Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  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 godson, 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 Canalis. 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 Grenoble — a place which was completely changed by Doctor Benassis. 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 Grenoble, 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 assassination of Sieur Ragoulleau; condemned by the Court of Assizes 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 passed 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 Duchesse 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 attitude 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, Benassis 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. The Vendetta. The Gondreville Mystery. Colonel Chabert. Domestic Peace. The Country Doctor.

  MURET gave information about Jean-Joachim Goriot, his predecessor in the manufacture of “pates alimentaires.” Father Goriot.

  MUSSON, well-known hoaxer in the early part of the nineteenth century. The policeman, Peyrad
e, imitated his craftiness in manner and disguise twenty years later, while acting as an English nabob keeping Suzanne Gaillard. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life.

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  NANON, called Nanon the Great from her height (6 ft. 4 in.); born about 1769. First she tended cows on a farm that she was forced to leave after a fire; turned away on every side, because of her appearance, which was repulsive, she became, about 1791, at the age of twenty-two, a member of Felix Grandet’s household at Saumur, where she remained the rest of her life. She always showed gratitude to her master for having taken her in. Brave, devoted and serious-minded, the only servant of the miser, she received as wages for very hard service only sixty francs a year. However, the accumulations of even so paltry an income allowed her, in 1819, to make a life investment of four thousand francs with Monsieur Cruchot. Nanon had also an annuity of twelve hundred francs from Madame de Bonfons, lived near the daughter of her former master, who was dead, and, about 1827, being almost sixty years of age, married Antoine Cornoiller. With her husband, she continued her work of devoted service to Eugenie de Bonfons. Eugenie Grandet.

  NAPOLITAS, in 1830, secretary of Bibi-Lupin, chief of the secret police. Prison spy at the Conciergerie, he played the part of a son in a family accused of forgery, in order to observe closely Jacques Collin, who pretended to be Carlos Herrera. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life.

  NARZICOF (Princess), a Russian; had left to the merchant Fritot, according to his own account, as payment for supplies, the carriage in which Mistress Noswell, wrapped in the shawl called Selim, returned to the Hotel Lawson. Gaudissart II.

  NATHAN (Raoul), son of a Jew pawn-broker, who died in bankruptcy a short while after marrying a Catholic, was for twenty-five years (1820-45) one of the best known writers in Paris. Raoul Nathan touched upon many branches: the journal, romance, poetry and the stage. In 1821, Dauriat published for him an imaginative work which Lucien de Rubempre alternately praised and criticized. The harsh criticism was meant for the publisher only. Nathan then put on the stage the “Alcade dans l’Embarras” — a comedie called an “imbroglio” and presented at the Panorama-Dramatique. He signed himself simply “Raoul”; he had as collaborator Cursy — M. du Bruel. The play was a distinct success. About the same time, he supplanted Lousteau, lover of Florine, one of his leading actresses. About this time also Raoul was on terms of intimacy with Emile Blondet, who wrote him a letter dated from Aigues (Bourgogne) in which he described the Montcornets, and related their local difficulties. Raoul Nathan, a member of all the giddy and dissipated social circles, was with Giroudeau, Finot and Bixiou, a witness of Philip Bridau’s wedding to Madame J.-J. Rouget. He visited Florentine Cabirolle, when the Marests and Oscar Husson were there, and appeared often on the rue Saint-Georges, at the home of Esther van Gobseck, who was already much visited by Blondet, Bixiou and Lousteau. Raoul, at this time, was much occupied with the press, and made a great parade of Royalism. The accession of Louis Philippe did not diminish the extended circle of his relations. The Marquise d’Espard received him. It was at her house that he heard evil reports of Diane de Cadignan, greatly to the dissatisfaction of Daniel d’Arthez, also present. Marie de Vandenesse, just married, noticed Nathan, who was handsome by reason of an artistic, uncouth ugliness, and elegant irregularity of features, and Raoul resolved to make the most of the situation. Although turned Republican, he took very readily to the idea of winning a lady of the aristocracy. The conquest of Madame the Comtesse de Vandenesse would have revenged him for the contempt shown him by Lady Dudley, but, fallen into the hands of usurers, fascinated with Florine, living in pitiable style in a passage between the rue Basse-du-Rempart and the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, and being often detained on the rue Feydau, in the offices of a paper he had founded, Raoul failed in his scheme in connection with the countess, whom Vandenesse even succeeded in restoring to his own affections, by very skilful play with Florine. During the first years of Louis Philippe’s reign, Nathan presented a flaming and brilliant drama, the two collaborators in which were Monsieur and Madame Marie Gaston, whose names were indicated on the hand-bills by stars only. In his younger days he had had a play of his put on at the Odeon, a romantic work after the style of “Pinto,”* at a time when the classic was dominant, and the stage had been so greatly stirred up for three days that the play was prohibited. At another time he presented at the Theatre-Francais a great drama that fell “with all the honors of war, amid the roar of newspaper cannon.” In the winter of 1837-38, Vanda de Mergi read a new romance of Nathan’s, entitled “La Perle de Dol.” The memory of his social intrigues still haunted Nathan when he returned so reluctantly to M. de Clagny, who demanded it of him, a printed note, announcing the birth of Melchior de la Baudraye, as follows: “Madame la Baronne de la Baudraye is happily delivered of a child; M. Etienne Lousteau has the honor of announcing it to you.” Nathan sought the society of Madame de la Baudraye, who got from him, in the rue de Chartres-du-Roule, at the home of Beatrix de Rochefide, a certain story, to be arranged as a novel, related more or less after the style of Sainte-Beuve, concerning the Bohemians and their prince, Rusticoli de la Palferine. Raoul cultivated likewise the society of the Marquise de Rochefide, and, one evening of October, 1840, a proscenium box at the Varietes was the means of bringing together Canalis, Nathan and Beatrix. Received everywhere, perfectly at home in Marguerite Turquet’s boudoir, Raoul, as a member of a group composed of Bixiou, La Palferine and Maitre Cardot, heard Maitre Desroches tell how Cerizet made use of Antonia Chocardelle, to “get even” with Maxime de Trailles. Nathan afterwards married his misress, Florine, whose maiden name was really Sophie Grignault. Lost Illusions. A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. The Secrets of a Princess. A Daughter of Eve. Letters of Two Brides. The Seamy Side of History. The Muse of the Department. A Prince of Bohemia. A Man of Business, The Unconscious Humorists.

