[417] M. Nay was engaged to M. Gisquet's daughter.—T.
[418] François Eugène Vidocq (1775-1857) was in early life a soldier and a thief and was several times imprisoned. He became connected with the Paris police as a detective in 1809 and resigned, as chief of the detective force, in 1825. In 1832, he started a private detective establishment, which was soon dosed by the Government. He was the reputed author of a famous set of Memoirs and other works.—T.
[419] Louis Henri Desmortiers had been appointed a counsellor to the Paris Courts by the Restoration; the Revolution of 1830 made him King's Attorney to the Tribunal of First Instance of the Seine. These functions he preserved during the greater part of the reign of Louis-Philippe; and he was therefore not an examining magistrate in 1832. The examining magistrate charged in the affair of Messieurs de Chateaubriand, Hyde de Neuville and de Fitz-James was M. Poultier, who "fulfilled his painful duty towards the accused with as much delicacy as consideration" (Mémoires du baron Hyde de Neuville, vol. III. p. 496).—B.
[420] Charles Guillaume Hello (1787-1850). He had been appointed attorney-general at Rennes in 1830. He was the author of Philosophie de l'histoire de France and other works, and was the father of M. Ernest Hello (1828-1885), author of L'Homme, Paroles de Dieu, etc., which gave him an eminent rank among the writers and thinkers of his time.—B.
[421] "My name is Loyal, sirs, I come from Normandy,
And am a tipstaff, in despite of jealousy."—T.
[422] This is one of the very few errors of fact that occur in the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe, nor is it a very serious one. M. Geoffroy de Grandmaison, in his fine work on the Congrégation (pp. 389 et seq.), publishes the complete list of its members: M. Desmortiers' name does not appear upon it.—B.
The Congregation was an association of laymen, formed, under the auspices of the Jesuits, to practise, under their direction, works of charity and piety.—T.
[423] Paul François Dubois (1793-1874) had founded the Globe, in 1824, with Pierre Leroux. He sat as Deputy for Nantes from 1831 to 1848.—B.
[424] Jean Jacques Ampère (1800-1864), son of the celebrated physicist and a member of the French Academy. His fidelity to Chateaubriand was the more meritorious inasmuch as he had conceived, from his youth, an ardent passion for Madame Récamier which time was unable to allay.—B.
[425] Charles Lenormant (1802-1859) had married, in 1826, Mademoiselle Amélie Cyvoct, niece to Madame Récamier.—B.