Repertory of The Comedie Humaine - Part 39
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Part 39

PLISSOUD (Madame Euphemie), wife of the preceding and daughter of Wattebled; ruled the "second" society of Soulanges, as Madame Soudry did the first, and though married to Plissoud, lived with Lupin as if she were his wife. [The Peasantry.]

POIDEVIN, was, in the month of November, 1806, second clerk of Maitre Bordin, a Paris attorney. [A Start in Life.]

POINCET, an old and unfortunate public scribe, and interpreter at the Palais de Justice of Paris; about 1815, he went with Christemio to see Henri de Marsay, in order to translate the words of the messenger of Paquita Valdes. [The Thirteen.]

POIREL (Abbe), a priest of Tours; advanced to the canonry at the time that Monsieur Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard persecuted Abbe Francois Birotteau. [The Vicar of Tours.]

POIRET, the elder, born at Troyes. He was the son of a clerk and of a woman whose wicked ways were notorious and who died in a hospital.

Going to Paris with a younger brother, they became clerks in the Department of Finance under Robert Lindet; there he met Antoine, the office boy; he left the department, in 1816, with a retiring pension, and was replaced by Saillard. [The Government Clerks.] Afflicted with cretinism he remained a bachelor because of the horror inspired by the memory of his mother's immoral life; he was a confirmed _idemiste_, repeating, with slight variation, the words of those with whom he was conversing. Poiret established himself on the rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, at Madame Vauquer's private boarding-house; he occupied the second story at the widow's house, became intimate with Christine-Mich.e.l.le Michonneau and married her, when Horace Bianchon demanded the exclusion of this young woman from the house for denouncing Jacques Collin (1819). [Father Goriot.] Poiret often afterwards met M. Clapart, an old comrade whom he had found again on the rue de la Cerisaie; had apartments on the rue des Poules and lost his health. [A Start in Life. Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] He died during the reign of Louis Philippe. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

POIRET (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Christine-Mich.e.l.le Michonneau, in 1779, doubtless had a stormy youth. Pretending to have been persecuted by the heirs of a rich old man for whom she had cared, Christine-Mich.e.l.le Michonneau went, during the Restoration, to board with Madame Vauquer, the third floor of the house on rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve; made Poiret her squire; made a deal with Bibi-Lupin--Gondureau--to betray Jacques Collin, one of Madame Vauquer's guests. Having thus sated her cupidity and her bitter feelings, Mademoiselle Michonneau was forced to leave the house on rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, at the formal demand of Bianchon, another of the guests. [Father Goriot.] Accompanied by Poiret, whom she afterwards married, she moved to the rue des Poules and rented furnished rooms.

Being summoned before the examining magistrate Camusot (May, 1830), she recognized Jacques Collin in the pseudo Abbe Carlos Herrera. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] Ten years later, Madame Poiret, now a widow, was living on a corner of the rue des Postes, and numbered Cerizet among her lodgers. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

POIRET, the younger, brother of Poiret the elder, and brother-in-law of the preceding, born in 1771; had the same start, the same instincts, and the same weakness of intellect as the elder; ran the same career, overwhelmed with work under Lindet; remained at the Treasury as copying clerk ten years longer than Poiret the elder, was also book-keeper for two merchants, one of whom was Camusot of the Cocon d'Or; he lived on the rue du Martroi; dined regularly at the Veau qui Tette, on the Place du Chatelet; bought his hats of Tournan, on rue Saint-Martin; and, a victim of J.-J. Bixiou's practical jokes, he wound up by being business clerk in the office of Xavier Rabourdin.

Being retired on January 1, 1825, Poiret the younger counted on living at Madame Vauquer's boarding-house. [The Government Clerks.]

POLISSARD, appraiser of the wood of the Ronquerolles estate in 1821; at this time, probably on the recommendation of Gaubertin, he employed as agent for the wood-merchant, Vaudoyer, a peasant of Ronquerolles, who had shortly before been discharged from the post of forest-keeper of Blangy (Bourgogne). [The Peasantry.]

POLLET, book-publisher in Paris, in 1821; a rival of Doguereau; published "Leonide ou La Vieille de Suresnes," a romance by Victor Ducange; had business relations with Porchon and Vidal; was at their establishment, when Lucien de Rubempre presented to them his "Archer de Charles IX." [A Distinguished Provincial at Paris.]

