Works of Honore De Balzac, page 1573
GRANDLIEU (Duchesse Ferdinand de), of Portuguese descent, born Ajuda and of the elder branch of that house connected with the Braganzas. Wife of Ferdinand de Grandlieu, and mother of several daughters. Of sedentary habits, proud, pious, good-hearted and beautiful, she wielded in Paris during the Restoration a sort of supremacy over the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The second and the next to the youngest of her children gave her much anxiety. Combating the hostility of those about her she welcomed Rubempre, the suitor of her daughter Clotilde-Frederique — 1829-30. The unfortunate results of the marriage of her other daughter Sabine, Baronne Calyste du Guenic, occupied Mme. de Grandlieu’s attention in 1837, and she succeeded in reconciling the young couple, with the assistance of Abbe Brossette, Maxime de Trailles, and La Palferine. Her religious scruples had made her halt a moment; but they fell like her political fidelity, and, with Mmes. d’Espard, de Listomere and des Touches, she tacitly recognized the bourgeois royalty, a few years after a new reign began, and re-opened the doors of her salon. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. Beatrix. A Daughter of Eve.
GRANDLIEU (Mademoiselle de), eldest daughter of the Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu, took the veil in 1822. A Bachelor’s Establishment. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life.
GRANDLIEU (Clotilde-Frederique de), born in 1802; second daughter of the Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu; a long, flat creature, the caricature of her mother. She had no consent save that of her mother when she fell in love with and wished to marry the ambitious Lucien de Rubempre in the spring of 1830. She saw him for the last time on the road to Italy in the forest of Fontainbleu near Bouron and under very painful circumstances the young man was arrested before her very eyes. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life.
GRANDLIEU (Josephine de). (See Ajuda-Pinto, Marquise Miguel d’.)
GRANDLIEU (Sabine de). (See Guenic, Baronne Calyste du.)
GRANDLIEU (Marie-Athenais de). (See Grandlieu, Vicomtesse Juste de.)
GRANDLIEU (Vicomtesse de), sister of Comte de Born; descended more directly than the duke from the countess of the seventeenth century. From 1813, the time of her husband’s death, the head of the younger Grandlieu house whose device was “Grands faits, grand lieu.” Mother of Camille and of Juste de Grandlieu, and the mother-in-law of Ernest de Restaud. Returned to France with Louis XVIII. At first she lived on royal bounty, but afterwards regained a considerable portion of her property through the efforts of Maitre Derville, about the beginning of the Restoration. She was very grateful to the lawyer, who also took her part against the Legion of Honor, was admitted to her confidential circle and told her the secrets of the Restaud household, one evening in the winter of 1830 when Ernest de Restaud, son of the Comtesse Anastasie, was paying court to Camille whom he finally married. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. Colonel Chabert. Gobseck.
GRANDLIEU (Camille de). (See Restaud, Comtesse Ernest de.)
GRANDLIEU (Vicomte Juste de), son of Vicomtesse de Grandlieu; brother of Comtesse Ernest de Restaud; cousin and afterwards husband of Marie-Athenais de Grandlieu, combining by this marriage the fortunes of the two houses of Grandlieu and obtaining the title of duke. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. Gobseck.
GRANDLIEU (Vicomtesse Juste de), born about 1820, Marie-Athenais de Grandlieu; last daughter of Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu; married to her cousin, the Vicomte Juste de Grandlieu. She received at Paris in the first days of the July government, a young married woman like herself, Mme. Felix de Vandenesse, then in the midst of a flirtation with Raoul Nathan. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. Gobseck. A Daughter of Eve.
GRANET, deputy-mayor of the second arrondissement of Paris, in 1818, under La Billardiere. With his homely wife he was invited to the Birotteau ball. Cesar Birotteau.
GRANET, one of the leading men of Besancon, under Louis Philippe. In gratitude for a favor done him by Albert Savarus he nominated the latter for deputy. Albert Savarus.
GRANSON (Madame), poor widow of a lieutenant-colonel of artillery killed at Jena, by whom she had a son, Athanase. From 1816 she lived at No. 8 rue du Bercail in Alencon, where the benevolence of a distant relative, Mme. du Bousquier, put in her charge the treasury of a maternal society against infanticide, and brought her into contact, under peculiar circumstances, with the woman who afterwards became Mme. Theodore Gaillard. Jealousies of a Country Town.
