RABOURDIN (Madame), born Celestine Leprince, in 1796; beautiful, tall and of good figure; reared by an artistic mother; a painter and a good musician; spoke many tongues and even had some knowledge of science.  She was married when very young through the instrumentality of her father, who was then a widower.  Her reception-rooms were not open to Jean-Jacques Bixiou, but she was frequently visited by the poet Canalis, the painter Schinner, Doctor Bianchon, who was especially fond of her company; Lucien de Rubempre, Octave de Camps, the Comte de Granville, the Vicomte de Fontaine, F. du Bruel, Andoche Finot, Derville, Chatelet, then deputy; Ferdinand du Tillet, Paul de Mannerville, and the Vicomte de Portenduere.  A rival, Madame Colleville, had dubbed Madame Rabourdin “The Celimene of rue Duphot.”  Having been over-indulged by her mother, Celestine Leprince thought herself entitled to a man of high rank.  Consequently, although M. Rabourdin pleased her, she hesitated at first about marrying him, as she did not consider him of high enough station.  This did not prevent her loving him sincerely.  Although she was very extravagant, she remained always strictly faithful to him.  By listening to the demands of Chardin des Lupeaulx, secretary-general in the Department of Finance, who was in love with her, she might have obtained for her husband the position of division chief.  Madame Rabourdin’s reception days were Wednesdays and Fridays.  She died in 1840. [The Commission in Lunacy.  The Government Clerks.]

RABOURDIN (Charles), law-student, son of the preceding couple, born in 1815, lived from 1836 to 1838 in a house on rue Corneille, Paris.  There he became acquainted with Z. Marcas, helped him in his distress, attended him on his death-bed, and, with Justi, a medical student, as his only companion, followed the body of this great, but unknown man to the beggar’s grave in Montparnasse cemetery.  After having told some friends the short, but pitiful story of Z. Marcas, Charles Rabourdin, following the advice of the deceased, left the country, and sailed from Havre for the Malayan islands; for he had not been able to gain a foothold in France. [Z.  Marcas.]

RACQUETS (Des). (See Raquets, des.)

RAGON born about 1748; a perfumer on rue Saint-Honore, between Saint-Roche and rue des Frondeurs, Paris, towards the close of the eighteenth century; small man, hardly five feet tall, with a face like a nut-cracker, self-important and known for his gallantry.  He was succeeded in his business, the “Reine des Roses,” by his chief clerk, Cesar Birotteau, after the eighteenth Brumaire.  As a former perfumer to Her Majesty Queen Marie-Antoinette, M. Ragon always showed Royalist zeal, and, under the Republic, the Vendeans used him to communicate between the princes and the Royalist committee of Paris.  He received at that time the Abbe de Marolles, to whom he pointed out and revealed the person of Louis XVI.’s executioner.  In 1818, being a loser in the Nucingen speculation in Wortschin mining stock, Ragon lived with his wife in an apartment on rue du Petit-Bourbon-Saint-Sulpice. [Cesar Birotteau.  An Episode under the Terror.]