ESGRIGNON (Marie-Armande-Claire d’), born about 1775; sister of Marquis Carol d’Esgrignon and aunt of Victurnien d’Esgrignon to whom she had been as a mother, with an absolute tenderness.  In his old age her father had married for a second time, and to the young daughter of a tax collector, ennobled by Louis XIV.  She was born of this union which was looked upon as a horrible mesalliance, and although the marquis loved her dearly he regarded her as an alien.  He made her weep for joy, one day, by saying solemnly:  “You are an Esgrignon, my sister.”  Emile Blondet, reared at Alencon, had known and loved her in his childhood, and often later he praised her beauty and good qualities.  On account of her devotion to her nephew she refused M. de la Roche-Guyon and the Chevalier de Valois, also M. du Bousquier.  She gave the fullest proof of her genuinely maternal affection for Victurnien, when the latter committed the crime at Paris, which would have placed him on the prisoner’s bench of the Court of Assizes, but for the clever work of Chesnel.  She outlived her brother, given over “to her religion and her over-thrown beliefs.”  About the middle of Louis Philippe’s reign Blondet, who had come to Alencon to obtain his marriage license, was again moved on the contemplation of that noble face. [Jealousies of a Country Town.]

ESPARD (Charles-Maurice-Marie-Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis d’), born about 1789; by name a Negrepelisse, of an old Southern family which acquired by a marriage, time of Henry IV., the lands and titles of the family of Espard, of Bearn, which was allied also with the Albret house.  The device of the d’Espards was:  “Des partem leonis.”  The Negrepelisses were militant Catholics, ruined at the time of the Church wars, and afterwards considerably enriched by the despoiling of a family of Protestant merchants, the Jeanrenauds whose head had been hanged after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  This property, so badly acquired, became wondrously profitable to the Negrepelisses-d’Espards.  Thanks to his fortune, the grandfather of the marquis was enabled to wed a Navarreins-Lansac, an extremely wealthy heiress; her father was of the younger branch of the Grandlieus.  In 1812 the Marquis d’Espard married Mlle. de Blamont-Chauvry, then sixteen years of age.  He had two sons by her, but discord soon arose between the couple.  Her silly extravagances forced the marquis to borrow.  He left her in 1816, going with his two children to live on rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve.  Here he devoted himself to the education of his boys and to the composition of a great work; “The Picturesque History of China,” the profits of which, combined with the savings resultant from an austere manner of living, allowed him to pay in twelve years’ time to the legatees of the suppliant Jeanrenauds eleven hundred thousand francs, representing the value—­time of Louis XIV.—­of the property confiscated from their ancestors.  This book was written,