PICHARD (Arsene), niece of the preceding. (See Rigou, Madame Gregoire.) [The Peasantry.]
PICOT (Nepomucene), astronomer and mathematician, friend of Biot after 1807, author of a "Treatise on Differential Logarithms," and especially of a "Theory of Perpetual Motion," four volumes, quarto, with engravings, Paris, 1825; lived, in 1840, No. 9 rue du Val-de-Grace. Being very near-sighted and erratic, the prey of his thieving servant, Madame Lambert, his family thought that he needed a protector. Being instructor of Felix Phellion, with whom he took a trip to England, Picot made known his pupil's great ability, which the boy had modestly kept secret, at the home of the Thuilliers, Place de la Madeleine, before an audience composed of the Collevilles, Minards and Phellions. Celeste Colleville's future was thus determined. As Picot was decorated late in life, his marriage to a wealthy and eccentric Englishwoman of forty was correspondingly late. After passing through a successful operation for a cancer, he returned "a new man," to the home of the Thuilliers. He was led through gratitude to leave to the Felix Phellions the wealth brought him by Madame Picot. [The Middle Classes.]
PICQUOISEAU (Comtesse), widow of a colonel. She and Madame de Vaumerland boarded with one of Madame Vauquer's rivals, according to Madame de l'Ambermesnil. [Father Goriot.]
PIUS VII. (Barnabas Chiaramonti), lived from 1740 till 1823; pope. Having been asked by letter in 1806, if a woman might go decollete to the ball or to the theatre, without endangering her welfare, he answered his correspondent, Madame Angelique de Granville, in a manner befitting the gentle Fenelon. [A Second Home.]
PIEDEFER (Abraham), descendant of a middle class Calvinist family of Sancerre, whose ancestors in the sixteenth century were skilled workmen, and subsequently woolen-drapers; failed in business during the reign of Louis XVI.; died about 1786, leaving two sons, Moise and Silas, in poverty. [The Muse of the Department.]
PIEDEFER (Moise), elder son of the preceding, profited by the Revolution in imitating his forefathers; tore down abbeys and churches; married the only daughter of a Convention member who had been guillotined, and by her had a child, Dinah, later Madame Milaud de la Baudraye; compromised his fortune by his agricultural speculations; died in 1819. [The Muse of the Department.]
PIEDEFER (Silas), son of Abraham Piedefer, and younger brother of the preceding; did not receive, as did Moise Piedefer, his part of the small paternal fortune; went to the Indies; died, about 1837, in New York, with a fortune of twelve hundred thousand francs. This money was inherited by his niece, Madame de la Baudraye, but was seized by her husband. [The Muse of the Department.]
PIEDEFER (Madame Moise), sister-in-law of the preceding, unaffable and excessively pious; pensioned by her son-in-law; lived successively in Sancerre and at Paris with her daughter, Madame de la Baudraye, whom she managed to separate from Etienne Lousteau. [The Muse of the Department.]
PIERQUIN, born about 1786, successor to his father as notary in Douai; distant cousin of the Molina-Claes of rue de Paris, through the Pierquins of Antwerp; self-interested and positive by nature; aspired to the hand of Marguerite Claes, eldest daughter of Balthazar, who afterwards became Madame Emmanuel de Solis; finally married Felicie, a younger sister of his first choice, in the second year of Charles X.'s reign. [The Quest of the Absolute.]
PIERQUIN (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Felicie Claes, found, as a young girl, a second mother in her elder sister, Marguerite. [The Quest of the Absolute.]