POMBRETON (Marquis de), a genuine anomaly; lieutenant of the black musketeers under the old regime, friend of the Chevalier de Valois, who prided himself on having lent him for a.s.sistance in leaving the country, twelve hundred pistoles. Pombreton returned this loan afterwards, almost beyond a question of doubt, but the fact of the case always remained unknown, for M. de Valois, an unusually successful gamester, was interested in spreading a report of the return of this loan, to shadow the resources that he derived from the gaming table; and so five years later, about 1821, Etienne Lousteau declared that the Pombreton succession and the Maubreuil[*] affair were among the most profitable "stereotypes" of journalism. Finally, Le Courrier de l'Orne of M. du Bousquier published, about 1830, these lines: "A certificate for an income of a thousand francs a year will be awarded to the person who can show the existence of a M. de Pombreton before, during, or after the emigration." [Lost Illusions. A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. Jealousies of a Country Town.]

[*] Maubreuil died at the end of the Second Empire.

POMPONNE (La). (See Toupinet, Madame.)

PONS (Sylvain)[*], born about 1785; son of the old age of Monsieur and Madame Pons, who, before 1789, founded the famous Parisian house for the embroidery of uniforms that was bought, in 1815, by M. Rivet, first cousin of the first Madame Camusot of the Cocon d'Or, sole heir of the famous Pons brothers, embroiderers to the Court; under the Empire, he won the Prix de Rome for musical composition, returned to Paris about 1810, and was for many years famous for his romances and melodies which were full of delicacy and good taste. From his stay in Italy, Pons brought back the tastes of the bibliomaniac and a love for works of art. His pa.s.sion for collecting consumed almost his entire patrimony. Pons became Sauvageot's rival. Monistrol and Elie Magus felt a hidden but envious appreciation of the artistic treasures ingeniously and economically collected by the musician. Being ignorant of the rare value of his museum, he went from house to house, giving private lessons in harmony. This lack of knowledge proved his ruin afterwards, for he became all the more fond of paintings, stones and furniture, as lyric glory was denied him, and his ugliness, coupled with his supposed poverty, kept him from getting married. The pleasures of a gourmand replaced those of the lover; he likewise found some consolation for his isolation in his friendship with Schmucke.

Pons suffered from his taste for high living; he grew old, like a parasitic plant, outside the circle of his family, only tolerated by his distant cousins, the Camusot de Marvilles, and their connections, Cardot, Berthier and Popinot. In 1834, at the awarding of the prize to the young ladies of a boarding-school, he met the pianist Schmucke, a teacher as well as himself, and in the strong intimacy that grew up between them, he found some compensation for the blighted hopes of his existence. Sylvain Pons was director of the orchestra at the theatre of which Felix Gaudissart was manager during the monarchy of July. He had Schmucke admitted there, with whom he pa.s.sed several happy years, in a house, on the rue de Normandie, belonging to C.-J. Pillerault.

The bitterness of Madeleine Vivet and Amelie Camusot de Marville, and the covetousness of Madame Cibot, the door-keeper, and Fraisier, Magus, Poulain and Remonencq were perhaps the indirect causes of the case of hepat.i.tis of which Pons died (in April, 1845), appointing Schmucke his residuary legatee before Maitre Leopold Hannequin, who had been hastily summoned by Heloise Brisetout. Pons was on the point of being employed to compose a piece of ballet music, ent.i.tled "Les Mohicans." This work most likely fell to his successor, Garangeot.

[Cousin Pons.]

[*] M. Alphonse de Launay has derived from the life of Sylvain Pons a drama that was presented at the Cluny theatre, Paris, about 1873.

POPINOT, alderman of Sancerre in the eighteenth century; father of Jean-Jules Popinot and Madame Ragon (born Popinot). He was the officer whose portrait, painted by Latour, adorned the walls of Madame Ragon's parlor, during the Restoration, at her home in the Quartier Saint-Sulpice, Paris. [Cesar Birotteau.]

