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.]