第158章 R(8)

ROGER, general, minister and director of personnel in the War Department in 1841. For thirty years a comrade of Baron Hulot. At this time he enlightened his friend on the administrative situation, which was seriously endangered at the time he asked for an appointment for his sub-chief, Marneffe. This advancement was not merited, but became possible through the dismissal of Coquet, the chief of bureau. [Cousin Betty.]

ROGRON, Provins tavern-keeper in the last half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. He was at first a carter, and married the daughter of M. Auffray, a Provins grocer, by his first wife. When his father-in-law died, Rogron bought his house from the widow for a song, retired from business and lived there with his wife.

He possessed about two thousand francs in rentals, obtained from twenty-seven pieces of land and the interest on the twenty thousand francs raised by the sale of his tavern. Having become in his old age a selfish, avaricious drunkard and shrewd as a Swiss tavern-keeper, he reared coarsely and without affection the two children, Sylvie and Jerome-Denis, whom he had by his wife. He died, in 1822, a widower.

[Pierrette.]

ROGRON (Madame), wife of the preceding; daughter, by his first wife, of M. Auffray, a Provins grocer; paternal aunt of Madame Lorrain, the mother of Pierrette; born in 1743; very homely; married at the age of sixteen; left her husband a widower. [Pierrette.]

ROGRON (Sylvie), elder child of the preceding; born between 1780 and 1785 at Provins; sent to the country to be nursed. When thirteen years old she was placed in a store on rue Saint-Denis, Paris. When twenty years old she was second clerk in a silk-store, the Ver Chinois, and towards the end of 1815, bought with her own savings and those of her brother the property of the Soeur de Famille, one of the best retail haberdasher's establishments and then kept by Madame Guenee. Sylvie and Jerome-Denis, partners in this establishment, retired to Provins in 1823. They lived there in their father's house, he having been dead several months, and received their cousin, the young Pierrette Lorrain, a fatherless and motherless child of a delicate nature, whom they treated harshly, and who died as a result of the brutal treatment of Sylvie, an envious spinster. This woman had been sought in marriage, on account of her dowry, by Colonel Gouraud, and she believed herself deserted by him for Pierrette. [Pierrette.]

ROGRON (Jerome-Denis), two years younger than his sister Sylvie, and like her sent to Paris by his father. When very young he entered the establishment of one of the leading haberdashers on rue Saint-Denis, the firm of Guepin at the Trois Quenouilles. He became first clerk there at eighteen. Finally associated with Sylvie in the haberdasher's establishment, the Soeur de Famille, he withdrew with her in 1823 to Provins. Jerome-Denis Rogron was ignorant and did not amount to much, but depended on his sister in everything, for Sylvie had "good sense and was sharp at a bargain." He allowed his sister to maltreat Pierrette Lorrain, and, when called before the Provins court as responsible for the young girl's death, was acquitted. In his little city, Rogron, through the influence of the attorney, Vinet, opposed the government of Charles X. After 1830 he was appointed receiver-general. The former Liberal, who was one of the masses, said that Louis Philippe would not be a real king until he could create noblemen. In 1828, although homely and unintelligent, he married the beautiful Bathilde de Chargeboeuf, who inspired in him an old man's foolish passion. [Pierrette.]

ROGRON (Madame Denis), born Bathilde de Chargeboeuf, about 1803, one of the most beautiful young girls of Troyes, poor but noble and ambitious. Her relative, Vinet the attorney, had made "a little Catherine de Medicis" of her, and married her to Denis Rogron. Some years after this marriage she desired to become a widow as soon as possible, so that she might marry General Marquis de Montriveau, a peer of France, who was very attentive to her. Montriveau controlled the department in which Rogron had a receivership. [Pierrette.]

ROGUIN, born in 1761; for twenty-five years a Paris notary, tall and heavy; black hair and high forehead; of somewhat distinguished appearance; affected with ozoena. This affection caused his ruin, for, having married the only daughter of the banker, Chevrel, he disgusted his wife very soon, and she was untrue to him. On the other hand, he had paid mistresses, and kept and was fleeced by Sarah van Gobseck--

"La Belle Hollandaise"--mother of Esther. He had met her about 1815.

In 1818 and 1819 Roguin, seriously compromised by careless financial ventures as well as by dissipation, disappeared from Paris; and thus brought about the ruin of Guillaume Grandet, Cesar Birotteau, and Mesdames Descoings and Bridau. [Cesar Birotteau. Eugenie Grandet. A Bachelor's Establishment.] Roguin had by his wife a daughter, whom he married to the president of the Provins tribunal. She was called in that city "the beautiful Madame Tiphaine." [Pierrette.] In 1816 he made, for Ginevra di Piombo, a respectful request of her father that he would allow his daughter to marry Luigi Porta, an enemy of the family. [The Vendetta.]