Page:Repertory of the Comedie Humaine.djvu/244



GRANSON (Athanase), son of the preceding; born in 1793; subordinate in the mayor's office at Alencon in charge of registry. A sort of poet, liberal in politics and filled with ambition; weary of poverty and overflowing with grandiose sentiments. In 1816 he loved, with a passion that his commonsense combated, Mme. du Bousquier, then Mlle. Cormon, his senior by more than seventeen years. In 1816 the marriage dreaded by him took place. He could not brook the blow and drowned himself in the Sarthe. He was mourned only by his mother and Suzanne du Val-Noble. (Jealousies of a Country Town) Nevertheless, eight years after it was said of him: "The Athanase Gransons must die, withered up, like the grains which fall on barren rock." (The Government Clerks)

GRANVILLE (Comte de), had a defective civil status, the orthography of the name varying frequently through the insertion of the letter "d" between the "n" and "v." In 1805 at an advanced age he lived at Bayeux, where he was probably born. His father was a president of the Norman Parliament. At Bayeux the Comte married his son to the wealthy Angelique Bontems. (A Second Home)

GRANVILLE (Vicomte de), son of Comte de Granville, and comte upon his father's death; born about 1779; a magistrate through family tradition. Under the guidance of Cambaceres he passed through all the administrative and judicial grades. He studied with Maitre Bordin, defended Michu in the trial resulting from the "Gondreville Mystery," and learned officially and officiously of one of its results a short time after his marriage with a young girl of Bayeux, a rich heiress and the acquirer of extensive public lands. Paris was generally the theatre for the brilliant career of Maitre Granville who, during the Empire, left the Augustin quai where he had lived to take up his abode with his wife on the ground-floor of a mansion in the Marais, between rue Vielle-du-Temple and rue Nueve-Saint-Francois. He became successively advocate-general at the court of the Seine, and president of one of its chambers. At this time a domestic drama was being enacted in his life. Hampered in his open