GRANCEY (Abbe de), born in 1764. Took orders because of a disapointment in love; became priest in 1786, and cure in 1788. A distinguished prelate who refused three bishoprics in order not to leave Besancon. In 1834 he became vicar-general of that diocese. The abbe had a handsome head. He gave free vent to cutting speeches. Was acquainted with Albert Savarus whom he liked and aided. A frequenter of the Watteville salon he found out and rebuked Rosalie, the singular and determined enemy of the advocate. He also intervened between Madame and Mademoiselle de Watteville. He died at the end of the winter of 1836-37. [Albert Savarus.]
GRANCOUR (Abbe de), one of the vicars-general of the bishopric of Limoges, about the end of the Restoration; and the physical antithesis of the other vicar, the attenuated and moody Abbe Dutheil whose lofty and independent liberal doctrines he, with cowardly caution, secretly shared. Grancour frequented the Graslin salon and doubtless knew of the Tascheron tragedy. [The Country Parson.]
GRANDEMAIN was in 1822 at Paris clerk for Desroches. [A Start in Life.]
GRANDET (Felix), of Saumur, born between 1745 and 1749. Well-to-do master-cooper, passably educated. In the first years of the Republic he married the daughter of a rich lumber merchant, by whom he had in 1796 one child, Eugenie. With their united capital, he bought at a bargain the best vineyards about Saumur, in addition to an old abbey and several farms. Under the Consulate he became successively member of the district government and mayor of Saumur. But the Empire, which supposed him to be a Jacobin, retired him from the latter office, although he was the town's largest tax-payer. Under the Restoration the despotism of his extraordinary avarice disturbed the peace of his family. His younger brother, Guillaume, failed and killed himself, leaving in Felix's hands the settlement of his affairs, and sending to him his son Charles, who had hastened to Saumur, not knowing his father's ruin. Eugenie loved her cousin and combated her father's niggardliness, which looked after his own interests to the neglect of his brother. The struggle between Eugenie and her father broke Mme.
Grandet's heart. The phases of the terrible duel were violent and numerous. Felix Grandet's passion resorted to stratagem and stubborn force. Death alone could settle with this domestic tyrant. In 1827, an octogenarian and worth seventeen millions, he was carried off by a stroke of paralysis. [Eugenie Grandet.]
GRANDET (Madame Felix), wife of the preceding; born about 1770; daughter of a rich lumber merchant, M. de la Gaudiniere; married in the beginning of the Republic, and gave birth to one child, Eugenie, in 1796. In 1806 she added considerably to the combined wealth of the family through two large inheritances--from her mother and M. de la Bertelliere, her maternal grandfather. A devout, shrinking, insignificant creature, bowed beneath the domestic yoke, Mme. Grandet never left Saumur, where she died in October, 1822, of lung trouble, aggravated by grief at her daughter's rebellion and her husband's severity. [Eugenie Grandet.]
GRANDET (Victor-Ange-Guillaume), younger brother of Felix Grandet; became rich at Paris in wine-dealing. In 1815 before the battle of Waterloo, Frederic de Nucingen bought of him one hundred and fifty thousand bottles of champagne at thirty sous, and sold them at six francs; the allies drank them during the invasion--1817-19. [The Firm of Nucingen.] The beginning of the Restoration favored Guillaume. He was the husband of a charming woman, the natural daughter of a great lord, who died young after giving him a child. Was colonel of the National Guard, judge of the Court of Commerce, governor of one of the arrondissements of Paris and deputy. Saumur accused him of aspiring still higher and wishing to become the father-in-law of a petty duchess of the imperial court. The bankruptcy of Maitre Roguin was the partial cause of the ruin of Guillaume, who blew out his brains to avoid disgrace, in November, 1819. In his last requests, Guillaume implored his elder brother to care for Charles whom the suicide had rendered doubly an orphan. [Eugenie Grandet.]
GRANDET, (Charles), only lawful child of the foregoing; nephew of Felix Grandet; born in 1797. He led at first the gay life of a young gallant, and maintained relations with a certain Annette, a married woman of good society. The tragic death of his father in November, 1819, astounded him and led him to Saumur. He thought himself in love with his cousin Eugenie to whom he swore fidelity. Shortly thereafter he left for India, where he took the name of Carl Sepherd to escape the consequences of treasonable actions. He returned to France in 1827 enormously wealthy, debarked at Bordeaux in June of that year, accompanying the Aubrions whose daughter Mathilde he married, and allowed Eugenie Grandet to complete the settlement with the creditors of his father. [Eugenie Grandet.] By his marriage he became Comte d'Aubrion. [The Firm of Nucingen.]
GRANDET (Eugenie).* (See Bonfons, Eugenie Cruchot de.)
* The incidents of her life have been dramatized by Bayard for the Gymnase-Dramatique, under the title of "The Miser's Daughter."
GRANDLIEU (Comtesse de), related to the Herouvilles; lived in the first part of the seventeenth century; probably ancestress of the Grandlieus, well known in France two centuries later. [The Hated Son.]
GRANDLIEU (Mademoiselle), under the first Empire married an imperial chamberlain, perhaps also the prefect of Orne, and was received, alone, in Alencon among the exclusive and aristocratic set lorded over by the Esgrignons. [Jealousies of a Country Town.]
