NEPOMUCENE, a foundling; servant-boy of Madame Vauthier, manager and door-keeper of the house on the Boulevard Montparnasse, which was occupied by the families of Bourlac and Mergi.  Nepomucene usually wore a ragged blouse and, instead of shoes, gaiters or wooden clogs.  To his work with Madame Vauthier was added daily work in the wood-yards of the vicinity, and, on Sundays and Mondays, during the summer, he worked also with the wine-merchants at the barrier. [The Seamy Side of History.]

NERAUD, a physician at Provins during the Restoration.  He ruined his wife, who was the widow of a grocer named Auffray, and who had married him for love.  He survived her.  Being a man of doubtful character and a rival of Dr. Martener, Neraud attached himself to the party of Gouraud and Vinet, who represented Liberal ideas; he failed to uphold Pierrette Lorrain, the granddaughter of Auffray, against her guardians, the Rogrons. [Pierrette.]

NERAUD (Madame), wife of the preceding.  Married first to Auffray, the grocer, who was sixty years old; she was only thirty-eight at the beginning of her widowhood; she married Dr. Neraud almost immediately after the death of her first husband.  By her first marriage she had a daughter, who was the wife of Major Lorrain, and the mother of Pierrette.  Madame Neraud died of grief, amid squalid surroundings, two years after her second marriage.  The Rogrons, descended from old Auffray by his first marriage, had stripped her of almost all she had. [Pierrette.]

NICOLAS. (See Montauran, Marquis de.)

NINETTE, born in 1832, “rat” at the Opera in Paris, was acquainted with Leon de Lora and J.-J.  Bixiou, who called Gazonal’s attention to her in 1845. [The Unconscious Humorists.]

NOLLAND (Abbe), the promising pupil of Abbe Roze.  Concealed during the Revolution at the house of M. de Negrepelisse, near Barbezieux, he had in charge the education of Marie-Louise-Anais (afterwards Madame de Bargeton), and taught her music, Italian and German.  He died in 1802. [Lost Illusions.]

NISERON, curate of Blangy (Bourgogne) before the Revolution; predecessor of Abbe Brossette in this curacy; uncle of Jean-Francois Niseron.  He was led by a childish but innocent indiscretion on the part of his great-niece, as well as by the influence of Dom Rigou, to disinherit the Niserons in the interests of the Mesdemoiselles Pichard, house-keepers in his family. [The Peasantry.]

NISERON (Jean-Francois), beadle, sacristan, chorister, bell-ringer, and grave-digger of the parish of Blangy (Bourgogne), during the Restoration; nephew and only heir of Niseron the cure; born in 1751.  He was delighted at the Revolution, was the ideal type of the Republican, a sort of Michel Chrestien of the fields; treated with cold disdain the Pichard family, who took from him the inheritance, to which he alone had any right; lived a life of poverty and sequestration; was none the less respected; was of Montcornet’s party represented by Brossette; their opponent, Gregoire Rigou, felt for him both esteem and fear.  Jean-Francois Niseron lost, one after another, his wife and his two children, and had by his side, in his old days, only Genevieve, natural daughter of his deceased son, Auguste. [The Peasantry.]