POIRET, the elder, born at Troyes. He was the son of a clerk and of a woman whose wicked ways were notorious and who died in a hospital. Going to Paris with a younger brother, they became clerks in the Department of Finance under Robert Lindet; there he met Antoine, the office boy; he left the department, in 1816, with a retiring pension, and was replaced by Saillard. [The Government Clerks.] Afflicted with cretinism he remained a bachelor because of the horror inspired by the memory of his mother's immoral life; he was a confirmed idemiste, repeating, with slight variation, the words of those with whom he was conversing. Poiret established himself on the rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, at Madame Vauquer's private boarding-house; he occupied the second story at the widow's house, became intimate with Christine-Michelle Michonneau and married her, when Horace Bianchon demanded the exclusion of this young woman from the house for denouncing Jacques Collin (1819). [Father Goriot.] Poiret often afterwards met M. Clapart, an old comrade whom he had found again on the rue de la Cerisaie; had apartments on the rue des Poules and lost his health. [A Start in Life. Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] He died during the reign of Louis Philippe. [The Middle Classes.]
POIRET (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Christine-Michelle Michonneau, in 1779, doubtless had a stormy youth. Pretending to have been persecuted by the heirs of a rich old man for whom she had cared, Christine-Michelle Michonneau went, during the Restoration, to board with Madame Vauquer, the third floor of the house on rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve; made Poiret her squire; made a deal with Bibi-Lupin—Gondureau—to betray Jacques Collin, one of Madame Vauquer's guests. Having thus sated her cupidity and her bitter feelings, Mademoiselle Michonneau was forced to leave the house on rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, at the formal demand of Bianchon, another of the guests. [Father Goriot.] Accompanied by Poiret, whom she afterwards married, she moved to the rue des Poules and rented furnished rooms. Being summoned before the examining magistrate Camusot (May, 1830), she recognized Jacques Collin in the pseudo Abbe Carlos Herrera. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] Ten years later, Madame Poiret, now a widow, was living on a corner of the rue des Postes, and numbered Cerizet among her lodgers. [The Middle Classes.]
POIRET, the younger, brother of Poiret the elder, and brother-in-law of the preceding, born in 1771; had the same start, the same instincts, and the same weakness of intellect as the elder; ran the same career, overwhelmed with work under Lindet; remained at the Treasury as copying clerk ten years longer than Poiret the elder, was also book-keeper for two merchants, one of whom was Camusot of the Cocon d'Or; he lived on the rue du Martroi; dined regularly at the Veau qui Tette, on the Place du Chatelet; bought his hats of Tournan, on rue Saint-Martin; and, a victim of J.-J. Bixiou's practical jokes, he wound up by being business clerk in the office of Xavier Rabourdin. Being retired on January 1, 1825, Poiret the younger counted on living at Madame Vauquer's boarding-house. [The Government Clerks.]
POLISSARD, appraiser of the wood of the Ronquerolles estate in 1821; at this time, probably on the recommendation of Gaubertin, he employed as agent for the wood-merchant, Vaudoyer, a peasant of Ronquerolles, who had shortly before been discharged from the post of forest-keeper of Blangy (Bourgogne). [The Peasantry.]
POLLET, book-publisher in Paris, in 1821; a rival of Doguereau; published "Leonide ou La Vieille de Suresnes," a romance by Victor Ducange; had business relations with Porchon and Vidal; was at their establishment, when Lucien de Rubempre presented to them his "Archer de Charles IX." [A Distinguished Provincial at Paris.]
POMBRETON (Marquis de), a genuine anomaly; lieutenant of the black musketeers under the old regime, friend of the Chevalier de Valois, who prided himself on having lent him for assistance in leaving the country, twelve hundred pistoles. Pombreton returned this loan afterwards, almost beyond a question of doubt, but the fact of the case always remained unknown, for M. de Valois, an unusually successful gamester, was interested in spreading a report of the return of this loan, to shadow the resources that he derived from the gaming table; and so five years later, about 1821, Etienne Lousteau declared that the Pombreton succession and the Maubreuil[*] affair were among the most profitable "stereotypes" of journalism. Finally, Le Courrier de l'Orne of M. du Bousquier published, about 1830, these lines: "A certificate for an income of a thousand francs a year will be awarded to the person who can show the existence of a M. de Pombreton before, during, or after the emigration." [Lost Illusions. A Distinguished Provincial at Paris. Jealousies of a Country Town.]
[*] Maubreuil died at the end of the Second Empire.
POMPONNE (La). (See Toupinet, Madame.)
PONS (Sylvain)[*], born about 1785; son of the old age of Monsieur and Madame Pons, who, before 1789, founded the famous Parisian house for the embroidery of uniforms that was bought, in 1815, by M. Rivet, first cousin of the first Madame Camusot of the Cocon d'Or, sole heir of the famous Pons brothers, embroiderers to the Court; under the Empire, he won the Prix de Rome for musical composition, returned to Paris about 1810, and was for many years famous for his romances and melodies which were full of delicacy and good taste. From his stay in Italy, Pons brought back the tastes of the bibliomaniac and a love for works of art. His passion for collecting consumed almost his entire patrimony. Pons became Sauvageot's rival. Monistrol and Elie Magus felt a hidden but envious appreciation of the artistic treasures ingeniously and economically collected by the musician. Being ignorant of the rare value of his museum, he went from house to house, giving private lessons in harmony. This lack of knowledge proved his ruin afterwards, for he became all the more fond of paintings, stones and furniture, as lyric glory was denied him, and his ugliness, coupled with his supposed poverty, kept him from getting married. The pleasures of a gourmand replaced those of the lover; he likewise found some consolation for his isolation in his friendship with Schmucke. Pons suffered from his taste for high living; he grew old, like a parasitic plant, outside the circle of his family, only tolerated by his distant cousins, the Camusot de Marvilles, and their connections, Cardot, Berthier and Popinot. In 1834, at the awarding of the prize to the young ladies of a boarding-school, he met the pianist Schmucke, a teacher as well as himself, and in the strong intimacy that grew up between them, he found some compensation for the blighted hopes of his existence. Sylvain Pons was director of the orchestra at the theatre of which Felix Gaudissart was manager during the monarchy of July. He had Schmucke admitted there, with whom he passed several happy years, in a house, on the rue de Normandie, belonging to C.-J. Pillerault. The bitterness of Madeleine Vivet and Amelie Camusot de Marville, and the covetousness of Madame Cibot, the door-keeper, and Fraisier, Magus, Poulain and Remonencq were perhaps the indirect causes of the case of hepatitis of which Pons died (in April, 1845), appointing Schmucke his residuary legatee before Maitre Leopold Hannequin, who had been hastily summoned by Heloise Brisetout. Pons was on the point of being employed to compose a piece of ballet music, entitled "Les Mohicans." This work most likely fell to his successor, Garangeot. [Cousin Pons.]
[*] M. Alphonse de Launay has derived from the life of Sylvain Pons a
drama that was presented at the Cluny theatre, Paris, about 1873.