POPINOT (Jean-Jules), son of the preceding, brother of Madame Ragon, and husband of Mademoiselle Bianchon--of Sancerre--embraced the profession of law, but did not attain promptly the rank which his powers and integrity deserved. Jean-Jules Popinot remained for a long time a judge of a lower court in Paris. He took a deep interest in the fate of the young orphan Anselme Popinot, his nephew, and a clerk of Cesar Birotteau; and was invited with Madame Jean-Jules Popinot to the perfumer's famous ball, on Sunday, December 17, 1818. Nearly eighteen months later, Jean-Jules Popinot once more saw Anselme, who was set up as a druggist on the rue des Cinq-Diamants, and met Felix Gaudissart, the commercial-traveler, and tried to excuse certain imprudent utterances of his on the political situation, that had been reported by Canquoelle-Peyrade, the police-agent. [Cesar Birotteau.] Three years later he lost his wife, who had brought him, for dowry, an income of six thousand francs, representing exactly twice his personal a.s.sets. Living from this time at the rue de Fouarre, Popinot was able to give free rein to the exercise of charity, a virtue that had become a pa.s.sion with him. At the urgent instance of Octave de Bauvan, Jean-Jules Popinot, in order to aid Honorine, the Count's wife, sent her a pretended commission-merchant, probably Felix Gaudissart, offering a more than generous price for the flowers she made.

[Honorine.] Jean-Jules Popinot eventually established a sort of benevolent agency. Lavienne, his servant, and Horace Bianchon, his wife's nephew aided him. He relieved Madame Toupinet, a poor woman on the rue du Pet.i.t-Banquier, from want (1828). Madame d'Espard's request for a guardian for her husband served to divert Popinot from his role of Saint Vincent de Paul; a man of rare delicacy hidden beneath a rough and uncultured exterior, he immediately discovered the injustice of the wrongs alleged by the marchioness, and recognized the real victim in M. d'Espard, when he cross-questioned him at No. 22 rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, in an apartment, the good management of which he seemed to envy, though the rooms were simply furnished, and in striking contrast with the splendor of which he had been a witness, at the home of the marchioness in the Faubourg Saint-Honore. A delay caused by a cold in the head, and especially the influence of Madame d'Espard's intrigues, removed Popinot from the cause, in which Camusot was subst.i.tuted. [The Commission in Lunacy.] We have varying accounts of Jean-Jules Popinot's last years. Madame de la Chanterie's circle mourned the death of the judge in 1833 [The Seamy Side of History.]

and Ph.e.l.lion in 1840. J.-J. Popinot probably died at No. 22 rue de la Montagne-Saint-Genevieve, in the apartment that he had already coveted, being a counselor to the court, munic.i.p.al counselor of Paris, and a member of the General Council of the Seine. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

POPINOT (Anselme), a poor orphan, and nephew of the preceding and of Madame Ragon (born Popinot), who took charge of him in his infancy.

Small of stature, red-haired, and lame, he gladly became clerk to Cesar Birotteau, the Paris perfumer of the Reine des Roses, the successor of Ragon, with whom he did a great deal of work, in order to be able to show appreciation for the favor shown a part of his family, that was well-nigh ruined as a result of some bad investments (the Wortschin mines, 1818-19). Anselme Popinot, being secretly in love with Cesarine Birotteau, his employer's daughter--the feeling being reciprocated, moreover--brought about, so far as his means allowed, the rehabilitation of Cesar, thanks to the profits of his drug business, established on the rue des Cinq-Diamants, between 1819 and 1820. The beginning of his great fortune and of his domestic happiness dated from this time. [Cesar Birotteau.] After Birotteau's death, about 1822, Popinot married Mademoiselle Birotteau, by whom he had three children, two sons and a daughter. The consequences of the Revolution of 1830 brought Anselme Popinot in the way of power and honors; he was twice deputy after the beginning of Louis Philippe's reign, and was also minister of commerce. [Gaudissart the Great.]

Anselme Popinot, twice secretary of state, had finally been made a count, and a peer of France. He owned a mansion on the rue Ba.s.se du Rempart. In 1834 he rewarded Felix Gaudissart for services formerly rendered on the rue des Cinq-Diamants, and entrusted to him the management of a boulevard theatre, where the opera, the drama, the fairy spectacle, and the ballet took turn and turn. [Cousin Pons.]

Four years later the Comte Popinot, again minister of commerce and agriculture, a lover of the arts and one who gladly acted the part of the refined Maecenas, bought for two thousand francs a copy of Steinbock's "Groupe de Samson" and stipulated that the mould should be destroyed that there might be only two copies, his own and the one belonging to Mademoiselle Hortense Hulot, the artist's fiancee. When Wenceslas married Mademoiselle Hulot, Popinot and Eugene de Rastignac were the Pole's witnesses. [Cousin Betty.]

