Repertory of The Comedie Humaine Part 51

VIMEUX, in 1824, an una.s.suming justice of the peace in a department of the North, rebuked his son Adolphe for the kind of life he was leading in Paris. [The Government Clerks.]

VIMEUX (Adolphe), son of the preceding, in 1824, was copyist emeritus in Xavier Rabourdin's bureau in the Finance Department. A great dandy, he thought only of his dress, and was satisfied with meagre fare at the Katcomb's restaurant; he became a debtor of Antoine, the messenger boy; secretly his ambition was to marry a rich old lady. [The Government Clerks.]

VINET had a painful career to start with; a disappointment crossed his path at the very outset. He had seduced a Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, and he supposed that her parents would acknowledge him as son-in-law, and endow their daughter richly; so he married her, but her family disowned her, and he therefore had to rely on himself entirely. As an attorney at Provins, Vinet made his mark by degrees; as head of the local opposition, with the aid of Goraud, he succeeded in making use of Denis Rogron, a wealthy retired merchant, established the "Courrier de Provins," a Liberalist paper, adroitly defended the Rogrons against the charge of killing Pierrette Lorrain by slow degrees, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies about 1830, and became also attorney-general, and probably minister of justice. [Pierrette. The Member for Arcis. The Middle Cla.s.ses. Cousin Pons.]

VINET (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Chargeboeuf, and therefore one of the descendants of the "n.o.ble family of La Brie, a name derived from the exploit of a knight in the expedition of Saint-Louis," was mother of two children, who suffered for her happiness. Absolutely controlled by her husband, rejected and sacrificed by her family from the time of her marriage, Madame Vinet scarcely dared in the Rogrons'

salon to speak in defence of Pierrette Lorrain, their victim.

[Pierrette.]

VINET (Olivier), son of the preceding couple, born in 1816. A magistrate, like his father, began his career as deputy king's attorney at Arcis, advanced to the position of king's attorney in the town of Mantes, and, still further, was deputy king's attorney, but now in Paris. Supported by his father's influence, and being noted for his independent raillery, Vinet was dreaded everywhere. Among the people of Arcis, he mixed only with the little coterie of government officials, composed of Goulard, Michu, and Marest. [The Member for Arcis.] Being a rival of Maitre Fraisier in the affections of Madame Vatinelle of Mantes, he resolved to destroy this contestant in the race, and so thwarted his career. [Cousin Pons.] At the Thuilliers', on the rue Saint-Dominique-d'Enfer, Paris, where he displayed his usual impertinence, Vinet was an aspirant to the hand of Celeste Colleville, the heiress, who was eventually Madame Felix Ph.e.l.lion.

[The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

VIOLETTE, a husbandman, tenanted in the department of Aube, near Arcis, the Grouage farm, that was a part of the Gondreville estate, at the time that Peyrade and Corentin, in accordance with Fouche's instructions, undertook the singular abduction of Senator Malin de Gondreville. A miserly and deceitful man, this fellow Violette secretly aided with Malin de Gondreville and the powers of the day against Michu, the mysterious agent of the Cinq-Cygne, Hauteserre, and Simeuse families. [The Gondreville Mystery.]

VIOLETTE (Jean), a descendant of the preceding; hosier of Arcis in 1837; took in hand Pigoult's business, as successor to Phileas Beauvisage. In the electoral stir of 1839, Jean Violette seemed to be entirely at the disposal of the Gondreville faction. [The Member for Arcis.]

VIRGINIE, cook in the household of Cesar Birotteau, the perfumer, in 1818. [Cesar Birotteau.]

VIRGINIE, during the years 1835-1836, lady's maid, on the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins (at present rue des Mathurins), Paris, to Marie-Eugenie du Tillet, who was at that time engrossed in righting the imprudent conduct of Angelique-Marie de Vandenesse. [A Daughter of Eve.]

VIRGINIE, mistress of a Provencal soldier, who, at a later period, during Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt, was lost for some time in a desert, where he lived with a female panther. The jealous mistress was constantly threatening to stab her lover, and he dubbed her Mignonne, by antiphrasis; in memory of her he gave the same name to the panther.

