BONNEBAULT, retired cavalry soldier, the Lovelace of the village of Blangy, Burgundy, and its suburbs in 1823. Bonnebault was the lover of Marie Tonsard who was perfectly foolish about him. He had still other “good friends” and lived at their expense. Their generosity did not suffice for his dissipations, his cafe bills and his unbridled taste for billiards. He dreamed of marrying Aglae Socquard, only daughter of Pere Socquard, proprietor of the “Cafe de la Paix” at Soulanges. Bonnebault obtained three thousand francs from General de Montcornet by coming to him to confess voluntarily that he had been commissioned to kill him for this price. The revelation, with other things, lead the general to weary of his fierce struggle with the peasantry, and to put up for sale his property at Aigues, which became the prey of Gaubertin, Rigou and Soudry. Bonnebault was squint-eyed and his physical appearance did not belie his depravity. [The Peasantry.]
BONNEBAULT (Mere), grandmother of Bonnebault the veteran. In 1823, at Conches, Burgandy, where she lived, she owned a cow which she did not hesitate to pasture in the fields belonging to General de Montcornet. The numerous depredations of the old woman, added to convictions for many similar offences, caused the general to decide to confiscate the cow. [The Peasantry.]
BONNET (Abbe), Cure of Montegnac near Limoges from 1814 on. In this capacity, he assisted at the public confession of his penitent, Mme. Graslin, in the summer of 1844. Upon leaving the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, he was sent to this village of Montegnac, which he never after wished to leave. Here, sometimes unaided, sometimes with the help of Mme. Graslin, he toiled for a material and moral betterment, bringing about an entire regeneration of a wretched country. It was he who brought the outlawed Tascheron back into the Church, and who accompanied him to the very foot of the scaffold, with a devotion which caused his own very sensitive nature much cringing. Born in 1788, he had embraced the ecclesiastical calling through choice, and all his studies had been to that end. He belonged to a family of more than easy circumstancaes. His father was a self-made man, stern and unyielding. Abbe Bonnet had an older brother, and a sister whom he counseled with his mother to marry as soon as possible, in order to release the young woman from the terrible paternal yoke. [The Country Parson.]
BONNET, older brother of Abbe Bonnet, who enlisted as a private about the beginning of the Empire. He became a general in 1813; fell at Leipsic. [The Country Parson.]
BONNET (Germain), valet de chambre of Canalis in 1829, at the time when the poet went to Havre to contest the hand of Modeste Mignon. A servant full of finesse and irreproachable in appearance, he was of the greatest service to his master. He courted Philoxene Jacmin, chambermaid of Mme. de Chaulieu. Here the pantry imitated the parlor, for the academician’s mistress was the great lady herself. [Modest Mignon.]