  * A drama by Nepomucene Lemercier; according to Labitte, “the first work of the renovated stage.”

  NATHAN,* (Madame Raoul), wife of the preceding, born Sophie Grignault, in 1805, in Bretagne. She was a perfect beauty, her foot alone left something to be desired. When very young she tried the double career of pleasure and the stage under the now famous name of Florine. The details of her early life are rather obscure: Madame Nathan, as supernumerary of the Gaite, had six lovers, before choosing Etienne Lousteau in that relation in 1821. She was at that time closely connected with Florentine Cabirolle, Claudine Chaffaroux, Coralie and Marie Godeschal. She had also a supporter in Matifat, the druggist, and lodged on the rue de Bondy, where, after a brilliant success at the Panorama-Dramatique, with Coralie and Bouffe, she received in maginficent style the diplomatists, Lucien de Rubempre, Camusot and others. Florine soon made an advantageous change in lover, home, theatre and protector; Nathan, whom she afterwards married, supplanted Lousteau about the middle of Louis Philippe’s reign. Her home was on rue Hauteville intead of rue de Bondy; and she had moved from the stage of the Panorama to that of the Gymnase. Having made an engagement at the theatre of the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, she met there her old rival, Coralie, against whom she organized a cabal; she was distinguished for the brilliancy of her costumes, and brought into her train of followers successively the opulent Dudley, Desire Minoret, M. des Grassins, the banker of Saumur, and M. du Rouvre; she even ruined the last two. Florine’s fortune rose during the monarchy of July. Her association with Nathan subserved, moreover, their mutual interests; the poet won respect for the actress, who knew moreover how to make herself formidable by her spirit of intrigue and the tartness of her sallies of wit. Who did not know her mansion on the rue Pigalle? Indeed, Madame Nathan was an intimate acquaintance of Coralie, Esther la Torpille, Claudine du Bruel, Euphrasie, Aquilina, Madame Theodore Gaillard, and Marie Godeschal; entertained Emile Blondet, Andoche Finot, Etienne Lousteau, Felicien Vernou, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac, Vignon, F. du Tillet, Nucingen, and Conti. Her apartments were embellished with the works of Bixiou, F. Souchet, Joseph Bridau, and
H. Schinner. Madame de Vandenesse, being somewhat enamored of Nathan, would have destroyed these joys and this splendor, without heeding the devotion of the writer’s mistress, on the one hand, or the interference of Vandenesse on the other. Florine, having entirely won back Nathan, made no delay in marrying him. The Muse of the Department. Lost Illusions. A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. The Government Clerks. A Bachelor’s Establishment. Ursule Mirouet. Eugenie Grandet. The Imaginary Mistress. A Prince of Bohemia. A Daughter of Eve. The Unconscious Humorists.

  * On the stage of the Boulevard du Temple Madame Nathan (Florine) henceforth made a salary of eight thousand francs.

  NAVARREINS (Duc de), born about 1767, son-in-law of the Prince de Cadignan, through his first marriage; father of Antoinette de Langeais, kinsman of Madame d’Espard, and cousin of Valentin; accused of “haughtiness.” He was patron of M. du Bruel — Cursy — on his entrance into the government service; had a lawsuit against the hospitals, which he entrusted to the care of Maitre Derville. He had Polydore de la Baudraye dignified to the appointment of collector, in consideration of his having released him from a debt contracted during the emigration; held a family council with the Grandlieus and Chaulieus when his daughter compromised her reputation by accepting an invitation to the house of Montriveau; was the patron of Victurnien d’Esgrignon; owned near Ville-aux-Fayes, in the sub-prefecture of Auxerrois, extensive estates, which were respected by Montcornet’s enemies, the Gaubertins, the Rigous, the Soudrys, the Fourchons, and the Tonsards; accompanied Madame d’Espard to the Opera ball, when Jacques Collin and Lucien de Rubempre mystified the marchioness; for five hundred thousand francs sold to the Graslins his estates and his Montegnac forest, near Limoges; was an acquaintance of Foedora through Valentin; was a visitor of the Princesse de Cadignan, after the death of their common father-in-law, of whom he had little to make boast, especially in matters of finance. The Duc de Navarrein’s mansion at Paris was on the rue du Bac. A Bachelor’s Establishment. The Thirteen. Jealousies of a Country Town. The Peasantry. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. The Country Parson. The Magic Skin. The Gondreville Mystery. The Secrets of a Princess. Cousin Betty.