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Repertory of the Comedie Humaine-2 [68]

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century; small man, hardly five feet tall, with a face like a nut-cracker, self-important and known for his gallantry. He was succeeded in his business, the "Reine des Roses," by his chief clerk, Cesar Birotteau, after the eighteenth Brumaire. As a former perfumer to Her Majesty Queen Marie-Antoinette, M. Ragon always showed Royalist zeal, and, under the Republic, the Vendeans used him to communicate between the princes and the Royalist committee of Paris. He received at that time the Abbe de Marolles, to whom he pointed out and revealed the person of Louis XVI.'s executioner. In 1818, being a loser in the Nucingen speculation in Wortschin mining stock, Ragon lived with his wife in an apartment on rue du Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice. [Cesar Birotteau. An Episode under the Terror.]

RAGON (Madame), born Popinot; sister of Judge Popinot, wife of the preceding, being very nearly the same age as her husband, was in 1818 "a tall slender woman of wrinkled face, sharp nose, thin lips, and the artificial manner of a marchioness of the old line." [Cesar Birotteau.]

RAGOULLEAU[*] (Jean-Antoine), a Parisian lawyer, whose signature the widow Morin tried to extort. She also attempted his assassination, and was condemned, January 11, 1812, on the evidence of a number of witnesses, among others that of Poiret, to twenty years of hard labor. [Father Goriot.]

[*] The real spelling of the name, as shown by some authentic papers, is Ragouleau.

RAGUET, working boy in the establishment of Cesar Birotteau, the perfumer, in 1818. [Cesar Birotteau.]

RAPARLIER, a Douai notary; drew up marriage contracts in 1825 for Marguerite Claes and Emmanuel de Solis, for Felicie Claes and Pierquin the notary, and for Gabriel Claes and Mademoiselle Conyncks. [The Quest for the Absolute.]

RAPARLIER, a Douai auctioneer, under the Restoration; nephew of the preceding; took an inventory at the Claes house after the death of Madame Balthazar Claes in 1816. [The Quest of the Absolute.]

RAPP, French general, born at Colmar in 1772; died in 1821. As aide- de-camp of the First Consul, Bonaparte, he found himself one day in October serving near his chief at the Tuileries, when the proscribed Corsican, Bartolomeo de Piombo, came up rather unexpectedly. Rapp, who was suspicious of this man, as he was of all Corsicians, wished to stay at Bonaparte's side during the interview, but the Consul good- naturedly sent him away. [The Vendetta.] On October 13, 1806, the day before the battle of Jena, Rapp had just made an important report to the Emperor at the moment when Napoleon was receiving on the next day's battlefield Mademoiselle Laurence de Cinq-Cygne and M. de Chargeboeuf, who had come from France to ask for the pardon of the two Hauteserres and the two Simeuses, people affected by the political suit and condemned to hard labor. [The Gondreville Mystery.]

RAQUETS (Des), lived at Douai, of Flemish descent, and devoted to the traditions and customs of his province; very wealthy uncle of the notary Pierquin, his only heir, who received his inheritance towards the close of the Restoration. [The Quest of the Absolute.]

RASTIGNAC (Chevalier de), great-uncle of Eugene de Rastignac; as vice- admiral was commander of the "Vengeur" before 1789, and lost his entire fortune in the service of the king, as the revolutionary government did not wish to satisfy his demands in the adjusting of the Compagnie des Indes affairs. [Father Goriot.]

RASTIGNAC (Baron and Baronne de) had, near Ruffec, Charente, an estate, where they lived in the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, and where were born to them five children: Eugene, Laure-Rose, Agathe, Gabriel and Henri. They were poor, and lived in close retirement, keeping a dignified silence, and like their neighbours, the Marquis and Marquise de Pimentel, exercised, through their connection with court circles, a strong influence over the entire province, being invited at various times to the home of Madame de Bargeton, at Angouleme, where they met Lucien de Rubempre and were
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