Repertory of The Comedie Humaine Part 38

[*] Under the t.i.tle of "Lydie" a portion of the life of Peyrade's daughter was used in a play presented at the Theatre des Nations, now Theatre de Paris, but the author did not publish his play.

Ph.e.l.lION, born in 1780, husband of a La Perche woman, who bore him three children, two of whom were sons, Felix and Marie-Theodore, and one a daughter, who became Madame Burniol; clerk in the Ministry of Finance, Xavier Rabourdin's bureau, division of Flamet de la Billardiere, a position which he held until the close of 1824. He upheld Rabourdin, who, in turn, often defended him. While living on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques near the Sourds-Muets, he taught history, literature and elementary ethics to the students of Mesdemoiselles La Grave. The Revolution of July did not affect him; even his retirement from service did not cause him to give up the home in which he remained for at least thirty years. He bought for eighteen thousand francs a small house on Feuillantines lane, now rue des Feuillantines, which he occupied, after he had improved it, in a serious Bourgeois manner. Ph.e.l.lion was a major in the National Guard.

For the most part he still had the same friends, meeting and visiting frequently Baudoyer, Dutocq, Fleury, G.o.dard, Laudigeois, Rabourdin, Madame Poiret the elder, and especially the Colleville, Thuillier and Minard families. His leisure time was occupied with politics and art.

At the Odeon he was on a committee of cla.s.sical reading. His political influence and vote were sought by Theodose de la Peyrade in the interest of Jerome Thuillier's candidacy for the General Council; for Ph.e.l.lion favored another candidate, Horace Bianchon, relative of the highly-honored J.-J. Popinot. [The Government Clerks. The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

Ph.e.l.lION (Madame), wife of the preceding; belonged to a family who lived in a western province. Her family being so large that the income of more than nine thousand francs, pension and rentals, was insufficient, she continued, under Louis Philippe, to give lessons in harmony to Mesdemoiselles La Grave, as in the Restoration, with the strictness observed in her every-day life.

Ph.e.l.lION (Felix), eldest son of the preceding couple, born in 1817; professor of mathematics in a Royal college at Paris, then a member of the Academy of Sciences, and chevalier of the Legion of Honor. By his remarkable works and his discovery of a star, he was thus made famous before he was twenty-five years old, and married, after this fame had come to him, Celeste-Louise-Caroline-Brigette Colleville, the sister of one of his pupils and a woman for whom his love was so strong that he gave up Voltairism for Catholicism. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

Ph.e.l.lION (Madame Felix), wife of the preceding; born Celeste-Louise-Caroline-Brigitte Colleville. Although M. and Madame Colleville's daughter, she was reared almost entirely by the Thuilliers.

Indeed, M. L.-J. Thuillier, who had been one of Madame Flavie Colleville's lovers, pa.s.sed for Celeste's father. M., Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier were all determined to give her their Christian names and to make up a large dowry for her. Olivier Vinet, G.o.deschal, Theodose de la Peyrade, all wished to marry Mademoiselle Colleville.

Nevertheless, although she was a devoted Christian, she loved Felix Ph.e.l.lion, the Voltairean, and married him after his conversion to Catholicism. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

Ph.e.l.lION (Marie-Theodore), Felix Ph.e.l.lion's younger brother, in 1840 pupil at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

PHILIPPART (Messieurs), owners of a porcelain manufactory at Limoges, in which was employed Jean-Francois Tascheron, the murderer of Pingret and Jeanne Mala.s.sis. [The Country Parson.]

PHILIPPE, employed in Madame Marie Gaston's family; formerly an attendant of the Princesse de Vauremont; later became the Duc Henri de Chaulieu's servant; finally entered Marie Gaston's household, where he was employed after his wife's decease. [Letters of Two Brides. The Member for Arcis.]

PICHARD (Mademoiselle), house-keeper of Niseron, vicar of Blangy in Bourgogne. Prior to 1789 she brought her niece, Mademoiselle a.r.s.ene Pichard, to his house. [The Peasantry.]

PICHARD (a.r.s.ene), niece of the preceding. (See Rigou, Madame Gregoire.) [The Peasantry.]