POPINOT (Madame Anselme), wife of the preceding, born Cesarine Birotteau, in 1801. Beautiful and attractive though, at one time, almost promised to Alexandre Crottat, she married, about 1822, Anselme Popinot, whom she loved and by whom she was loved. [Cesar Biroteau.]

After her marriage, though in the midst of splendor, she remained the simple, open, and even artless character that she was in the modest days of her youth.[*] The transformation of the dancer Claudine du Bruel, the whilom Tullia of the Royal Academy of Music, to a moral bourgeois matron, surprised Madame Anselme, who became intimate with her. [A Prince of Bohemia.] The Comtesse Popinot rendered aid, in a delicate way, in 1841, to Adeline Hulot d'Ervy. Her influence with that of Mesdames de Rastignac, de Navarreins, d'Espard, de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Lenoncourt, and de la Bastie, procured Adeline's appointment as salaried inspector of charities. [Cousin Betty.] Three years later when one of her three children married Mademoiselle Camusot de Marville, Madame Popinot, although she appeared at the most exclusive social gatherings, imitated modest Anselme, and, unlike Amelie Camusot, received Pons, a tenant of her maternal great-uncle, C.-J. Pillerault. [Cousin Pons.]

[*] In 1838, the little theatre Pantheon, destroyed in 1846, gave a vaudeville play, by M. Eugene Cormon, ent.i.tled "Cesar Birotteau,"

of which Madame Anselme Popinot was one of the heroines.

POPINOT (Vicomte), the eldest of the three children of the preceding couple, married, in 1845, Cecile Camusot de Marville. [Cousin Pons.]

During the course of the year 1846, he questioned Victorin Hulot about the remarkable second marriage of Baron Hector Hulot d'Ervy, which was solemnized on the first of February of that year. [Cousin Betty.]

POPINOT (Vicomtesse), wife of the preceding; born Cecile Camusot in 1821, before the name Marville was added to Camusot through the acquisition of a Norman estate. Red-haired and insignificant looking, but very pretentious, she persecuted her distant kinsman Pons, from whom she afterwards inherited; from lack of sufficient fortune she failed of more than one marriage, and was treated with scorn by the wealthy Frederic Brunner, especially because of her being an only daughter and the spoiled child. [Cousin Pons.]

POPINOT-CHANDIER (Madame and Mademoiselle), mother and daughter; of the family of Madame Boirouge; hailing from Sancerre; frequent visitors of Madame de la Baudraye, whose superiority of manner they ridiculed in genuine bourgeois fashion. [The Muse of the Department.]

PORCHON. (See Vidal.)

PORRABERIL (Euphemie). (See San-Real, Marquise de.)

PORRIQUET, an elderly student of the cla.s.sics, was teacher of Raphael de Valentin, whom he had as a pupil in the sixth cla.s.s, in the third cla.s.s, and in rhetoric. Retired from the university without a pension after the Revolution of July, on suspicion of Carlism, seventy years of age, without means, and with a nephew whose expenses he was paying at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, he went to solicit the aid of his dear "foster-child," to obtain the position of princ.i.p.al of a provincial school, and suffered rough treatment at the hands of the _carus alumnus_, every act of whose shortened Valentin's existence.

[The Magic Skin.]

PORTA (Luigi), born in 1793, strikingly like his sister Nina. He was the last member that remained, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, of the Corsican family of Porta, by reason of a b.l.o.o.d.y vendetta between his kinspeople and the Piombos. Luigi Porta alone was saved, by Elisa Vanni, according to Giacomo; he lived at Genoa, where he enlisted, and found himself, when quite young, in the affair of the Beresina. Under the Restoration he was already an officer of high rank; he put an end to his military career and was hunted by the authorities at the same time as Labedoyere. Luiga Porta found Paris a safe place of refuge. Servin, the Bonapartist painter, who had opened a studio of drawing, where he taught his art to young ladies, concealed the officer. One of his pupils, Ginevra di Piombo, discovered the outlaw's hiding-place, aided him, fell in love with him, made him fall in love with her, and married him, despite the opposition of her father, Bartolomeo di Piombo. Luigi Porta chose as a witness, when he was married, his former comrade, Louis Vergniaud, also known to Hyacinthe Chabert. He lived from hand to mouth by doing secretary's work, lost his wife, and, crushed by poverty, went to tell the Piombos of her death. He died almost immediately after her (1820).

[The Vendetta.]