[A Pa.s.sion in the Desert.]

VIRGINIE, a Parisian milliner, whose hats were praised, for a consideration, by Andoche Finot in his newspaper in 1821. [A Distinguished Provincial at Paris.]

VIRLAZ, a rich furrier of Leipsic, from whom his nephew, Frederic Brunner, inherited, about the middle of Louis-Philippe's reign. In his lifetime this Jew, head of the house of Virlaz & Co., had the fortune of Madame Brunner (first of the name) placed in the coffers of the Al-Sartchild bank. [Cousin Pons.]

VISSARD (Marquis du), in memory of his younger brother, the Chevalier Rifoel du Vissard, was created a peer of France by Louis XVIII., who entered him as a lieutenant in the Maison-Rouge, and made him a prefect upon the dissolution of the Maison-Rouge. [The Seamy Side of History.]

VISSARD (Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph Rifoel, Chevalier du), n.o.ble and headstrong gentleman; played an important part, after 1789, in the various anti-revolutionary insurrections of western France. In December, 1799, he was at the Vivetiere, and his impulsiveness was a contrast with the coolness of Marquis Alphonse de Montauran, also called Le Gars. [The Chouans.] He took part in the battle of Quiberon, and, in company with Boislaurier, took a leading part in the uprising of the Chauffeurs of Mortagne. Several circ.u.mstances, indeed, helped to strengthen his Royalist inclinations. Fergus found in Henriette Bryond des Tours-Minieres (Contenson, the spy), who secretly betrayed him. Like his accomplices, Rifoel du Vissard was executed in 1809. At times during his anti-revolutionary campaigns he a.s.sumed the name of Pierrot. [The Seamy Side of History.]

VISSEMBOURG (Duc de), son of Marechal Vernon; brother of the Prince de Chiavari; between 1835 and 1840 presided over a horticultural society, the vice-president of which was Fabien du Ronceret. [Beatrix.]

VITAGLIANI, tenor at the Argentina, Rome, when Zambinella took the soprano parts in 1758. Vitagliani was acquainted with J.-E. Sarrasine.

[Sarrasine.]

VITAL, born about 1810, a Parisian hatter, who succeeded Finot Pere, whose store on rue du Coq was very popular about 1845, and deservedly so, apparently. He amused J.-J. Bixiou and Leon de Lora by his ridiculous pretensions. They wished him to supply S.-P. Gazonal with a hat, and he proposed to sell him a hat like that of Lousteau. On this occasion Vital showed them the head-covering that he had devised for Claude Vignon, who was undecided in politics. Vital really pretended to make each hat according to the personality of the person ordering it. He praised the Prince de Bethune's hat and dreamed of the time when high hats would go out of style. [The Unconscious Humorists.]

VITAL (Madame), wife of the preceding, believed in her husband's genius and greatness. She was in the store when the hatter received a call from Bixiou, Lora and Gazonal. [The Unconscious Humorists.]

VITEL, born in 1776, Paris justice of the peace in 1845, an acquaintance of Doctor Poulain; was succeeded by Maitre Fraisier, a protege of the Camusot de Marvilles. [Cousin Pons.]

VITELOT, partner of Sonet, the marble-cutter; designed tombstones. He failed to obtain the contract for monuments to Marsay, the minister, and to Keller, the officer. It was given to Stidmann. The plans made by Vitelot having been retouched, were submitted to Wilhelm Schmucke for the grave of Sylvain Pons, who was buried in Pere-Lachaise.

[Cousin Pons.]

VITELOT (Madame), wife of the preceding, severely rebuked an agent of the firm for bringing in as a customer W. Schmucke, heir-contestant to the Pons property. [Cousin Pons.]

VIVET (Madeleine), servant to the Camusot de Marvilles; during nearly twenty-five years was their feminine Maitre-Jacques. She tried in vain to gain Sylvain Pons for a husband, and thus to become their cousin.

Madeleine Vivet, having failed in her matrimonial attempts, took a dislike for Pons, and persecuted him in a thousand ways. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. Cousin Pons.]