PICOT (Nepomucene), astronomer and mathematician, friend of Biot after 1807, author of a "Treatise on Differential Logarithms," and especially of a "Theory of Perpetual Motion," four volumes, quarto, with engravings, Paris, 1825; lived, in 1840, No. 9 rue du Val-de-Grace. Being very near-sighted and erratic, the prey of his thieving servant, Madame Lambert, his family thought that he needed a protector. Being instructor of Felix Ph.e.l.lion, with whom he took a trip to England, Picot made known his pupil's great ability, which the boy had modestly kept secret, at the home of the Thuilliers, Place de la Madeleine, before an audience composed of the Collevilles, Minards and Ph.e.l.lions. Celeste Colleville's future was thus determined. As Picot was decorated late in life, his marriage to a wealthy and eccentric Englishwoman of forty was correspondingly late. After pa.s.sing through a successful operation for a cancer, he returned "a new man," to the home of the Thuilliers. He was led through grat.i.tude to leave to the Felix Ph.e.l.lions the wealth brought him by Madame Picot. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

PICQUOISEAU (Comtesse), widow of a colonel. She and Madame de Vaumerland boarded with one of Madame Vauquer's rivals, according to Madame de l'Ambermesnil. [Father Goriot.]

PIUS VII. (Barnabas Chiaramonti), lived from 1740 till 1823; pope.

Having been asked by letter in 1806, if a woman might go _decollete_ to the ball or to the theatre, without endangering her welfare, he answered his correspondent, Madame Angelique de Granville, in a manner befitting the gentle Fenelon. [A Second Home.]

PIEDEFER (Abraham), descendant of a middle cla.s.s Calvinist family of Sancerre, whose ancestors in the sixteenth century were skilled workmen, and subsequently woolen-drapers; failed in business during the reign of Louis XVI.; died about 1786, leaving two sons, Moise and Silas, in poverty. [The Muse of the Department.]

PIEDEFER (Moise), elder son of the preceding, profited by the Revolution in imitating his forefathers; tore down abbeys and churches; married the only daughter of a Convention member who had been guillotined, and by her had a child, Dinah, later Madame Milaud de la Baudraye; compromised his fortune by his agricultural speculations; died in 1819. [The Muse of the Department.]

PIEDEFER (Silas), son of Abraham Piedefer, and younger brother of the preceding; did not receive, as did Moise Piedefer, his part of the small paternal fortune; went to the Indies; died, about 1837, in New York, with a fortune of twelve hundred thousand francs. This money was inherited by his niece, Madame de la Baudraye, but was seized by her husband. [The Muse of the Department.]

PIEDEFER (Madame Moise), sister-in-law of the preceding, unaffable and excessively pious; pensioned by her son-in-law; lived successively in Sancerre and at Paris with her daughter, Madame de la Baudraye, whom she managed to separate from Etienne Lousteau. [The Muse of the Department.]

PIERQUIN, born about 1786, successor to his father as notary in Douai; distant cousin of the Molina-Claes of rue de Paris, through the Pierquins of Antwerp; self-interested and positive by nature; aspired to the hand of Marguerite Claes, eldest daughter of Balthazar, who afterwards became Madame Emmanuel de Solis; finally married Felicie, a younger sister of his first choice, in the second year of Charles X.'s reign. [The Quest of the Absolute.]

PIERQUIN (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Felicie Claes, found, as a young girl, a second mother in her elder sister, Marguerite. [The Quest of the Absolute.]

PIERQUIN, brother-in-law of the preceding; physician who attended the Claes at Douai. [The Quest of the Absolute.]

PIERROT, a.s.sumed name of Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph Rifoel, Chevalier du Vissard. [The Seamy Side of History.]

PIERROTIN, born in 1781. After having served in the cavalry, he left the service in 1815 to succeed his father as manager of a stage-line between Paris and Isle-Adam--an undertaking which, though only moderately successful, finally flourished. One morning in the autumn of 1822, he received as pa.s.sengers, at the Lion d'Argent, some people, either famous or of rising fame, the Comte Hugret de Serizy, Leon de Lora and Joseph Bridau, and took them to Presles, a place near Beaumont. Having become "coach-proprietor of Oise," in 1838 he married his daughter, Georgette, to Oscar Husson, a high officer, who, upon retiring, had been appointed to a collectors.h.i.+p in Beaumont, and who, like the Ca.n.a.lises and the Moreaus, had for a long time been one of Pierrotin's customers. [A Start in Life.]

