Page:Repertory of the Comedie Humaine.djvu/523

 born Angelique-Marie de Granville in 1808; a brunette like her father. In bearing the cruel treatment of her prejudiced mother, in the Marais house, where she spent her youth, the Comtesse Felix was consoled by the tender affection of a younger sister, Marie-Eugenie, later Madame F. du Tillet. The lessons in harmony given them by Wilhelm Schmucke afforded them some diversion. Married about 1828, and dowered handsomely, to the detriment of Marie-Eugenie, she underwent, when about twenty-five years old, a critical experience. Although mother of at least one child, becoming suddenly of a romantic turn of mind, she narrowly escaped becoming the victim of a worldly conspiracy formed against her by Lady Dudley and by Mesdames Charles de Vandenesse and de Manerville. Marie, moved by the strength of her passion for the writer, Raoul Nathan, and wishing to save him from financial trouble, appealed to the good offices of Madame de Nucingen and to the devotion of Schmucke. The proof furnished to her by her husband of the debasing relations and the extreme Bohemian life of Raoul, kept Madame Felix de Vandenesse from falling. (A Second Home, A Daughter of Eve) Afterwards, her adventure, the dangers which she had run, and her rupture with the poet, were all recounted by M. de Clagny, in the presence of Madame de la Baudraye, Lousteau's mistress. (The Muse of the Department)

VANDENESSE (Alfred de), son of the Marquis Charles de Vandenesse, a coxcomb who, under the reign of Louis Philippe, at the Faubourg Saint-Germain, compromised the reputation of the Comtesse de Saint-Hereen, despite the presence of her mother, Madame d'Aiglemont, the former mistress of the marquis. (A Woman of Thirty)

VANDIERES (General, Comte de), old, feeble and childish, when, with his wife and a large number of soldiers, November 29, 1812, he started on a raft to cross the Beresina. When the boat struck the other bank the shock threw the count into the river. His head was severed from his body by a cake of ice, and went down the river like a cannon-ball. (Farewell)