VOLFGANG,[*] cashier of Baron du Saint-Empire, F. de Nucingen, when this well-known Parisian banker of rue Saint-Lazare fell madly in love with Esther van Gobseck, and when Jacques Falleix's discomfiture occurred. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]

[*] He lived on rue de L'Arcade, near rue des Mathurins, Paris.

VORDAC (Marquise de), born in 1769, mistress of the rich Lord Dudley; she had by him a son, Henry. To legitimize this child she arranged a marriage with Marsay, a bankrupt old gentleman of tarnished reputation. He demanded payment of the interest on a hundred thousand francs as a reward for his marriage, and he died without having known his wife. The widow of Marsay became by her second marriage the well-known Marquise de Vordac. She neglected her duties as mother until late in life, and paid no attention to Henri de Marsay except to propose Miss Stevens as a suitable wife for him. [The Thirteen.]

VULPATO (La), n.o.ble Venetian, very frequently present in Fenice; about 1820 tried to interest Emilio Memmi, Prince of Varese, and Ma.s.similla Doni, d.u.c.h.esse Cataneo, in each other. [Ma.s.similla Doni.]

VYDER, anagram formed from d'Ervy, and one of the three names taken successively by Baron Hector Hulot d'Ervy, after deserting his wife.

He hid under this a.s.sumed name, when he became a pet.i.tion-writer in Paris, in the lower part of Pet.i.te Pologne, opposite rue de la Pepiniere, on Pa.s.sage du Soleil, to-day called Galerie de Cherbourg.

[Cousin Betty.]

W

WADMANN, an Englishman who owned, near the Marville estate in Normandie, a cottage and pasture-lands, which Madame Camusot de Marville talked of buying in 1845, when he was about to leave for England after twenty years' sojourn in France. [Cousin Pons.]

WAHLENFER or WALHENFER, wealthy German merchant who was murdered at the "Red Inn," near Andenach, Rhenish Prussia, October, 1799. The deed was done by Jean-Frederic Taillefer, then a surgeon and under-a.s.sistant-major in the French army, who suffered his comrade, Prosper Magnan, to be executed for the crime. Wahlenfer was a short, heavy-set man of rotund appearance, with frank and cordial manners. He was proprietor of a large pin-manufactory on the outskirts of Neuwied.

He was from Aix-la-Chapelle. Possibly Wahlenfer was an a.s.sumed name.

[The Red Inn.]

WALLENROD-TUSTALL-BARTENSTILD (Baron de), born in 1742, banker at Frankfort-on-the-Main; married in 1804, his only daughter, Bettina, to Charles Mignon de la Bastie, then only a lieutenant in the French army; died in 1814, following some disastrous speculations in cotton.

[Modeste Mignon.]

WATSCHILDINE, a London firm which did business with F. de Nucingen, the banker. On a dark autumn evening in 1821, the cashier, Rodolphe Castanier, was surprised by the satanic John Melmoth, while he was in the act of forging the name of his employer on some letters of credit drawn on the Watschildine establishment. [Melmoth Reconciled.]

WATTEBLED, grocer in Soulanges, Bourgogne, in 1823; father of the beautiful Madame Plissoud; was in middle cla.s.s society; kept a store on the first floor of a house belonging to Soudry, the mayor. [The Peasantry.]

WATTEVILLE (Baron de), Besancon gentleman of Swiss descent; last descendant of the well known Dom Jean de Watteville, the renegade Abbe of Baumes (1613-1703); small and very thin, rather deficient mentally; spent his life in a cabinet-maker's establishment "enjoying utter ignorance"; collected sh.e.l.ls and geological specimens; usually in good humor. After living in the Comte, "like a bug in a rug," in 1815 he married Clotilde-Louise de Rupt, who domineered over him completely.

As soon as her parents died, about 1819, he lived with her in the beautiful Rupt house on rue de la Prefecture, a piece of property which included a large garden extending along the rue du Perron. By his wife, the Baron de Watteville had one daughter, whom he loved devotedly, so much, indeed, that he lost all authority over her. M. de Watteville died in 1836, as a result of his fall into the lake on his estate of Rouxey, near Besancon. He was buried on an islet in this same lake, and his wife, making great show of her sorrow, had erected thereon a Gothic monument of marble like the one to Heloise and Abelard in the Pere-Lachaise. [Albert Savarus.]

