BOURGNIER (Du). (See Bousquier, Du.)

BOURIGNARD (Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph), father of Mme. Jules Desmarets.  One of the “Thirteen” and the former chief of the Order of the Devorants under the title of Ferragus XXIII.  He had been a laborer, but afterwards was a contractor of buildings.  His daughter was born to an abandoned woman.  About 1807 he was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor, but he managed to escape during a journey of the chain-gang from Paris to Toulon, and he returned to Paris.  In 1820 he lived there under diverse names and disguises, lodging successively on rue des Vieux Augustins (now rue d’Argout), corner of rue Soly (an insignificant street which disappeared when the Hotel des Postes was rebuilt); then at number seven rue Joquelet; finally at Mme. E. Gruget’s, number twelve rue des Enfants-Rouges (now part of the rue des Archives running from rue Pastourelle to rue Portefoin), changing lodgings at this time to evade the investigations of Auguste de Maulincour.  Stunned by the death of his daughter, whom he adored and with whom he held secret interviews to prevent her becoming amenable to the law, he passed his last days in an indifferent, almost idiotic way, idly watching match games at bowling on the Place de l’Observatoire; the ground between the Luxembourg and the Boulevard de Montparnasse was the scene of these games.  One of the assumed names of Bourignard was the Comte de Funcal.  In 1815, Bourignard, alias Ferragus, assisted Henri de Marsay, another member of the “Thirteen,” in his raid on Hotel San-Real, where dwelt Paquita Valdes. [The Thirteen.]

BOURLAC (Bernard-Jean-Baptiste-Macloud, Baron de), former procureur-general of the Royal Court of Rouen, grand officer of the Legion of Honor.  Born in 1771.  He fell in love with and married the daughter of the Pole, Tarlowski, a colonel in the French Imperial Guard.  By her he had a daughter, Vanda, who became the Baronne de Mergi.  A widower and reserved by nature, he came to Paris in 1829 to take care of Vanda, who was seized by a strange and very dangerous malady.  After having lived in the Quartier du Roule in 1838, with his daughter and grandson, he dwelt for several years, in very straitened circumstances, in a tumble-down house on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, where Godefroid, a recent initiate into the “Brotherhood of the Consolation” and under the direction of Mme. de la Chanterie and her associates, came to his relief.  Afterwards it was discovered that the Baron de Bourlac was none other than the terrible magistrate who had pronounced judgment on this noble woman and her daughter during the trial of the Chauffeurs of Mortagne in 1809.  Nevertheless, the aiding of the family was not abated in the least.  Vanda was cured, thanks to a foreign physician, Halpersohn, procured by Godefroid.  M. de Bourlac was enabled to publish his great work on the “Spirit of Modern Law.”  At Sorbonne a chair of comparative legislation was created for him.  At last he obtained forgiveness from Mme. de la Chanterie, at whose feet he flung himself. [The Seamy Side of History.] In 1817 the Baron de Bourlac, then procureur-general, and superior of Soudry the younger, royal procureur, helped, with the assistance also of the latter, to secure for Sibilet the position of estate-keeper to the General de Montcornet at Aigues. [The Peasantry.]