceding couple, was but a child when the sorrowful news arrived which caused her mother to leave the table. The child, thinking only of the comical side of affairs, remarked upon her father's gluttony, suggesting that the countess' abrupt departure had allowed him to break the rules of diet imposed by her presence. [The Message.]

MONTRIVEAU (General Marquis de), father of Armand de Montriveau.

Although a knighted chevalier, he continued to hold fast to the exalted manners of Bourgogne, and scorned the opportunities which rank and wealth had offered in his birth. Being an encyclopaedist and "one of those already mentioned who served the Republic n.o.bly," Montriveau was killed at Novi near Joubert's side. [The Thirteen.]

MONTRIVEAU (Comte de), paternal uncle of Armand de Montriveau.

Corpulent, and fond of oysters. Unlike his brother he emigrated, and in his exile met with a cordial reception by the Dulmen branch of the Rivaudoults of Arschoot, a family with which he had some relationship.

He died at St. Petersburg. [The Thirteen.]

MONTRIVEAU (General Marquis Armand de), nephew of the preceding and only son of General de Montriveau. As a penniless orphan he was entered by Bonaparte in the school of Chalons. He went into the artillery service, and took part in the last campaigns of the Empire, among others that in Russia. At the battle of Waterloo he received many serious wounds, being then a colonel in the Guard. Montriveau pa.s.sed the first three years of the Restoration far away from Europe.

He wished to explore the upper sections of Egypt and Central Africa.

After being made a slave by savages he escaped from their hands by a bold ruse and returned to Paris, where he lived on rue de Seine near the Chamber of Peers. Despite his poverty and lack of ambition and influential friends, he was soon promoted to a general's position. His a.s.sociation with The Thirteen, a powerful and secret band of men, who counted among their members Ronquerolles, Marsay and Bourignard, probably brought him this unsolicited favor. This same freemasonry aided Montriveau in his desire to have revenge on Antoinette de Langeais for her delicate flirtation; also later, when still feeling for her the same pa.s.sion, he seized her body from the Spanish Carmelites. About the same time the general met, at Madame de Beauseant's, Rastignac, just come to Paris, and told him about Anastasie de Restaud. Towards the end of 1821, the general met Mesdames d'Espard and de Bargeton, who were spending the evening at the Opera. Montriveau was the living picture of Kleber, and in a kind of tragic way became a widower by Antoinette de Langeais. Having become celebrated for a long journey fraught with adventures, he was the social lion at the time he ran across a companion of his Egyptian travels, Sixte du Chatelet. Before a select audience of artists and n.o.blemen, gathered during the first years of the reign of Louis Philippe at the home of Mademoiselle des Touches, he told how he had unwittingly been responsible for the vengeance taken by the husband of a certain Rosina, during the time of the Imperial wars. Montriveau, now admitted to the peerage, was in command of a department. At this time, having become unfaithful to the memory of Antoinette de Langeais, he became enamored of Madame Rogron, born Bathilde de Chargeboeuf, who hoped soon to bring about their marriage. In 1839, in company with M. de Ronquerolles, he beame second to the Duc de Rhetore, elder brother of Louise de Chaulieu, in his duel with Dorlange-Sallenauve, brought about because of Marie Gaston. [The Thirteen. Father Goriot. Lost Illusions. A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. Another Study of Woman. Pierrette. The Member for Arcis.]

MORAND, formerly a clerk in Barbet's publishing-house, in 1838 became a partner; along with Metivier tried to take advantage of Baron de Bourlac, author of "The Spirit of Modern Law." [The Seamy Side of History.]

MOREAU, born in 1772, son of a follower of Danton, procureur-syndic at Versailles during the Revolution; was Madame Clapart's devoted lover, and remained faithful almost all the rest of his life. After a very adventurous life Moreau, about 1805, became manager of the Presles estate, situated in the valley of the Oise, which was the property of the Comte de Serizy. He married Estelle, maid of Leontine de Serizy, and had by her three children. After serving as manager of the estate for seventeen years, he gave up his position, when his dishonest dealings with Leger were exposed by Reybert, and retired a wealthy man. A silly deed of his G.o.dson, Oscar Husson, was, more than anything else, the cause of his dismissal from his position at Presles. Moreau attained a lofty position under Louis Philippe, having grown wealthy through real-estate, and became the father-in-law of Constant-Cyr-Melchior de Ca.n.a.lis. At last he became a prominent deputy of the Centre under the name of Moreau of the Oise. [A Start in Life.]

MOREAU (Madame Estelle), fair-skinned wife of the preceding, born of lowly origin at Saint-Lo, became maid to Leontine de Serizy. Her fortune made, she became overbearing and received Oscar Husson, son of Madame Clapart by her first husband, with unconcealed coldness. She bought the flowers for her coiffure from Nattier, and, wearing some of them, she was seen, in the autumn of 1822, by Joseph Bridau and Leon de Lora, who had just arrived from Paris to do some decorating in the chateau at Serizy. [A Start in Life.]

MOREAU (Jacques), eldest of the preceding couple's three children, was the agent between his mother and Oscar Husson at Presles. [A Start in Life.]

MOREAU, the best upholsterer in Alencon, rue de la Porte-de-Seez, near the church; in 1816 furnished Madame du Bousquier, then Mademoiselle Rose Cormon, the articles of furniture made necessary by M. de Troisville's unlooked-for arrival at her home on his return from Russia. [Jealousies of a Country Town.]

MOREAU, an aged workman at Dauphine, uncle of little Jacques Colas, lived, during the Restoration, in poverty and resignation, with his wife, in the village near Gren.o.ble--a place which was completely changed by Doctor Bena.s.sis. [The Country Doctor.]