PEITRO, Corsican servant of the Bartolomeo di Piombos, kinsmen of Madame Luigi Porta. [The Vendetta.]

PIGEAU, during the Restoration, at one time head-carrier and afterwards owner of a small house, which he had built with his own hands and on a very economical basis, at Nanterre (between Paris and Saint-Germain-in-Laye). [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]

PIGEAU (Madame), wife of the preceding; belonged to a family of wine merchants. After her husband's death, about the end of the Restoration, she inherited a little property, which caused her much unhappiness, in consequence of her avarice and distrust. Madame Pigeau was planning to remove from Nanterre to Saint-Germain with a view to living there on her annuity, when she was murdered with her servant and her dogs, by Theodore Calvi, in the winter of 1828-29. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]

PIGERON, of Auxerre, was murdered, it is said, by his wife; be that as it may, the autopsy, entrusted to Vermut, a druggist of Soulanges, in Bourgogne, proved the use of poison. [The Peasantry.]

PIGOULT, was head clerk in the office where Malin de Gondreville and Grevin studied pettifogging; was, about 1806, first justice of the peace at Arcis, and then president of the tribunal of the same town, at the time of the lawsuit in connection with the abduction of Malin, when he and Grevin were the prosecuting attorneys. [The Gondreville Mystery.] In the neighborhood of 1839, Pigoult was still living, having his home in the ward. At that time he made public recognition of Pantaleon, Marquis de Sallenauve, and supposed father of Charles Dorlange, Comte de Sallenauve, thus serving the interests, or rather the ambitions, of deputy. [The Member for Arcis.]

PIGOULT, son of the preceding, acquired the hat manufactory of Phileas Beauvisage, made a failure of the undertaking, and committed suicide; but appeared to have had a natural, though sudden, death. [The Member for Arcis.]

PIGOULT (Achille), son of the preceding and grandson of the next preceding, born in 1801. A man of unattractive personality, but of great intelligence, he supplanted Grevin, and, in 1819, was the busiest notary of Arcis. Gondreville's influence, and his intimacy with Beauvisage and Giguet, were the causes of his taking a prominent part in the political contests of that period; he opposed Simon Giguet's candidacy, and successfully supported the Comte de Sallenauve. The introduction of the Marquis Pantaleon de Sallenauve to old Pigoult was brought about through Achille Pigoult, and a.s.sured a triumph for the sculptor, Sallenauve-Dorlange. [The Member for Arcis.]

PILLERAULT (Claude-Joseph), a very upright Parisian trader, proprietor of the Cloche d'Or, a hardware establishment on the Quai de la Ferraille; made a modest fortune, and retired from business in 1814.

After losing, one after another, his wife, his son, and an adopted child, Pillerault devoted his life to his niece, Constance-Barbe-Josephine, of whom he was guardian and only relative.

Pillerault lived on the rue des Bourdonnais, in 1818, occupying a small apartment let to him by Camusot of the Cocon d'Or. During that period, Pillerault was remarkable for the intelligence, energy and courage displayed in connection with the unfortunate Birotteaus, who were falling into bad repute. He found out Claparon, and terrified Molineux, both enemies of the Birotteaus. Politics and the Cafe David, situated between the rue de la Monnaie and the rue Saint-Honore, consumed the leisure hours of Pillerault, who was a stoical and staunch Republican; he was exceedingly considerate of Madame Vaillant, his house-keeper, and treated Manuel, Foy, Perier, Lafayette and Courier as G.o.ds. [Cesar Birotteau.] Pillerault lived to a very advanced age. The Anselme Popinots, his grand-nephew and grand-niece, paid him a visit in 1844.

Poulain cured the old man of an illness when he was more than eighty years of age; he then owned an establishment (rue de Normandie, in the Marais), managed by the Cibots, and counting among its occupants the Chapoulot family, Schmucke and Sylvain Pons. [Cousin Pons.]

PILLERAULT (Constance-Barbe-Josephine). (See Birotteau, Madame Cesar.)

PIMENTEL (Marquis and Marquise de), enjoyed extended influence during the Restoration, not only with the society element of Paris, but especially in the department of Charente, where they spent their summers. They were reputed to be the wealthiest land-owners around Angouleme, were on intimate terms with their peers, the Rastignacs, together with whom they composed the s.h.i.+ning lights of the Bargeton circle. [Lost Illusions.]

