第131章 M(18)

MORTSAUF (Comte de), head of a Touraine family, which owed to an ancestor of Louis XI.'s reign--a man who had escaped the gibbet--its fortune, coat-of-arms and position. The count was the incarnation of the "refugee." Exiled, either willingly or unwillingly, his banishment made him weak of mind and body. He married Blanche-Henriette de Lenoncourt, by whom he had two children, Jacques and Madeleine. On the accession of the Bourbons he was breveted field-marshal, but did not leave Clochegourde, a castle brought to him in his wife's dowry and situated on the banks of the Indre and the Cher. [The Lily of the Valley.]

MORTSAUF (Comtesse de),[*] wife of the preceding; born Blanche-

Henriette de Lenoncourt, of the "house of Lenoncourt-Givry, fast becoming extinct," towards the first years of the Restoration; was born after the death of three brothers, and thus had a sorrowful childhood and youth; found a good foster-mother in her aunt, a Blamont-Chauvry; and when married found her chief pleasure in the care of her children. This feeling gave her the power to repress the love which she felt for Felix de Vandenesse, but the effort which this hard struggle caused her brought on a severe stomach disease of which she died in 1820. [The Lily of the Valley.]

[*] Beauplan and Barriere presented a play at the Comedie-Francaise, having for a heroine Madame de Mortsauf, June 14, 1853.

MORTSAUF (Jacques de), elder child of the preceding couple, pupil of Dominis, most delicate member of the family, died prematurely. With his death the line of Lenoncourt-Givrys proper passed away, for he would have been their heir. [The Lily of the Valley.]

MORTSAUF (Madeleine de), sister of the preceding; after her mother's death she would not receive Felix de Vandenesse, who had been Madame de Mortsauf's lover. She became in time Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Givry (see that name). [The Lily of the Valley.]

MOUCHE, born in 1811, illegitimate son of one of Fourchon's natural daughters and a soldier who died in Russia; was given a home, when an orphan, by his maternal grandfather, whom he aided sometimes as ropemaker's apprentice. About 1823, in the district of Ville-aux-

Fayes, Bourgogne, he profited by the credulity of the strangers whom he was supposed to teach the art of hunting otter. Mouche's attitude and conversation, as he came in the autumn of 1823 to the Aigues, scandalized the Montcornets and their guests. [The Peasantry.]

MOUCHON, eldest of three brothers who lived in 1793 in the Bourgogne valley of Avonne or Aigues; managed the estate of Ronquerolles; became deputy of his division to the Convention; had a reputation for uprightness; preserved the property and the life of the Ronquerolles; died in the year 1804, leaving two daughters, Mesdames Gendrin and Gaubertin. [The Peasantry.]

MOUCHON, brother of the preceding, had charge of the relay post-house at Conches, Bourgogne; had a daughter who married the wealthy farmer Guerbet; died in 1817. [The Peasantry.]

MOUGIN, born about 1805 in Toulouse, fifth of the Parisian hair-dressers who, under the name of Marius, successively owned the same business. In 1845, a wealthy married man of family, captain in the Guard and decorated after 1832, an elector and eligible to office, he had established himself on the Place de la Bourse as capillary artist emeritus, where his praises were sung by Bixiou and Lora to the wondering Gazonal. [The Unconscious Humorists.]

MOUILLERON, king's attorney at Issoudun in 1822, cousin to every person in the city during the quarrels between the Rouget and Bridau families. [A Bachelor's Establishment.]

MURAT (Joachim, Prince). In October, 1800, on the day in which Bartolomeo de Piombo was presented by Lucien Bonaparte, he was, with Lannes and Rapp, in the rooms of Bonaparte, the First Consul. He became Grand Duke of Berg in 1806, the time of the well-known quarrel between the Simeuses and Malin de Gondreville. Murat came to the rescue of Colonel Chabert's cavalry regiment at the battle of Eylau, February 7 and 8, 1807. "Oriental in tastes," he exhibited, even before acceding to the throne of Naples in 1808, a foolish love of luxury for a modern soldier. Twenty years later, during a village celebration in Dauphine, Benassis and Genestas listened to the story of Bonaparte, as told by a veteran, then became a laborer, who mingled with his narrative a number of entertaining stories of the bold Murat.

[The Vendetta. The Gondreville Mystery. Colonel Chabert. Domestic Peace. The Country Doctor.]

MURET gave information about Jean-Joachim Goriot, his predecessor in the manufacture of "pates alimentaires." [Father Goriot.]

MUSSON, well-known hoaxer in the early part of the nineteenth century.

The policeman, Peyrade, imitated his craftiness in manner and disguise twenty years later, while acting as an English nabob keeping Suzanne Gaillard. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]