Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A - Z | Page 7

Mlle. Julie de Chatillonest, his cousin, with whom
he resided successively at Touraine, Paris and Versailles.* He took part
in the great struggle of the Empire; but the Restoration freed him from
his oath to Napoleon, restored his titles, entrusted to him a station in the
Body Guard, which gave him the rank of general, and later made him a
peer of France. Gradually he forsook his wife, whom he deceived on
account of Madame de Serizy. In 1817 the Marquis d'Aiglemont
became the father of a daughter (See Helene d'Aiglemont) who was his
image physically and morally; his last three children came into the
world during a liaison between the Marquise d'Aiglemont and the
brilliant diplomat, Charles de Vandenesse. In 1827 the general, as well
as his protege and cousin, Godefroid de Beaudenord, was hurt by the
fraudulent failure of the Baron de Nucingen. Moreover, he sank a
million in the Wortschin mines where he had been speculating with
hypothecated securities of his wife's. This completed his ruin. He went
to America, whence he returned, six years later, with a new fortune.
The Marquis d'Aiglemont died, overcome by his exertions, in 1833.**
[At the Sign of the Cat and Racket. The Firm of Nucingen. A Woman
of Thirty.]
* It appears that the residence of the Marquis d'Aiglemont at Versailles
was located at number 57, on the present Avenue de Paris; until

recently it was occupied by one of the authors of this work.
** Given erroneously in the original as 1835.
AIGLEMONT (Generale, Marquise Julie d'), wife of the preceding;
born in 1792. Her father, M. de Chatillonest, advised her against, but
gave her in marriage to her cousin, the attractive Colonel Victor
d'Aiglemont, in 1813. Quickly disillusioned and attacked from another
source by an "inflammation very often fatal, and which is spoken of by
women only in confidence," she sank into a profound melancholy. The
death of the Comtesse de Listomere-Landon, her aunt by marriage,
deprived her of valuable protection and advice. Shortly thereafter she
became a mother and found, in the realization of her new duties,
strength to resist the mutual attachment between herself and the young
and romantic Englishman, Lord Arthur Ormond Grenville, a student of
medicine who had nursed her and healed her bodily ailments, and who
died rather than compromise her. Heart-broken, the marquise withdrew
to the solitude of an old chateau situated between Moret and Montereau
in the midst of a neglected waste. She remained a recluse for almost a
year, given over utterly to her grief, refusing the consolations of the
Church offered her by the old cure of the village of Saint-Lange. Then
she re-entered society at Paris. There, at the age of about thirty, she
yielded to the genuine passion of the Marquis de Vandenesse. A child,
christened Charles, was born of this union, but he perished at an early
age under very tragic circumstances. Two other children, Moina and
Abel, were also the result of this love union. They were favored by
their mother above the two eldest children, Helene and Gustave, the
only ones really belonging to the Marquis d'Aiglemont. Madame
d'Aiglemont, when nearly fifty, a widow, and having none of her
children remaining alive save her daughter Moina, sacrificed all her
own fortune for a dower in order to marry the latter to M. de
Saint-Hereen, heir of one of the most famous families of France. She
then went to live with her son-in-law in a magnificent mansion
overlooking the Esplanade des Invalides. But her daughter gave her
slight return for her love. Ruffled one day by some remarks made to her
by Madame d'Aiglemont concerning the suspicious devotion of the
Marquis de Vandenesse, Moina went so far as to fling back at her

mother the remembrance of the latter's own guilty relations with the
young man's father. Terribly overcome by this attack, the poor woman,
who was a physical wreck, deaf and subject to heart disease, died in
1844. [A Woman of Thirty.]
AIGLEMONT (Helene d'), eldest daughter of the Marquis and
Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont; born in 1817. She and her brother
Gustave were neglected by her mother for Charles, Abel and Moina.
On this account Helene became jealous and defiant. When about eight
years old, in a paroxysm of ferocious hate, she pushed her brother
Charles into the Bievre, where he was drowned. This childish crime
always passed for a terrible accident. When a young woman--one
Christmas night--Helene eloped with a mysterious adventurer who was
being tracked by justice and who was, for the time being, in hiding at
the home of the Marquis Victor d'Aiglemont, at Versailles. Her
despairing father sought her vainly. He saw her no more till seven years
later, and then only once, when on his return from America to France.
The