TAILLEFER (Frederic-Michel), son of Jean-Frederic Taillefer by his first wife, did not even try to protect his sister, Victorine, from her father’s unjust persecutions. Designated heir of the whole of his father’s great fortune, he was killed, in 1819, near Clignancourt, by a dexterous and unerring stroke, in a duel with Colonel Franchessini, the duel being instigated by Jacques Collin, in the interest of Eugene de Rastignac, though the latter knew nothing of the matter. [Father Goriot.]
TAILLEFER (Victorine), sister of the preceding, and daughter of Jean-Frederic Taillefer by his first wife; a distant cousin of Madame Couture; her mother having died in 1819, she wrongfully passed in her father’s opinion for “the child of adulterous connections”; was turned away from her father’s house, and sought protection with her kinswoman, Madame Couture, the widow of Couture the ordainer, on the rue Neuve-Saint-Genevieve, in Madame Vauquer’s boarding-house; there she fell in love with Eugene de Rastignac; by the death of her brother she became heir to all the property of her father, Jean-Frederic Taillefer, whose death-bed she comforted in every way possible. Victorine Taillefer probably remained single. [Father Goriot. The Red Inn.]
TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD (Charles-Maurice de), Prince de Benevent, Bishop of Autun, ambassador and minister, born in Paris, in 1754, died in 1838, at his home on the rue Saint-Florentin.[*] Talleyrand gave attention to the insurrectional stir that arose in Bretagne, under the direction of the Marquis de Montauran, about 1799. [The Chouans.] The following year (June, 1800), on the eve of the battle of Marengo, M. de Talleyrand conferred with Malin de Gondreville, Fouche, Carnot, and Sieyes, about the political situation. In 1804 he received M. de Chargeboeuf, M. d’Hauteserre the elder, and the Abbe Goujet, who came to urge him to have the names of Robert and Adrien d’Hauteserre and Paul-Marie and Marie-Paul de Simeuse erased from the list of emigrants; some time afterwards, when these latter were condemned, despite their innocence, as guilty of the abduction and detention of Senator Malin, he made every effort to secure their pardon, at the earnest instance of Maitre Bordin, as well as the Marquis de Chargeboeuf. At the hour of the execution of the Duc d’Enghien, which he had perhaps advised, he was found with Madame de Luynes in time to give her the news of it, at the exact moment of its happening. M. de Talleyrand was very fond of Antoinette de Langeais. A frequent visitor of the Chaulieus, he was even more intimate with their near relative, the elderly Princesse de Vauremont, who made him executor of her will. [The Gondreville Mystery. The Thirteen. Letters of Two Brides.] Fritot, in selling his famous “Selim” shawl to Mistress Noswell, made use of a cunning that certainly would not have deceived the illustrious diplomat; one day, indeed, on noticing the hesitation of a fashionable lady as between two bracelets, Talleyrand asked the opinion of the clerk who was showing the jewelry, and advised the purchase of the one rejected by the latter. [Gaudissart II.]