GRANDET (Felix), of Saumur, born between 1745 and 1749.  Well-to-do master-cooper, passably educated.  In the first years of the Republic he married the daughter of a rich lumber merchant, by whom he had in 1796 one child, Eugenie.  With their united capital, he bought at a bargain the best vineyards about Saumur, in addition to an old abbey and several farms.  Under the Consulate he became successively member of the district government and mayor of Saumur.  But the Empire, which supposed him to be a Jacobin, retired him from the latter office, although he was the town’s largest tax-payer.  Under the Restoration the despotism of his extraordinary avarice disturbed the peace of his family.  His younger brother, Guillaume, failed and killed himself, leaving in Felix’s hands the settlement of his affairs, and sending to him his son Charles, who had hastened to Saumur, not knowing his father’s ruin.  Eugenie loved her cousin and combated her father’s niggardliness, which looked after his own interests to the neglect of his brother.  The struggle between Eugenie and her father broke Mme. Grandet’s heart.  The phases of the terrible duel were violent and numerous.  Felix Grandet’s passion resorted to stratagem and stubborn force.  Death alone could settle with this domestic tyrant.  In 1827, an octogenarian and worth seventeen millions, he was carried off by a stroke of paralysis. [Eugenie Grandet.]

GRANDET (Madame Felix), wife of the preceding; born about 1770; daughter of a rich lumber merchant, M. de la Gaudiniere; married in the beginning of the Republic, and gave birth to one child, Eugenie, in 1796.  In 1806 she added considerably to the combined wealth of the family through two large inheritances—­from her mother and M. de la Bertelliere, her maternal grandfather.  A devout, shrinking, insignificant creature, bowed beneath the domestic yoke, Mme. Grandet never left Saumur, where she died in October, 1822, of lung trouble, aggravated by grief at her daughter’s rebellion and her husband’s severity. [Eugenie Grandet.]

GRANDET (Victor-Ange-Guillaume), younger brother of Felix Grandet; became rich at Paris in wine-dealing.  In 1815 before the battle of Waterloo, Frederic de Nucingen bought of him one hundred and fifty thousand bottles of champagne at thirty sous, and sold them at six francs; the allies drank them during the invasion—­1817-19. [The Firm of Nucingen.] The beginning of the Restoration favored Guillaume.  He was the husband of a charming woman, the natural daughter of a great lord, who died young after giving him a child.  Was colonel of the National Guard, judge of the Court of Commerce, governor of one of the arrondissements of Paris and deputy.  Saumur accused him of aspiring still higher and wishing to become the father-in-law of a petty duchess of the imperial court.  The bankruptcy of Maitre Roguin was the partial cause of the ruin of Guillaume, who blew out his brains to avoid disgrace, in November, 1819.  In his last requests, Guillaume implored his elder brother to care for Charles whom the suicide had rendered doubly an orphan. [Eugenie Grandet.]