Page:Repertory of the Comedie Humaine.djvu/204

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Provincial at Paris]]) In 1834-35, the princess gave balls which the Comtesse Felix de Vandenesse attended. (A Daughter of Eve) About 1840 the prince tried to get Mme. Schontz away from the Marquis de Rochefide; but she said: "Prince, you are no handsomer, but you are older than Rochefide. You would beat me, while he is like a father to me." (Beatrix)

GALOPE-CHOPINE. (See Cibot.)

GAMARD (Sophie), old maid; owner of a house at Tours on rue de la Psalette, which backed the Saint Gatien church. She let part of it to priests. Here lodged the Abbes Troubert, Chapeloud and Francois Birotteau. The house had been purchased during the Terror by the father of Mlle. Gamard, a dealer in wood, a kind of parvenu peasant. After receiving Abbe Birotteau most cordially she took a disliking to him which was secretly fostered by Troubert, and she finally dispossessed him, seizing the furniture which he valued so greatly. Mlle. Gamard died in 1826 of a chill. Troubert circulated the report that Birotteau had caused her death by the sorrow which he had caused the old maid. (The Vicar of Tours)

GAMBARA (Paolo), musician, born at Cremona in 1791; son of an instrument-maker, a moderately good performer and a great composer who was driven from his home by the French and ruined by the war. These events consigned Paolo Gambara to a wandering existence from the age of ten. He found little quietude and obtained no congenial situation till about 1813 in Venice. At this time he put on an opera, "Mahomet," at the Fenice theatre, which failed miserably. Nevertheless he obtained the hand of Marianina, whom he loved, and with her wandered through Germany to settle finally in Paris in 1831, in a wretched apartment on rue Froidmanteau. The musician, an accomplished theorist, could not interpret intelligently any of his remarkable ideas and he would play to his wondering auditors jumbled compositions which he thought to be sublime inspirations. However he enthusiastically analyzed "Robert le Diable," having heard Meyerbeer's masterpiece while a guest of Andrea Marcosini. In 1837 he was reduced to mending