Page:Repertory of the Comedie Humaine.djvu/173

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Chesnel had repurchased, together with certain portions of his other estates. The Marquis d'Esgrignon, though not having to emigrate, was still obliged to conceal himself. He participated in the Vendean struggle against the Republic, and was one of the members of the Committee Royal of Alencon. In 1800, at the age of fifty, in the hope of perpetuating his race, he married Mlle. de Nouastre, who died in child-birth, leaving the marquis an only son. M. d'Esgrignon always overlooked the escapades of this child, whose reputation was preserved by Chesnel; and he passed away shortly after the downfall of Charles X., saying: "The Gauls triumph." (The Chouans, Jealousies of a Country Town)

ESGRIGNON (Madame d') nee Nouastre; of blood the purest and noblest; married at twenty-two, in 1800, to Marquis Carol d'Esgrignon, a man of fifty. She soon died at the birth of an only son. She was "the prettiest of human beings; in her person were reawakened the charms—now fanciful—of the feminine figures of the sixteenth century." (Jealousies of a Country Town)

ESGRIGNON (Victurnien, Comte, then Marquis d'), only son of Marquis Carol d'Esgrignon; born about 1800 at Alencon. Handsome and intelligent, reared with extreme indulgence and kindness by his aunt, Mlle. Armande d'Esgrignon, he gave himself over without restraint to all the whims usual to the ingenuous egoism of his age. From eighteen to twenty-one he squandered eighty thousand francs without the knowledge of his father and his aunt; the devoted Chesnel footed all the bills. The youthful d'Esgrignon was systematically urged to wrong-doing by an ally of his own age, Fabien du Ronceret, a perfidious fellow of the town whom M. du Croisier employed. About 1823 Victurnien d'Esgrignon was sent to Paris. There he had the misfortune to fall into the society of the Parisian roues—Marsay, Ronquerolles, Trailles, Chardin des Lupeaulx, Vandenesse, Ajuda-Pinto, Beaudenord, Martial de la Roche-Hugon, Manerville, people met at the homes of Marquise d'Espard, the Duchesses de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Chaulieu, the Marquises d'Aiglemont