GRANSON (Athanase), son of the preceding; born in 1793; subordinate in the mayor’s office at Alencon in charge of registry. A sort of poet, liberal in politics and filled with ambition; weary of poverty and overflowing with grandiose sentiments. In 1816 he loved, with a passion that his commonsense combated, Mme. du Bousquier, then Mlle. Cormon, his senior by more than seventeen years. In 1816 the marriage dreaded by him took place. He could not brook the blow and drowned himself in the Sarthe. He was mourned only by his mother and Suzanne du Val-Noble. Jealousies of a Country Town. Nevertheless, eight years after it was said of him: “The Athanase Gransons must die, withered up, like the grains which fall on barren rock.” The Government Clerks.
GRANVILLE (Comte de), had a defective civil status, the orthography of the name varying frequently through the insertion of the letter “d” between the “n” and “v.” In 1805 at an advanced age he lived at Bayeux, where he was probably born. His father was a president of the Norman Parliament. At Bayeux the Comte married his son to the wealthy Angelique Bontems. A Second Home.
GRANVILLE (Vicomte de), son of Comte de Granville, and comte upon his father’s death; born about 1779; a magistrate through family tradition. Under the guidance of Cambaceres he passed through all the administrative and judicial grades. He studied with Maitre Bordin, defended Michu in the trial resulting from the “Gondreville Mystery,” and learned officially and officiously of one of its results a short time after his marriage with a young girl of Bayeux, a rich heiress and the acquirer of extensive public lands. Paris was generally the theatre for the brilliant career of Maitre Granville who, during the Empire, left the Augustin quai where he had lived to take up his abode with his wife on the ground-floor of a mansion in the Marais, between rue Vielle-du-Temple and rue Nueve-Saint-Francois. He became successively advocate-general at the court of the Seine, and president of one of its chambers. At this time a domestic drama was being enacted in his life. Hampered in his open and broad-minded nature by the bigotry of Mme. de Granville, he sought domestic happiness outside his home, though he already had a family of four children. He had met Caroline Crochard on rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean. He installed her on rue Taitbout and found in this relation, though it was of brief duration, the happiness vainly sought in his proper home. Granville screened this fleeting joy under the name of Roger. A daughter Eugenie, and a son Charles, were born of this adulterous union which was ended by the desertion of Mlle. Crochard and the misconduct of Charles. Until the death of Mme. Crochard, the mother of Caroline, Granville was able to keep up appearances before his wife. Thus it happened that he accompanied her to the country, Seine-et-Oise, when he assisted M. d’Albon and M. de Sucy. The remainder of Granville’s life, after his wife and his mistress left him, was passed in comparative solitude in the society of intimate friends like Octave de Bauvan and Serizy. Hard work and honors partially consoled him. His request as attorney-general caused the reinstatement of Cesar Birotteau, one of the tenants at No. 397 rue Saint-Honore. He and his wife had been invited to the famous ball given by Birotteau more than three years previously. As attorney-general of the Court of Cassation, Granville secretly protected Rubempre during the poet’s famous trial, thus drawing upon himself the powerful affection of Jacques Collin, counterbalanced by the enmity of Amelie Camusot. The Revolution of July upheld Granville’s high rank. He was peer of France under the new regime, owning and occupying a small mansion on rue Saint-Lazare, or traveling in Italy. At this time he was one of Dr. Bianchon’s patients. The Gondreville Mystery. A Second Home. Farewell. Cesar Birotteau. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. A Daughter of Eve. Cousin Pons.
GRANVILLE (Comtesse Angelique de), wife of preceding, and daughter of Bontems, a farmer and sort of Jacobin whom the Revolution enriched through the purchase of evacuated property at low prices. She was born at Bayeux in 1787, and received from her mother a very bigoted education. At the beginning of the Empire she married the son of one of the neighbors of the family, then Vicomte and later Comte de Granville; and, under the influence of Abbe Fontanon, she maintained at Paris the manners and customs of an extreme devotee. She thus evoked the infidelity of her husband who had begun by simply neglecting her. Of her four children she retained charge of the education of her two daughters. She broke off entirely from her husband when she discovered the existence of her rival, Mlle. de Bellefeuille — Caroline Crochard — and returned to Bayeux to end her days, remaining to the last the austere, stingy sanctified creature who had formerly been scandalized by the openness of the affair of Montriveau and Mme. de Langeais. She died in 1822. A Second Home. The Thirteen. A Daughter of Eve.
