GRANVILLE (Vicomte de), son of Comte de Granville, and comte upon his father's death; born about 1779; a magistrate through family tradition. Under the guidance of Cambaceres he passed through all the administrative and judicial grades. He studied with Maitre Bordin, defended Michu in the trial resulting from the "Gondreville Mystery," and learned officially and officiously of one of its results a short time after his marriage with a young girl of Bayeux, a rich heiress and the acquirer of extensive public lands. Paris was generally the theatre for the brilliant career of Maitre Granville who, during the Empire, left the Augustin quai where he had lived to take up his abode with his wife on the ground-floor of a mansion in the Marais, between rue Vielle-du-Temple and rue Nueve-Saint-Francois. He became successively advocate-general at the court of the Seine, and president of one of its chambers. At this time a domestic drama was being enacted in his life. Hampered in his open and broad-minded nature by the bigotry of Mme. de Granville, he sought domestic happiness outside his home, though he already had a family of four children. He had met Caroline Crochard on rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean. He installed her on rue Taitbout and found in this relation, though it was of brief duration, the happiness vainly sought in his proper home. Granville screened this fleeting joy under the name of Roger. A daughter Eugenie, and a son Charles, were born of this adulterous union which was ended by the desertion of Mlle. Crochard and the misconduct of Charles. Until the death of Mme. Crochard, the mother of Caroline, Granville was able to keep up appearances before his wife. Thus it happened that he accompanied her to the country, Seine-et-Oise, when he assisted M. d'Albon and M. de Sucy. The remainder of Granville's life, after his wife and his mistress left him, was passed in comparative solitude in the society of intimate friends like Octave de Bauvan and Serizy. Hard work and honors partially consoled him. His request as attorney-general caused the reinstatement of Cesar Birotteau, one of the tenants at No. 397 rue Saint-Honore. He and his wife had been invited to the famous ball given by Birotteau more than three years previously. As attorney-general of the Court of Cassation, Granville secretly protected Rubempre during the poet's famous trial, thus drawing upon himself the powerful affection of Jacques Collin, counterbalanced by the enmity of Amelie Camusot. The Revolution of July upheld Granville's high rank. He was peer of France under the new regime, owning and occupying a small mansion on rue Saint-Lazare, or traveling in Italy. At this time he was one of Dr. Bianchon's patients. [The Gondreville Mystery. A Second Home. Farewell. Cesar Birotteau. Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. A Daughter of Eve. Cousin Pons.]
GRANVILLE (Comtesse Angelique de), wife of preceding, and daughter of Bontems, a farmer and sort of Jacobin whom the Revolution enriched through the purchase of evacuated property at low prices. She was born at Bayeux in 1787, and received from her mother a very bigoted education. At the beginning of the Empire she married the son of one of the neighbors of the family, then Vicomte and later Comte de Granville; and, under the influence of Abbe Fontanon, she maintained at Paris the manners and customs of an extreme devotee. She thus evoked the infidelity of her husband who had begun by simply neglecting her. Of her four children she retained charge of the education of her two daughters. She broke off entirely from her husband when she discovered the existence of her rival, Mlle. de Bellefeuille—Caroline Crochard—and returned to Bayeux to end her days, remaining to the last the austere, stingy sanctified creature who had formerly been scandalized by the openness of the affair of Montriveau and Mme. de Langeais. She died in 1822. [A Second Home. The Thirteen. A Daughter of Eve.]
GRANVILLE (Vicomte de), elder son of the preceding. Was reared by his father. In 1828 he was deputy-attorney at Limoges, where he afterwards became advocate-general. He fell in love with Veronique Graslin, but incurred her secret disfavor by his proceedings against the assassin Tascheron. The vicomte had a career almost identical with that of his father. In 1833 he was made first president at Orleans, and in 1844 attorney-general. Later near Limoges he came suddenly upon a scene which moved him deeply: the public confession of Veronique Graslin. The vicomte had unknowingly been the executioner of the chatelaine of Montegnac. [A Second Home. A Daughter of Eve. The Country Parson.]
GRANVILLE (Baron Eugene de), younger brother of the foregoing. King's attorney at Paris from May, 1830. Three years later he still held this office, when he informed his father of the arrest of a thief named Charles Crochard, who was the count's natural son. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. A Second Home.]
GRANVILLE (Marie-Angelique de). (See Vandenesse, Comtesse Felix de.)
GRANVILLE (Marie-Eugenie de). (See Tillet, Madame Ferdinand du.)
GRASLIN (Pierre), born in 1775. An Auvergnat, compatriot and friend of Sauviat, whose daughter Veronique he married in 1822. He began as a bank-clerk with Grosstete & Perret, a first-class firm of the town. A man of business and a hard worker he became successor to his employers. His fortune, increased by lucky speculations with Brezac, enabled him to buy one of the finest places in the chief city of Haute-Vienne. But he was not able to win his wife's heart. His physical unattractiveness, added to by his carelessness and grinding avarice, were complicated by a domestic tyranny which soon showed itself. Thus it was that he was only the legal father of a son named Francis, but he was ignorant of this fact, for, in the capacity of juror in the Court of Assizes dealing with the fate of Tascheron, the real father of the child, he urged but in vain the acquittal of the prisoner. Two years after the boy's birth and the execution of the mother's lover, in April, 1831, Pierre Graslin died of weakness and grief. The July Revolution suddenly breaking forth had shaken his financial standing, which was regained only with an effort. It was at the time when he had brought Montegnac from the Navarreins. [The Country Parson.]
GRASLIN (Madame Pierre), wife of preceding; born Veronique Sauviat, at Limoges in May, 1802; beautiful in spite of traces of small-pox; had had the spoiled though simple childhood of an only daughter. When twenty she married Pierre Graslin. Soon after marriage her ingenuous nature, romantic and refined, suffered in secret from the harsh tyranny of the man whose name she bore. Veronique, however, held aloof from the gallants who frequented her salon, especially the Vicomte de Granville. She had become the secret mistress of J.-F. Tascheron, a porcelain worker. She was on the point of eloping with him when a crime committed by him was discovered. Mme. Graslin suffered the most poignant anguish, giving birth to the child of the condemned man at the very moment when the father was led to execution. She inflicted upon herself the bitterest flagellations. She could devote herself more freely to penance after her husband's death, which occurred two years later. She left Limoges for Montegnac, where she made herself truly famous by charitable works on a huge scale. The sudden return of the sister of her lover dealt her the final blow. Still she had energy enough to bring about the union of Denise Tascheron and Gregoire Gerard, gave her son into their keeping, left important bequests destined to keep alive her memory, and died during the summer of 1844 after confessing in public in the presence of Bianchon, Dutheil, Granville, Mme. Sauviat and Bonnet who were all seized with admiration and tenderness for her. [The Country Parson.]
GRASLIN (Francis), born at Limoges in August, 1829. Only child of Veronique Graslin, legal son of Pierre Graslin, but natural son of J.-F. Tascheron. He lost his legal father two years after his birth, and his mother thirteen years later. His tutor M. Ruffin, his maternal grandmother Mme. Sauviat, and above all the Gregoire Gerards watched over his boyhood at Montegnac. [The Country Parson.]
GRASSET, bailiff and successor of Louchard. On the demand of Lisbeth Fischer and by Rivet's advice, in 1838, he arrested W. Steinbock in Paris and took him to Clichy prison. [Cousin Betty.]