began a very close relationship with Natalie de Manerville.  She herself broke this off as a result of the detailed description that he gave her of the love which he had formerly felt for Madame de Mortsauf. [The Marriage Settlement.] The year following, he married Angelique-Marie de Granville, elder daughter of the celebrated magistrate of that name, and began to keep house on rue du Rocher, where he had a house, furnished with the best of taste.  At first he was not able to gain his wife’s affection, as his known profligacy and his patronizing manners filled her with fear.  She did not go with him to the evening entertainment given by Madame d’Espard, where he found himself with his elder brother, and where many gossiping tongues directed their speech against Diane de Cadignan, despite the presence of her lover, Arthez.  Felix de Vandenesse went with his wife to a rout at the home of Mademoiselle des Touches, where Marsay told the story of his first love.  The Comte and Comtesse de Vandenesse, who, under Louis Philippe, still frequented the houses of the Cadignans and the Montcornets, came very near having serious trouble.  Madame de Vandenesse, had foolishly fallen in love with Raoul Nathan, but was kept from harm by her husband’s skilful management. [The Secrets of a Princess.  Another Study of Woman.  The Gondreville Mystery.  A Daughter of Eve.]

VANDENESSE (Comtesse Felix de), wife of the preceding; born Angelique-Marie de Granville in 1808; a brunette like her father.  In bearing the cruel treatment of her prejudiced mother, in the Marais house, where she spent her youth, the Comtesse Felix was consoled by the tender affection of a younger sister, Marie-Eugenie, later Madame F. du Tillet.  The lessons in harmony given them by Wilhelm Schmucke afforded them some diversion.  Married about 1828, and dowered handsomely, to the detriment of Marie-Eugenie, she underwent, when about twenty-five years old, a critical experience.  Although mother of at least one child, becoming suddenly of a romantic turn of mind, she narrowly escaped becoming the victim of a worldly conspiracy formed against her by Lady Dudley and by Mesdames Charles de Vandenesse and de Manerville.  Marie, moved by the strength of her passion for the writer, Raoul Nathan, and wishing to save him from financial trouble, appealed to the good offices of Madame de Nucingen and to the devotion of Schmucke.  The proof furnished to her by her husband of the debasing relations and the extreme Bohemian life of Raoul, kept Madame Felix de Vandenesse from falling. [A Second Home.  A Daughter of Eve.] Afterwards, her adventure, the dangers which she had run, and her rupture with the poet, were all recounted by M. de Clagny, in the presence of Madame de la Baudraye, Lousteau’s mistress. [The Muse of the Department.]

VANDENESSE (Alfred de), son of the Marquis Charles de Vandenesse, a coxcomb who, under the reign of Louis Philippe, at the Faubourg Saint-Germain, compromised the reputation of the Comtesse de Saint-Hereen, despite the presence of her mother, Madame d’Aiglemont, the former mistress of the marquis. [A Woman of Thirty.]