GRANVILLE (Vicomte de), elder son of the preceding. Was reared by his father. In 1828 he was deputy-attorney at Limoges, where he afterwards became advocate-general. He fell in love with Veronique Graslin, but incurred her secret disfavor by his proceedings against the assassin Tascheron. The vicomte had a career almost identical with that of his father. In 1833 he was made first president at Orleans, and in 1844 attorney-general. Later near Limoges he came suddenly upon a scene which moved him deeply: the public confession of Veronique Graslin. The vicomte had unknowingly been the executioner of the chatelaine of Montegnac. A Second Home. A Daughter of Eve. The Country Parson.
GRANVILLE (Baron Eugene de), younger brother of the foregoing. King’s attorney at Paris from May, 1830. Three years later he still held this office, when he informed his father of the arrest of a thief named Charles Crochard, who was the count’s natural son. Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life. A Second Home.
GRANVILLE (Marie-Angelique de). (See Vandenesse, Comtesse Felix de.)
GRANVILLE (Marie-Eugenie de). (See Tillet, Madame Ferdinand du.)
GRASLIN (Pierre), born in 1775. An Auvergnat, compatriot and friend of Sauviat, whose daughter Veronique he married in 1822. He began as a bank-clerk with Grosstete & Perret, a first-class firm of the town. A man of business and a hard worker he became successor to his employers. His fortune, increased by lucky speculations with Brezac, enabled him to buy one of the finest places in the chief city of Haute-Vienne. But he was not able to win his wife’s heart. His physical unattractiveness, added to by his carelessness and grinding avarice, were complicated by a domestic tyranny which soon showed itself. Thus it was that he was only the legal father of a son named Francis, but he was ignorant of this fact, for, in the capacity of juror in the Court of Assizes dealing with the fate of Tascheron, the real father of the child, he urged but in vain the acquittal of the prisoner. Two years after the boy’s birth and the execution of the mother’s lover, in April, 1831, Pierre Graslin died of weakness and grief. The July Revolution suddenly breaking forth had shaken his financial standing, which was regained only with an effort. It was at the time when he had brought Montegnac from the Navarreins. The Country Parson.
GRASLIN (Madame Pierre), wife of preceding; born Veronique Sauviat, at Limoges in May, 1802; beautiful in spite of traces of small-pox; had had the spoiled though simple childhood of an only daughter. When twenty she married Pierre Graslin. Soon after marriage her ingenuous nature, romantic and refined, suffered in secret from the harsh tyranny of the man whose name she bore. Veronique, however, held aloof from the gallants who frequented her salon, especially the Vicomte de Granville. She had become the secret mistress of J.-F. Tascheron, a porcelain worker. She was on the point of eloping with him when a crime committed by him was discovered. Mme. Graslin suffered the most poignant anguish, giving birth to the child of the condemned man at the very moment when the father was led to execution. She inflicted upon herself the bitterest flagellations. She could devote herself more freely to penance after her husband’s death, which occurred two years later. She left Limoges for Montegnac, where she made herself truly famous by charitable works on a huge scale. The sudden return of the sister of her lover dealt her the final blow. Still she had energy enough to bring about the union of Denise Tascheron and Gregoire Gerard, gave her son into their keeping, left important bequests destined to keep alive her memory, and died during the summer of 1844 after confessing in public in the presence of Bianchon, Dutheil, Granville, Mme. Sauviat and Bonnet who were all seized with admiration and tenderness for her. The Country Parson.
GRASLIN (Francis), born at Limoges in August, 1829. Only child of Veronique Graslin, legal son of Pierre Graslin, but natural son of J.-F. Tascheron. He lost his legal father two years after his birth, and his mother thirteen years later. His tutor M. Ruffin, his maternal grandmother Mme. Sauviat, and above all the Gregoire Gerards watched over his boyhood at Montegnac. The Country Parson.
GRASSET, bailiff and successor of Louchard. On the demand of Lisbeth Fischer and by Rivet’s advice, in 1838, he arrested W. Steinbock in Paris and took him to Clichy prison. Cousin Betty.
