第83章 G(16)

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.]