Repertory of the Comedie Humaine-2 [56]
PIUS VII. (Barnabas Chiaramonti), lived from 1740 till 1823; pope. Having been asked by letter in 1806, if a woman might go /decollete/ to the ball or to the theatre, without endangering her welfare, he answered his correspondent, Madame Angelique de Granville, in a manner befitting the gentle Fenelon. [A Second Home.]
PIEDEFER (Abraham), descendant of a middle class Calvinist family of Sancerre, whose ancestors in the sixteenth century were skilled workmen, and subsequently woolen-drapers; failed in business during the reign of Louis XVI.; died about 1786, leaving two sons, Moise and Silas, in poverty. [The Muse of the Department.]
PIEDEFER (Moise), elder son of the preceding, profited by the Revolution in imitating his forefathers; tore down abbeys and churches; married the only daughter of a Convention member who had been guillotined, and by her had a child, Dinah, later Madame Milaud de la Baudraye; compromised his fortune by his agricultural speculations; died in 1819. [The Muse of the Department.]
PIEDEFER (Silas), son of Abraham Piedefer, and younger brother of the preceding; did not receive, as did Moise Piedefer, his part of the small paternal fortune; went to the Indies; died, about 1837, in New York, with a fortune of twelve hundred thousand francs. This money was inherited by his niece, Madame de la Baudraye, but was seized by her husband. [The Muse of the Department.]
PIEDEFER (Madame Moise), sister-in-law of the preceding, unaffable and excessively pious; pensioned by her son-in-law; lived successively in Sancerre and at Paris with her daughter, Madame de la Baudraye, whom she managed to separate from Etienne Lousteau. [The Muse of the Department.]
PIERQUIN, born about 1786, successor to his father as notary in Douai; distant cousin of the Molina-Claes of rue de Paris, through the Pierquins of Antwerp; self-interested and positive by nature; aspired to the hand of Marguerite Claes, eldest daughter of Balthazar, who afterwards became Madame Emmanuel de Solis; finally married Felicie, a younger sister of his first choice, in the second year of Charles X.'s reign. [The Quest of the Absolute.]
PIERQUIN (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Felicie Claes, found, as a young girl, a second mother in her elder sister, Marguerite. [The Quest of the Absolute.]
PIERQUIN, brother-in-law of the preceding; physician who attended the Claes at Douai. [The Quest of the Absolute.]
PIERROT, assumed name of Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph Rifoel, Chevalier du Vissard. [The Seamy Side of History.]
PIERROTIN, born in 1781. After having served in the cavalry, he left the service in 1815 to succeed his father as manager of a stage-line between Paris and Isle-Adam--an undertaking which, though only moderately successful, finally flourished. One morning in the autumn of 1822, he received as passengers, at the Lion d'Argent, some people, either famous or of rising fame, the Comte Hugret de Serizy, Leon de Lora and Joseph Bridau, and took them to Presles, a place near Beaumont. Having become "coach-proprietor of Oise," in 1838 he married his daughter, Georgette, to Oscar Husson, a high officer, who, upon retiring, had been appointed to a collectorship in Beaumont, and who, like the Canalises and the Moreaus, had for a long time been one of Pierrotin's customers. [A Start in Life.]
PEITRO, Corsican servant of the Bartolomeo di Piombos, kinsmen of Madame Luigi Porta. [The Vendetta.]
PIGEAU, during the Restoration, at one time head-carrier and afterwards owner of a small house, which he had built with his own hands and on a very economical basis, at Nanterre (between Paris and Saint-Germain-in-Laye). [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]
PIGEAU (Madame), wife of the preceding; belonged to a family of wine merchants. After her husband's death, about the end of the Restoration, she inherited a little property, which caused her much unhappiness, in consequence of her avarice and distrust. Madame Pigeau was planning to remove from Nanterre to Saint-Germain with a view to living there on her annuity, when she was