GRASSINS (Des), ex-quartermaster of the Guard, seriously wounded at Austerlitz, pensioned and decorated. Time of Louis XVIII. he became the richest banker in Saumur, which he left for Paris where he located with the purpose of settling the unfortunate affairs of the suicide, Guillaume Grandet and where he was later made a deputy. Although the father of a family he conceived a passion for Florine, a pretty actress of the Theatre du Madame,* to the havoc of his fortune. Eugenie Grandet.
* The name of this theatre was changed, in 1830, to Gymnase-Dramatique.
GRASSINS (Madame des), born about 1780; wife of foregoing, giving him two children; spent most of her life at Saumur. Her husband’s position and sundry physical charms which she was able to preserve till nearly her fortieth year enabled her to shine somewhat in society. With the Cruchots she often visited the Grandets, and, like the family of the President de Bonfons, she dreamed of mating Eugenie with her son Adolphe. The dissipated life of her husband at Paris and the combination of the Cruchots upset her plans. Nor was she able to do much for her daughter. However, deprived of much of her property and making the best of things, Mme. des Grassins continued unaided the management of the bank at Saumur. Eugenie Grandet.
GRASSINS (Adolphe des), born in 1797, son of M. and Mme. des Grassins; studied law at Paris where he lived in a lavish way. A caller at the Nucingens where he met Charles Grandet. Returned to Saumur in 1819 and vainly courted Eugenie Grandet. Finally he returned to Paris and rejoined his father whose wild life he imitated. Eugenie Grandet.
GRASSOU (Pierre), born at Fougeres, Brittany, in 1795. Son of a Vendean peasant and militant Royalist. Removing at an early age to Paris he began as clerk to a paint-dealer who was from Mayenne and a distant relative of the Orgemonts. A mistaken idea led him toward art. His Breton stubbornness led him successively to the studios of Servin, Schinner and Sommervieux. He afterwards studied, but fruitlessly, the works of Granet and Drolling; then he completed his art studies with Duval-Lecamus. Grassou profited nothing by his work with these masters, nor did his acquaintance with Lora or Joseph Bridau assist him. Though he could understand and admire he lacked the creative faculty and the skill in execution. For this reason Grassou, usually called Fougeres by his comrades, obtained their warm support and succeeded in getting admission into the Salon of 1829, for his “Toilet of a Condemned Chouan,” a very mediocre painting palpably along the lines of Gerard Dow. The work obtained for him from Charles X. the cross of the Legion of Honor. At last his canvasses found purchasers. Elie Magus gave him an order for pictures after the Flemish school, which he sold to Vervelle as works of Dow or Teniers. At that time Grassou lived at No. 2 rue de Navarin. He became the son-in-law of Vervelle, in 1832, marrying Virginie Vervelle, the heiress of the family, who brought him a dowry of one hundred thousand francs, as well as country and city property. His determined mediocrity opened the doors of the Academy to him and made him an officer in the Legion of Honor in 1830, and major of a battalion in the National Guard after the riots of May 12. He was adored by the middle classes, becoming their accredited artist. Painted portraits of all the members of the Crevel and Thuillier families, and also of the director of the theatre who preceded Gaudissart. Left many frightful and ridiculous daubs, one of which found its way into Topinard’s humble home. Pierre Grassou. A Bachelor’s Establishment. Cousin Betty. The Middle Classes. Cousin Pons.
GRASSOU (Madame Pierre), born Virginie Vervelle; red-haired and homely; sole heiress of wealthy dealers in cork, on rue Boucherat. Wife of the preceding whom she married in Paris in 1832. There is a portrait of her painted in this same year before her marriage, which at first was a colorless study by Grassou, but was dexterously retouched by Joseph Bridau. Pierre Grassou.
GRAVELOT brothers, lumber-merchants of Paris, who purchased in 1823 the forests of Aigues, the Burgundy estate of General de Montcornet. The Peasantry.
GRAVIER, paymaster-general of the army during the first Empire, and interested at that time in large Spanish affairs with certain commanding officers. Upon the return of the Bourbons he purchased at twenty thousand francs of La Baudraye the office of tax-receiver for Sancerres, which office he still held about 1836. With the Abbe Duret and others he frequented the home of Mme. Dinah de la Baudraye. He was little, fat and common. His court made little way with the baroness, despite his talent and his worldly-wise ways of a bachelor. He sang ballads, told stories, and displayed pseudo-rare autographs. The Muse of the Department.
