第146章 P(8)

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 substituted. [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 Phellion 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, municipal counselor of Paris, and a member of the General Council of the Seine. [The Middle Classes.]

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 Basse 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, entitled "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.]