AUVERGNAT (L'), one of the assumed names of the rogue Selerier, alias Pere Ralleau, alias Rouleur, alias Fil-de-soie. (See Selerier.) [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]
B
BABYLAS, groom or "tiger" of Amedee de Soulas, in 1834, at Besancon. Was fourteen years old at this time. The son of one of his master's tenants. He earned thirty-six francs a month by his position to support himself, but he was neat and skillful. [Albert Savarus.]
BAPTISTE, valet de chambre to the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu in 1830. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.]
BARBANCHU, Bohemian with a cocked hat, who was called into Vefour's by some journalists who breakfasted there at the expense of Jerome Thuillier, in 1840, and invited by them to "sponge" off of this urbane man, which he did. [The Middle Classes.]
BARBANTI (The), a Corsican family who brought about the reconciliation of the Piombos and the Portas in 1800. [The Vendetta.]
BARBET, a dynasty of second-hand book-dealers in Paris under the Restoration and Louis Philippe. They were Normans. In 1821 and the years following, one of them ran a little shop on the quay des Grands-Augustins, and purchased Lousteau's books. In 1836, a Barbet, partner in a book-shop with Metivier and Morand, owned a wretched house on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, where dwelt the Baron Bourlac with his daughter and grandson. In 1840 the Barbets had become regular usurers dealing in credits with the firm of Cerizet and Company. The same year a Barbet occupied, in a house belonging to Jerome Thuillier, rue Saint-Dominique-d'Enfer (now rue Royal-Collard), a room on the first flight up and a shop on the ground floor. He was then a "publisher's shark." Barbet junior, a nephew of the foregoing, and editor in the alley des Panoramas, placed on the market at this time a brochure composed by Th. de la Peyrade but signed by Thuillier and having the title "Capital and Taxes." [A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. A Man of Business. The Seamy Side of History. The Middle Classes.]
BARBETTE, wife of the great Cibot, known as Galope-Chopine. (See Cibot, Barbette.) [Les Chouans.]
BARCHOU DE PENHOEN (Auguste-Theodore-Hilaire), born at Morlaix (Finistere), April 28, 1801, died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, July 29, 1855. A school-mate of Balzac, Jules Dufaure and Louis Lambert, and his neighbors in the college dormitory of Vendome in 1811. Later he was an officer, then a writer of transcendental philosophy, a translator of Fichte, a friend and interpreter of Ballanche. In 1849 he was elected, by his fellow-citizens of Finistere, to the Legislative Assembly where he represented the Legitimists and the Catholics. He protested against the coup d'etat of December 2, 1851 (See "The Story of a Crime," by Victor Hugo). When a child he came under the influence of Pyrrhonism. He once gainsaid the talent of Louis Lambert, his Vendome school-mate. [Louis Lambert.]