PINAUD (Jacques), a "poor linen-merchant," the name under which M.

d'Orgemont, a wealthy broker of Fougeres, tried to conceal his ident.i.ty from the Chouans, in 1799, to avoid being a victim of their robbery. [The Chouans.]

PINGRET, uncle of Monsieur and Madame des Vauneaulx; a miser, who lived in an isolated house in the Faubourg Saint-Etienne, near Limoges; robbed and murdered, with his servant Jeanne Mala.s.sis, one night in March, 1829, by Jean-Francois Tascheron. [The Country Parson.]

PINSON, long a famous Parisian restaurant-keeper of the rue de l'Ancienne-Comedie, at whose establishment Theodose de la Peyrade, reduced, in the time of Louis Philippe, to the uttermost depths of poverty, dined, at the expense of Cerizet and Dutocq, at a cost of forty-seven francs; there also these three men concluded a compact to further their mutual interests. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

PIOMBO (Baron Bartolomeo di), born in 1738, a fellow-countryman and friend of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose mother he had protected during the Corsican troubles. After a terrible vendetta, carried out in Corsica against all the Portas except one, he had to leave his country, and went in great poverty to Paris with his family. Through the intercession of Lucien Bonaparte, he saw the First Consul (October, 1800) and obtained property, t.i.tles and employment. Piombo was not without grat.i.tude; the friend of Daru, Drouot, and Carnot, he gave evidence of devotion to his benefactor until the latter's death. The return of the Bourbons did not deprive him entirely of the resources that he had acquired. For his Corsican property Bartolomeo received of Madame Let.i.tia Bonaparte a sum which allowed him to purchase and occupy the Portenduere mansion. The marriage of his adored daughter, Ginevra, who, against her father's will, became the wife of the last of the Portas, was a source of vexation and grief to Piombo, that nothing could diminish. [The Vendetta.]

PIOMBO (Baronne Elisa di), born in 1745, wife of the preceding and mother of Madame Porta, was unable to obtain from Bartolomeo the pardon of Ginevra, whom he would not see after her marriage. [The Vendetta.]

PIOMBO (Ginevra di). (See Porta, Madame Luigi.)

PIOMBO (Gregorio di), brother of the preceding, and son of Bartolomeo and Elisa di Piombo; died in his infancy, a victim of the Portas, in the vendetta against the Piombos. [The Vendetta.]

PIQUETARD (Agathe). (See Hulot d'Ervy, Baronne Hector.)

PIQUOIZEAU, porter of Frederic de Nucingen, when Rodolphe Castanier was cas.h.i.+er at the baron's bank. [Melmoth Reconciled.]

PLAISIR, an "ill.u.s.trious hair-dresser" of Paris; in September, 1816, on the rue Taitbout, he waited on Caroline Crochard de Bellefeuille, at that time mistress of the Comte de Granville. [A Second Home.]

PLANCHETTE, an eminent professor of mechanics, consulted by Raphael de Valentin on the subject of the wonderful piece of s.h.a.green that the young man had in his possession; he took him to Spieghalter, the mechanician, and to Baron j.a.phet, the chemist, who tried in vain to stretch this skin. The failure of science in this effort was a cause of amazement to Planchette and j.a.phet. "They were like Christians come from the tomb without finding a G.o.d in heaven." Planchette was a tall, thin man, and a sort of poet always in deep contemplation. [The Magic Skin.]

PLANTIN, a Parisian publicist, was, in 1834, editor of a review, and aspired to the position of master of requests in the Council of State, when Blondet recommended him to Raoul Nathan, who was starting a great newspaper. [A Daughter of Eve.]

PLISSOUD, like Brunet, court-crier at Soulanges (Bourgogne), and afterwards Brunet's unfortunate compet.i.tor. He belonged, during the Restoration, to the "second" society of his village, witnessed his exclusion from the "first" by reason of the misconduct of his wife, who was born Euphemie Wattebled. Being a gambler and a drinker, Plissoud did not save any money; for, though he was appointed to many offices, they were all lacking in lucrativeness; he was insurance agent, as well as agent for a society that insured against the chances for conscription. Being an enemy of Soudry's party, Maitre Plissoud might readily have served, especially for pecuniary considerations, the interests of Montcornet, proprietor at Aigues. [The Peasantry.]