WATTEVILLE (Baronne de), wife of the preceding, and after his death of Amedee de Soulas. (See Soulas, Madame A. de.)

WATTEVILLE (Rosalie de), only daughter of the preceding couple; born in 1816; a blonde with colorless cheeks and pale-blue eyes; slender and frail of body; resembled one of Albert Durer's saints. Reared under her mother's stern oversight, accustomed to the most rigid religious observances, kept in ignorance of all worldly matters, she entirely concealed uner her modesty of manner and retiring disposition her iron character, and her romantic audacity, so like that of her great-uncle, the Abbe de Watteville; and which was increased by the resoluteness and pride of the Rupt blood; although destined to marry Amedee de Soulas, "la fleur de pois"[*] of Besancon, she became enamoured of the attorney, Albert Savaron de Savarus. By successfully carrying out her schemes she separated him from the d.u.c.h.esse d'Argaiolo, although these two were mutually in love--a separation which caused Savarus great despair. He never knew of Rosalie's affection for him, and withdrew to the Grande Chartreuse. Mademoiselle de Watteville then lived for some time in Paris with her mother, who was then the wife of Amedee de Soulas. She tried to see the d.u.c.h.esse d'Argaiolo, who, believing Savarus faithless, had given her hand to the Duc de Rhetore. In February, 1838, on meeting her at a charity ball given for the benefit of the former civil pensioners, Rosalie made an appointment with her for the Opera ball, when she told her former rival the secret of her manoeuvres against Madame de Rhetore, and of her conduct as regards the attorney. Mademoiselle de Watteville retired finally to Rouxey--a place which she left, only to take a trip in 1841 on an unknown mission, from which she came back seriously crippled, having lost an arm and a leg in a boiler explosion on a steamboat. Henceforth she devoted her life to the exercises of religion, and left her retreat no more. [Albert Savarus.]

[*] t.i.tle of one of the first editions of "A Marriage Settlement."

WERBRUST, a.s.sociated with Palma, Parisian discounter on rue Saint- Denis and rue Saint-Martin, during the Restoration; knew the story of the glory and decay of Cesar Birotteau, the perfumer, who was mayor of the second district; was the friend of the banker, Jean-Baptiste d'Aldrigger, at whose burial he was present; carried on business with the Baron de Nucingen, making a shrewd speculation when the latter settled for the third time with his creditors in 1836. [Cesar Birotteau. The Firm of Nucingen.]

WERCHAUFFEN (Baron de), one of Schirmer's aliases. (See Schirmer.)

WIERZCHOWNIA (Adam de), Polish gentleman, who, after the last division of Poland, found refuge in Sweden, where he sought consolation in the study of chemistry, a study for which he had always felt a strong liking. Poverty compelled him to give up his study, and he joined the French army. In 1809, while on the way to Douai, he was quartered for one night with M. Balthazar Claes. During a conversation with his host, he explained to him his ideas on the subject of "ident.i.ty of matter" and the absolute, thus bringing misfortune on a whole family, for from that moment Balthazar Claes devoted time and money to this quest of the absolute. Adam de Wierzchownia, while dying at Dresden, in 1812, of a wound received during the last wars, wrote a final letter to Balthazar Claes, informing him of the different thoughts relative to the search in question, which had been in his mind since their first meeting. By this writing, he increased the misfortunes of the Claes family. Adam de Wierzchownia had an angular wasted countenance, large head which was bald, eyes like tongues of fire, a large mustache. His calmness of manner frightened Madame Balthazar Claes.[*] [The Quest of the Absolute.]

[*] Under the t.i.tle of _Gold, or the Dream of a Savant_, there is a play by Bayard and Bieville, which presents the misfortunes of the Claes. This was given at the Gymnase, November 11, 1837, by M.

Bouffe and Madame E. Sauvage, both of whom are still alive.

WILLEMSENS (Marie-Augusta). (See Brandon,[*] Comtesse de.)