BEMBONI (Monsignor), attache to the Secretary of State at Rome, who was entrusted with the transmission to the Duc de Soria at Madrid of the letters of Baron de Macumer his brother, a Spanish refugee at Paris in 1823, 1824. [Letters of Two Brides.]

BENARD (Pieri).  After corresponding with a German for two years, he discovered an engraving by Muller entitled the “Virgin of Dresden.”  It was on Chinese paper and made before printing was discovered.  It cost Cesar Birotteau fifteen hundred francs.  The perfumer destined this engraving for the savant Vauquelin, to whom he was under obligations. [Cesar Birotteau.]

BENASSIS (Doctor), born about 1779 in a little town of Languedoc.  He received his early training at the College of Soreze, Tarn, which was managed by the Oratorians.  After that he pursued his medical studies at Paris, residing in the Latin quarter.  When twenty-two he lost his father, who left him a large fortune; and he deserted a young girl by whom he had had a son, in order to give himself over to the most foolish dissipations.  This young girl, who was thoroughly well meant and devoted to him, died two years after the desertion despite the most tender care of her now contrite lover.  Later Benassis sought marriage with another young girl belonging to a Jansenist family.  At first the affair was settled, but he was thrown over when the secret of his past life, hitherto concealed, was made known.  He then devoted his whole life to his son, but the child died in his youth.  After wavering between suicide and the monastery of Grande-Chartreuse, Doctor Benassis stopped by chance in the poor village of l’Isere, five leagues from Grenoble.  He remained there until he had transformed the squalid settlement, inhabited by good-for-nothing Cretins, into the chief place of the Canton, bustling and prosperous.  Benassis died in 1829, mayor of the town.  All the populace mourned the benefactor and man of genius. [The Country Doctor.]

BENEDETTO, an Italian living at Rome in the first third of the nineteenth century.  A tolerable musician, and a police spy, “on the side.”  Ugly, small and a drunkard, he was nevertheless the lucky husband of Luigia, whose marvelous beauty was his continual boast.  After an evening spent by him over the wine-cups, his wife in loathing lighted a brasier of charcoal, after carefully closing all the exits of the bedchamber.  The neighbors rushing in succeeded in saving her alone; Benedetto was dead. [The Member for Arcis.]

BERENICE, chambermaid and cousin of Coralie the actress of the Panorama and Gymnase Dramatique.  A large Norman woman, as ugly as her mistress was pretty, but tender and sympathetic in direct proportion to her corpulence.  She had been Coralie’s childhood playmate and was absolutely bound up in her.  In October, 1822, she gave Lucien de Rubempre, then entirely penniless, four five-franc pieces which she undoubtedly owed to the generosity of chance lovers met on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle.  This sum enabled the unfortunate poet to return to Angouleme. [Lost Illusions.  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris.]