MOREAU-MALVIN, "a prominent butcher," died about 1820. His beautiful tomb of white marble ornaments rue du Marechal-Lefebvre at Pere-Lachaise, near the burial-place of Madame Jules Desmarets and Mademoiselle Raucourt of the Comedie-Francaise. [The Thirteen.]

MORILLON (Pere), a priest, who had charge, for some time under the Empire, of Gabriel Claes' early education. [The Quest of the Absolute.]

MORIN (La), a very poor old woman who reared La Fosseuse, an orphan, in a kindly manner in a market-town near Gren.o.ble, but who gave her some raps on the fingers with her spoon when the child was too quick in taking soup from the common porringer. La Morin tilled the soil like a man, and murmured frequently at the miserable pallet on which she and La Fosseuse slept. [The Country Doctor.]

MORIN (Jeanne-Marie-Victoire Tarin, veuve), accused of trying to obtain money by forging signatures to promissory-notes, also of the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination of Sieur Ragoulleau; condemned by the Court of a.s.sizes at Paris on January 11, 1812, to twenty years hard labor. The elder Poiret, a man who never thought independently, was a witness for the defence, and often thought of the trial. The widow Morin, born at Pont-sur-Seine, Aube, was a fellow-countrywoman of Poiret, who was born at Troyes. [Father Goriot.] Many extracts have been taken from the items published about this criminal case.

MORISSON, an inventor of purgative pills, which were imitated by Doctor Poulain, physician to Pons and the Cibots, when, as a beginner, he wished to make his fortune rapidly. [Cousin Pons.]

MORTSAUF (Comte de), head of a Touraine family, which owed to an ancestor of Louis XI.'s reign--a man who had escaped the gibbet--its fortune, coat-of-arms and position. The count was the incarnation of the "refugee." Exiled, either willingly or unwillingly, his banishment made him weak of mind and body. He married Blanche-Henriette de Lenoncourt, by whom he had two children, Jacques and Madeleine. On the accession of the Bourbons he was breveted field-marshal, but did not leave Clochegourde, a castle brought to him in his wife's dowry and situated on the banks of the Indre and the Cher. [The Lily of the Valley.]

MORTSAUF (Comtesse de),[*] wife of the preceding; born Blanche-Henriette de Lenoncourt, of the "house of Lenoncourt-Givry, fast becoming extinct," towards the first years of the Restoration; was born after the death of three brothers, and thus had a sorrowful childhood and youth; found a good foster-mother in her aunt, a Blamont-Chauvry; and when married found her chief pleasure in the care of her children. This feeling gave her the power to repress the love which she felt for Felix de Vandenesse, but the effort which this hard struggle caused her brought on a severe stomach disease of which she died in 1820. [The Lily of the Valley.]

[*] Beauplan and Barriere presented a play at the Comedie-Francaise, having for a heroine Madame de Mortsauf, June 14, 1853.

MORTSAUF (Jacques de), elder child of the preceding couple, pupil of Dominis, most delicate member of the family, died prematurely. With his death the line of Lenoncourt-Givrys proper pa.s.sed away, for he would have been their heir. [The Lily of the Valley.]

MORTSAUF (Madeleine de), sister of the preceding; after her mother's death she would not receive Felix de Vandenesse, who had been Madame de Mortsauf's lover. She became in time d.u.c.h.esse de Lenoncourt-Givry (See that name). [The Lily of the Valley.]

MOUCHE, born in 1811, illegitimate son of one of Fourchon's natural daughters and a soldier who died in Russia; was given a home, when an orphan, by his maternal grandfather, whom he aided sometimes as ropemaker's apprentice. About 1823, in the district of Ville-aux-Fayes, Bourgogne, he profited by the credulity of the strangers whom he was supposed to teach the art of hunting otter. Mouche's att.i.tude and conversation, as he came in the autumn of 1823 to the Aigues, scandalized the Montcornets and their guests. [The Peasantry.]

MOUCHON, eldest of three brothers who lived in 1793 in the Bourgogne valley of Avonne or Aigues; managed the estate of Ronquerolles; became deputy of his division to the Convention; had a reputation for uprightness; preserved the property and the life of the Ronquerolles; died in the year 1804, leaving two daughters, Mesdames Gendrin and Gaubertin. [The Peasantry.]

MOUCHON, brother of the preceding, had charge of the relay post-house at Conches, Bourgogne; had a daughter who married the wealthy farmer Guerbet; died in 1817. [The Peasantry.]

MOUGIN, born about 1805 in Toulouse, fifth of the Parisian hair-dressers who, under the name of Marius, successively owned the same business. In 1845, a wealthy married man of family, captain in the Guard and decorated after 1832, an elector and eligible to office, he had established himself on the Place de la Bourse as capillary artist emeritus, where his praises were sung by Bixiou and Lora to the wondering Gazonal. [The Unconscious Humorists.]

MOUILLERON, king's attorney at Issoudun in 1822, cousin to every person in the city during the quarrels between the Rouget and Bridau families. [A Bachelor's Establishment.]

MURAT (Joachim, Prince). In October, 1800, on the day in which Bartolomeo de Piombo was presented by Lucien Bonaparte, he was, with Lannes and Rapp, in the rooms of Bonaparte, the First Consul. He became Grand Duke of Berg in 1806, the time of the well-known quarrel between the Simeuses and Malin de Gondreville. Murat came to the rescue of Colonel Chabert's cavalry regiment at the battle of Eylau, February 7 and 8, 1807. "Oriental in tastes," he exhibited, even before acceding to the throne of Naples in 1808, a foolish love of luxury for a modern soldier. Twenty years later, during a village celebration in Dauphine, Bena.s.sis and Genestas listened to the story of Bonaparte, as told by a veteran, then became a laborer, who mingled with his narrative a number of entertaining stories of the bold Murat.