第151章 R(1)

RABOUILLEUSE (La), name assumed by Flore Brazier, who became in turn Madame Jean-Jacques Rouget and Madame Philippe Bridau. (See this last name.)

RABOURDIN (Xavier), born in 1784; his father was unknown to him. His mother, a beautiful and fastidious woman, who lived in luxury, left him a penniless orphan of sixteen. At this time he left the Lycee Napoleon and became a super-numerary clerk in the Treasury Department.

He was soon promoted, becoming second head clerk at twenty-two and head clerk at twenty-five. An unknown, but influential friend, was responsible for this progress, and also gave him an introduction into the home of M. Leprince, a wealthy widower, who had formerly been an auctioneer. Rabourdin met, loved and married this man's only daughter.

Beginning with this time, when his influential friend probably died, Rabourdin saw the end of his own rapid progress. Despite his faithful, intelligent efforts, he occupied at forty the same position. In 1824 the death of M. Flamet de la Billardiere left open the place of division chief. This office, to which Rabourdin had long aspired, was given to the incapable Baudoyer, who had been at the head of a bureau, through the influence of money and the Church. Disgusted, Rabourdin sent in his resignation. He had been responsible for a rather remarkable plan for executive and social reform, and this possibly contributed to his overthrow. During his career as a minister Rabourdin lived on rue Duphot. He had by his wife two children, Charles, born in 1815, and a daughter, born two years later. About 1830 Rabourdin paid a visit to the Bureau of Finances, where he saw once more his former pages, nephews of Antoine, who had retired from service by that time. From these he learned that Colleville and Baudoyer were tax-collectors in Paris. [The Government Clerks.] Under the Empire he was a guest at the evening receptions given by M.

Guillaume, the cloth-dealer of rue Saint-Denis. [At the Sign of the Cat and Racket.] Later he and his wife were invited to attend the famous ball tendered by Cesar Birotteau, December 17, 1818. [Cesar Birotteau.] In 1840, being still a widower, Rabourdin was one of the directors of a proposed railway. At this time he began to lodge in a house on the Place de la Madeleine, which had been recently bought by the Thuilliers, whom he had known in the Bureau of Finance. [The Middle Classes.]

RABOURDIN (Madame), born Celestine Leprince, in 1796; beautiful, tall and of good figure; reared by an artistic mother; a painter and a good musician; spoke many tongues and even had some knowledge of science.

She was married when very young through the instrumentality of her father, who was then a widower. Her reception-rooms were not open to Jean-Jacques Bixiou, but she was frequently visited by the poet Canalis, the painter Schinner, Doctor Bianchon, who was especially fond of her company; Lucien de Rubempre, Octave de Camps, the Comte de Granville, the Vicomte de Fontaine, F. du Bruel, Andoche Finot, Derville, Chatelet, then deputy; Ferdinand du Tillet, Paul de Mannerville, and the Vicomte de Portenduere. A rival, Madame Colleville, had dubbed Madame Rabourdin "The Celimene of rue Duphot."

Having been over-indulged by her mother, Celestine Leprince thought herself entitled to a man of high rank. Consequently, although M.

Rabourdin pleased her, she hesitated at first about marrying him, as she did not consider him of high enough station. This did not prevent her loving him sincerely. Although she was very extravagant, she remained always strictly faithful to him. By listening to the demands of Chardin des Lupeaulx, secretary-general in the Department of Finance, who was in love with her, she might have obtained for her husband the position of division chief. Madame Rabourdin's reception days were Wednesdays and Fridays. She died in 1840. [The Commission in Lunacy. The Government Clerks.]

RABOURDIN (Charles), law-student, son of the preceding couple, born in 1815, lived from 1836 to 1838 in a house on rue Corneille, Paris.

There he became acquainted with Z. Marcas, helped him in his distress, attended him on his death-bed, and, with Justi, a medical student, as his only companion, followed the body of this great, but unknown man to the beggar's grave in Montparnasse cemetery. After having told some friends the short, but pitiful story of Z. Marcas, Charles Rabourdin, following the advice of the deceased, left the country, and sailed from Havre for the Malayan islands; for he had not been able to gain a foothold in France. [Z. Marcas.]

RACQUETS (Des). (See Raquets, des.)

RAGON born about 1748; a perfumer on rue Saint-Honore, between Saint-Roche and rue des Frondeurs, Paris, towards the close of the eighteenth century; small man, hardly five feet tall, with a face like a nut-cracker, self-important and known for his gallantry. He was succeeded in his business, the "Reine des Roses," by his chief clerk, Cesar Birotteau, after the eighteenth Brumaire. As a former perfumer to Her Majesty Queen Marie-Antoinette, M. Ragon always showed Royalist zeal, and, under the Republic, the Vendeans used him to communicate between the princes and the Royalist committee of Paris. He received at that time the Abbe de Marolles, to whom he pointed out and revealed the person of Louis XVI.'s executioner. In 1818, being a loser in the Nucingen speculation in Wortschin mining stock, Ragon lived with his wife in an apartment on rue du Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice. [Cesar Birotteau. An Episode under the Terror.]

RAGON (Madame), born Popinot; sister of Judge Popinot, wife of the preceding, being very nearly the same age as her husband, was in 1818 "a tall slender woman of wrinkled face, sharp nose, thin lips, and the artificial manner of a marchioness of the old line." [Cesar Birotteau.]