PORTA (Madame Luigi), wife of the preceding, born Ginevra di Piombo about 1790; shared, in Corsica as in Paris, the stormy life of her father and mother, whose adored child she was. In Servin's, the painter's studio, where with her talent she shone above the whole cla.s.s, Ginevra knew Mesdames Tiphaine and Camusot de Marville, at that time Mesdemoiselles Roguin and Thirion. Defended by Laure alone, she endured the cruelly planned persecution of Amelie Thirion, a Royalist, and an envious woman, especially when the favorite drawing pupil discovered and aided Luigi Porta, whom she married shortly afterwards, against the will of Bartolomeo di Piombo. Madame Porta lived most wretchedly; she resorted to Magus to dispose of copies of paintings at a meagre price; brought a son into the world, Barthelemy; could not nurse him, lost him, and died of grief and exhaustion in the year 1820. [The Vendetta.]

PORTAIL (Du), name a.s.sumed by Corentin, when as "prefect of secret police of diplomacy and political affairs," he lived on the rue Honore-Chevalier, in the reign of Louis Philippe. [The Government Clerks.]

PORTENDUERE (Comte Luc-Savinien de), grandson of Admiral de Portenduere, born about 1788, represented the elder branch of the Portendueres, of whom Madame de Portenduere and her son Savinien represented the younger branch. Under the Restoration, being the husband of a rich wife, the father of three children and member for Isere, he lived, according to the season of the year, in the chateau of Portenduere or the Portenduere mansion, which were situated, the one in Dauphine, and the other in Paris, and extended no aid to the Vicomte Savinien, though he was hara.s.sed by his creditors. [Ursule Mirouet.]

PORTENDUERE (Madame de,) born Kergarouet, a Breton, proud of her n.o.ble descent and of her race. She married a post-captain, nephew of the famous Admiral de Portenduere, the rival of the Suffrens, the Kergarouets, and the Simeuses; bore him a son, Savinien; she survived her husband; was on intimate terms with the Rouvres, her country neighbors; for, having but little means, she lived, during the Restoration, in the little village of Nemours, on the rue des Bourgeois, where Denis Minoret was domiciled. Savinien's prodigal dissipation and the long opposition to his marriage to Ursule Mirouet saddened, or at least distrubed, Madame de Portenduere's last days.

[Ursule Mirouet.]

PORTENDUERE (Vicomte Savinien de), son of preceding, born in 1806; cousin of the Comte de Portenduere, who was descended from the famous admiral of this name, and great nephew of Vice-Admiral Kergarouet.

During the Restoration he left the little town of Nemours and his mother's society to go and try the life in Paris, where, in spite of his relationship with the Fontaines, he fell in love with Emilie de Fontaine, who did not reciprocate his love, but married first Admiral de Kergarouet, and afterwards the Marquis de Vandenesse. [The Ball at Sceaux.] Savinien also became enamored of Leontine de Serizy; was on intimate terms with Marsay, Rastignac, Rubempre, Maxime de Trailles, Blondet and Finot; soon lost a considerable sum of money, and, laden with debts, became a boarder at Sainte-Pelagie; he then received Marsay, Rastignac and Rubempre, the latter wishing to relieve his distress, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of Florine, afterwards Madame Nathan.

[Secrets from a Courtesan's Life.] Urged by Ursule Mirouet, his ward, Denis Minoret, who was one of Savinien's neighbors at Nemours, raised the sum necessary to liquidate young Portenduere's debt, and freed him of its burden. The viscount enlisted in the marine service, and retired with the rank and insignia of an ensign, two years after the Revolution of July, and five years before being able to marry Ursule Mirouet. [Ursule Mirouet.] The Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Portenduere made a charming couple, recalling two other happy families of Paris, the Langinskis and the Ernest de la Basties. In 1840 they lived on the Rue Saint-Peres, became the intimate friends of the Calyste du Guenics, and shared their box at the Italiens. [Beatrix.]

PORTENDUERE (Vicomtesse Savinien de), wife of the preceding, born in 1814. The orphan daughter of an unfortunate artist, Joseph Mirouet, the military musician, and Dinah Grollman, a German; natural granddaughter of Valentine Mirouet, the famous harpsichordist, and consequently niece of the rich Dr. Denis Minoret; she was adopted by the last named, and became his ward, so much the more adored as, in appearance and character, she recalled Madame Denis Minoret, deceased.

