第8章 A(3)

ALBON (Marquis d'), court councillor and ministerial deputy under the Restoration. Born in 1777. In September, 1819, he went hunting in the edge of the forest of l'Isle-Adam with his friend Philippe de Sucy, who suddenly fell senseless at the sight of a poor madwoman whom he recognized as a former mistress, Stephanie de Vandieres. The Marquis d'Albon, assisted by two passers by, M. and Mme. de Granville, resuscitated M. de Sucy. Then the marquis returned, at his friend's entreaty, to the home of Stephanie, where he learned from the uncle of this unfortunate one the sad story of the love of his friend and Madame de Vandieres. [Farewell.]

ALBRIZZI (Comtesse), a friend, in 1820, at Venice, of the celebrated melomaniac, Capraja. [Massimilla Doni.]

ALDRIGGER (Jean-Baptiste, Baron d'), born in Alsace in 1764. In 1800 a banker at Strasbourg, where he was at the apogee of a fortune made during the Revolution, he wedded, partly through ambition, partly through inclination, the heiress of the Adolphuses of Manheim. The young daughter was idolized by every one in her family and naturally inherited all their fortune after some ten years. Aldrigger, created baron by the Emperor, was passionately devoted to the great man who had bestowed upon him his title, and he ruined himself, between 1814 and 1815, by believing too deeply in "the sun of Austerlitz." At the time of the invasion, the trustworthy Alsatian continued to pay on demand and closed up his bank, thus meriting the remark of Nucingen, his former head-clerk: "Honest, but stoobid." The Baron d'Aldrigger went at once to Paris. There still remained to him an income of forty-four thousand francs, reduced at his death, in 1823, by more than half on account of the expenditures and carelessness of his wife. The latter was left a widow with two daughters, Malvina and Isaure. [The Firm of Nucingen.]

ALDRIGGER (Theodora-Marguerite-Wilhelmine, Baronne d'), nee Adolphus.

Daughter of the banker Adolphus of Manheim, greatly spoiled by her parents. In 1800 she married the Strasbourg banker, Aldrigger, who spoiled her as badly as they had done and as later did the two daughters whom she had by her husband. She was superficial, incapable, egotistic, coquettish and pretty. At forty years of age she still preserved almost all her freshness and could be called "the little Shepherdess of the Alps." In 1823, when the baron died, she came near following him through her violent grief. The following morning at breakfast she was served with small pease, of which she was very fond, and these small pease averted the crisis. She resided in the rue Joubert, Paris, where she held receptions until the marriage of her younger daughter. [The Firm of Nucingen.]

ALDRIGGER (Malvina d'), elder daughter of the Baron and Baroness d'Aldrigger, born at Strasbourg in 1801, at the time when the family was most wealthy. Dignified, slender, swarthy, sensuous, she was a good type of the woman "you have seen at Barcelona." Intelligent, haughty, whole-souled, sentimental and sympathetic, she was nevertheless smitten by the dry Ferdinand du Tillet, who sought her hand in marriage at one time, but forsook her when he learned of the bankruptcy of the Aldrigger family. The lawyer Desroches also considered asking the hand of Malvina, but he too gave up the idea.

The young girl was counseled by Eugene de Rastignac, who took it upon himself to see that she got married. Nevertheless, she ended by being an old maid, withering day by day, giving piano lessons, living rather meagrely with her mother in a modest flat on the third floor, in the rue du Mont-Thabor. [The Firm of Nucingen.]

ALDRIGGER (Isaure d'), second daughter of the Baron and Baronne d'Aldrigger, married to Godefroid de Beaudenord (See that name.) [The Firm of Nucingen.]

ALINE, a young Auvergne chambermaid in the service of Madame Veronique Graslin, to whom she was devoted body and soul. She was probably the only one to whom was confided all the terrible secrets pertaining to the life of Madame Graslin. [The Country Parson.]

ALLEGRAIN* (Christophe-Gabriel), French sculptor, born in 1710. With Lauterbourg and Vien, at Rome, in 1758, he assisted his friend Sarrasine to abduct Zambinella, then a famous singer. The prima-donna was a eunuch. [Sarrasine.]

* To the sculptor Allegrain who died in 1795, the Louvre Museum is indebted for a "Narcisse," a "Diana," and a "Venus entering the Bath."

ALPHONSE, a friend of the ruined orphan, Charles Grandet, tarrying temporarily at Saumur. In 1819 he acquitted himself most creditably of a mission entrusted to him by that young man. He wound up Charles' business at Paris, paying all his debts by a single little sale.

[Eugenie Grandet.]

AL-SARTCHILD, name of a German banking-house, where Gedeon Brunner was compelled to deposit the funds belonging to his son Frederic and inherited from his mother. [Cousin Pons.]

ALTHOR (Jacob), a Hambourg banker, who opened up a business at Havre in 1815. He had a son, whom in 1829 M. and Mme. Mignon desired for a son-in-law. [Modeste Mignon.]

ALTHOR (Francisque), son of Jacob Althor. Francisque was the dandy of Havre in 1829. He wished to marry Modeste Mignon but forsook her quickly enough when he found out that her family was bankrupt. Not long afterwards he married Mlle. Vilquin the elder. [Modeste Mignon.]

AMANDA, Parisian modiste at the time of Louis Philippe. Among her customers was Marguerite Turquet, known as Malaga, who was slow in paying bills. [A Man of Business.]

AMAURY (Madame), owner, in 1829, of a pavilion at Sauvic, near Ingouville, which Canalis leased when he went to Havre to see Mlle.

Mignon [Modeste Mignon.]

AMBERMESNIL (Comtesse de l') went in 1819, when about thirty-six years old, to board with the widow, Mme. Vauquer, rue Nueve Sainte-

Genevieve, now Tournefort, Paris. Mme. de l'Ambermesnil gave it out that she was awaiting the settlement of a pension which was due her on account of being the widow of a general killed "on the battlefield."