Page:Repertory of the Comedie Humaine.djvu/502

 one of the co-workers of that beneficent physician. Tonnelet was thin and pale, and of medium height; he generally dressed in black, and wore spectacles. (The Country Doctor)

TONSARD (Mere), a peasant woman of Bourgogne, born in 1745, was one of the most formidable enemies of Montcornet, the owner of Aigues, and of his head-keeper, Justine Michaud. She had killed the keeper's favorite hound and she encroached upon the forest trees, so as to kill them and take the dead wood off. A reward of a thousand francs having been offered to the person who should discover the perpetrator of these wrongs, Mere Tonsard had herself denounced by her granddaughter, Marie Tonsard, in order to secure this sum of money to her family, and she was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, though she probably did not serve her term. Mere Bonnebault committed the same offences as Mere Tonsard; they had a quarrel, each wishing to profit by the advantages of a denunciation, and had ended by referring the matter to the casting of lots, which resulted in favor of Mere Tonsard. (The Peasantry)

TONSARD (Francois), son of the preceding, born about 1773, was a country laborer, skilled more or less in everything; he possessed a hereditary talent, attested, moreover, by his name, for trimming trees, and various kinds of hedges. Lazy and crafty, Francois Tonsard secured from Sophie Laguerre, Montcornet's predecessor at Aigues, an acre of land, on which he built, in 1795, the wine-shop known as the Grand-I-Vert. He was saved from conscription by Francois Gaubertin, at that time steward of Aigues, at the urgent request of Mademoiselle Cochet, their common mistress. Being then married to Philippine Fourchon, and Gaubertin having become his wife's lover, he could poach with freedom, and so it was that the Tonsard family made regular levies on the Aigues forest with impunity: they supplied themselves entirely from the wood of the forest, kept two cows at the expense of the landlord, and were represented at the harvest by seven gleaners. Being incommoded by the active watch kept over them by Justine Michaud, Gaubertin'