Q

QUELUS (Abbe), priest of Tours or of its vicinity, called frequently on the Chessels, neighbors of the Mortsaufs, at the beginning of the century. [The Lily of the Valley.]

QUEVERDO, faithful steward of the immense domain of Baron de Macumer, in Sardinia.  After the defeat of the Liberals in Spain, in 1823, he was told to look out for his master’s safety.  Some fishers for coral agreed to pick him up on the coast of Andalusia and set him off at Macumer. [Letters of Two Brides.]

QUILLET (Francois), office-boy employed by Raoul Nathan’s journal on rue Feydau, Paris, 1835.  He aided his employer by lending him the name of Francois Quillet.  Raoul, in great despair, while occupying a furnished room on rue du Mail, threw several creditors off his track by the use of this assumed name. [A Daughter of Eve.]

R

RABOUILLEUSE (La), name assumed by Flore Brazier, who became in turn Madame Jean-Jacques Rouget and Madame Philippe Bridau. (See this last name.)

RABOURDIN (Xavier), born in 1784; his father was unknown to him.  His mother, a beautiful and fastidious woman, who lived in luxury, left him a penniless orphan of sixteen.  At this time he left the Lycee Napoleon and became a super-numerary clerk in the Treasury Department.  He was soon promoted, becoming second head clerk at twenty-two and head clerk at twenty-five.  An unknown, but influential friend, was responsible for this progress, and also gave him an introduction into the home of M. Leprince, a wealthy widower, who had formerly been an auctioneer.  Rabourdin met, loved and married this man’s only daughter.  Beginning with this time, when his influential friend probably died, Rabourdin saw the end of his own rapid progress.  Despite his faithful, intelligent efforts, he occupied at forty the same position.  In 1824 the death of M. Flamet de la Billardiere left open the place of division chief.  This office, to which Rabourdin had long aspired, was given to the incapable Baudoyer, who had been at the head of a bureau, through the influence of money and the Church.  Disgusted, Rabourdin sent in his resignation.  He had been responsible for a rather remarkable plan for executive and social reform, and this possibly contributed to his overthrow.  During his career as a minister Rabourdin lived on rue Duphot.  He had by his wife two children, Charles, born in 1815, and a daughter, born two years later.  About 1830 Rabourdin paid a visit to the Bureau of Finances, where he saw once more his former pages, nephews of Antoine, who had retired from service by that time.  From these he learned that Colleville and Baudoyer were tax-collectors in Paris. [The Government Clerks.] Under the Empire he was a guest at the evening receptions given by M. Guillaume, the cloth-dealer of rue Saint-Denis. [At the Sign of the Cat and Racket.] Later he and his wife were invited to attend the famous ball tendered by Cesar Birotteau, December 17, 1818. [Cesar Birotteau.] In 1840, being still a widower, Rabourdin was one of the directors of a proposed railway.  At this time he began to lodge in a house on the Place de la Madeleine, which had been recently bought by the Thuilliers, whom he had known in the Bureau of Finance. [The Middle Classes.]