Page:Repertory of the Comedie Humaine.djvu/480

 Rigou, his son's father-in-law, the old gendarme kept as his mistress, under the same roof with his wife, his servant Jeannette, who was younger than Madame Soudry. (The Peasantry)

SOUDRY (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Cochet in 1763. Lady's-maid to Sophie Laguerre, Montcornet's predecessor at Aigues, she had an understanding with Francois Gaubertin, the steward of the estate, to make a victim of the former opera singer. Twenty days after the burial of her mistress, La Cochet married the brigadier, Soudry, a superb specimen of manhood, though pitted with small-pox. During the reign of Louis XVIII., Madame Soudry, who tried awkwardly enough to imitate her late mistress, Sophie Laguerre, reigned supreme in the society of Soulanges, in her parlor which was the meeting ground of Montcornet's enemies. (The Peasantry)

SOUDRY, natural son of Soudry, the brigadier of gendarmes; legitimized at the time of his father's marriage to Mademoiselle Cochet, in 1815. On the day on which Soudry became legally possessed of a mother, he had just finished his course at Paris. There he knew Gaubertin's son, during a stay which he had at first intended to make long enough to entitle him to be registered as an advocate, and eventually to enter the legal profession; but he returned to Bourgogne to take charge of an attorney's practice for which his father paid thirty thousand francs. However, abandoning pettifoggery, Soudry soon found himself deputy king's attorney in a department of Bourgogne, and, in 1817, king's attorney under Attorney-General Bourlac, whom he replaced in 1821, thanks to the influence of Francois Gaubertin. He then married Mademoiselle Rigou. (The Peasantry)

SOUDRY (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Arsene Rigou, the only daughter of wealthy parents, Gregoire Rigou and Arsene Pichard; resembled her father in cunningness of character, and her mother in beauty. (The Peasantry)

SOULANGES (Comte Leon de), born in 1777, was colonel