Ursule's girlhood and youth, pa.s.sed at Nemours, were marked alternately by joy and bitterness. Her guardian's servants, as well as his intimate friends, overwhelmed her with indications of interest. A distinguished performer, the future viscountess received lessons in harmony from Schmucke, the pianist, who was summoned from Paris. Being of a religious nature, she converted Denis Minoret, who was an adherent of Voltaire's teachings; but the influence she acquired over him called forth against the young girl the fierce animosity of Minoret-Levrault, Ma.s.sin, Cremiere, Dionis and Goupil, who, foreseeing that she would be the doctor's residuary legatee, abused her, slandered her, and persecuted her most cruelly. Ursule was also scornfully treated by Madame de Portenduere, with whose son, Savinien, she was in love. Later, the relenting of Minoret-Levrault and Goupil, shown in various ways, and her marriage to the Vicomte de Portenduere, at last approved by his mother, offered Ursule some consolation for the loss of Denis Minoret. [Ursule Mirouet.] Paris adopted her, and made much of her; she made a glorious success in society as a singer.

[Another Study of Woman.] Amid her own great happiness, the viscountess showed herself the devoted friend, in 1840, of Madame Calyste du Guenic, just after her confinement, who was almost dying of grief over the treachery of her husband. [Beatrix.]

POSTEL was pupil and clerk of Chardon the druggist of L'Houmeau, a suburb of Angouleme; succeeded Chardon after his death; was kind to his former patron's unfortunate family; desired, but without success, to marry Eve, who was afterwards Madame David Sechard, and became the husband of Leonie Marron, by whom he had several sickly children.

[Lost Illusions.]

POSTEL (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Leonie Marron, daughter of Doctor Marron, a pract.i.tioner in Marsac (Charente); through jealousy she was disagreeable to the beautiful Madame Sechard; through cupidity she fawned upon the Abbe Marron, from whom she hoped to inherit. [Lost Illusions.]

POTa.s.sE, sobriquet of the Protez family, manufacturers of chemicals, as a.s.sociates of Cochin; known by Minard, Ph.e.l.lion, Thuiller and Colleville, types of Parisians of the middle cla.s.s, about 1840. [The Middle Cla.s.ses.]

POTEL, former officer of the Imperial forces, retired, during the Restoration, to Issoudun, with Captain Renard; he took sides with Maxence Gilet against the officers, Mignonnet and Carpentier, declared enemies of the chief of the "Knights of Idlesse." [A Bachelor's Establishment.]

POULAIN (Madame), born in 1778. She married a trousers-maker, who died in very reduced circ.u.mstances; for from the sale of his business she received only about eleven hundred francs for income. She lived then, for twenty years, on work which some fellow-countrymen of the late Poulain gave to her, and the meagre profits of which afforded her the opportunity of starting in a professional career her son, the future physician, whom she dreamed of seeing gain a rich marriage settlement.

Madame Poulain, though deprived of an education, was very tactful, and she was in the habit of retiring when patients came to consult her son. This she did when Madame Cibot called at the office on rue d'Orleans, late in 1844 or early in 1845. [Cousin Pons.]

POULAIN (Doctor), born about 1805, friendless and without fortune; strove in vain to gain the patronage of the Paris "four hundred" after 1835. He kept constantly near him his mother, widow of a trousers-maker. As a poor neighborhood physician he afterwards lived with his mother on rue d'Orleans at the Marais. He became acquainted with Madame Cibot, door-keeper at a house on rue de Normandie, the proprietor of which, C.-J. Pillerault, uncle of the Popinots and ordinarily under Horace Bianchon's treatment, he cured. By Madame Cibot, Poulain was called also to attend Pons in a case of inflammation of the liver. Aided by his friend Fraisier, he arranged matters to suit the Camusots de Marville, the rightful heirs of the musician. Such a service had its reward. In 1845, following the death of Pons, and that of his residuary legatee, Schmucke, soon after, Poulain was given an appointment in the Quinze-Vingts hospital as head physician of this great infirmary. [Cousin Pons.]

POUPART, or Poupard, from Arcis-sur-Aube, husband of Gothard's sister; one of the heroes of the Simeuse affair; proprietor of the Mulet tavern. Being devoted to the interest of the Cadignans, the Cinq-Cygnes and the Hauterserres, in 1839, during the electoral campaign, he gave lodging to Maxime de Trailles, a government envoy, and to Paradis, the count's servant. [The Member for Arcis.]