MAHEU (VINCENT).  See Bonnemort.

MAHEU (ZACHARIE), eldest child of Toussaint Maheu.  He worked in the Voreux pit along with his father, but was lazy and seized any opportunity of pleasure.  He was married to Philomene Levaque, by whom he already had two children.  The strike interested him very little, and he spent most of his time playing crosse with Mouquet.  But when his sister Catherine was entombed in the pit he was one of the first to come forward to the rescue, and he worked day and night with frantic energy.  The ninth day, in his haste, he was imprudent enough to open his lamp, and a sudden explosion of gas reduced him to a calcined, unrecognizable mass.  Germinal.

MAHEUDE (LA), wife of Toussaint Maheu.  She was at first against the miners’ strike, but moved by the hardship of her lot and the poverty in which she was forced to bring up her family, she ultimately urged her husband to take an active part.  Even after she had seen him killed by the bullets of the soldiers, she was furious with those who talked of submitting.  But further tragedies broke her spirit; her son Zacharie was killed in an attempt to rescue his sister, entombed at the bottom of the Voreux pit.  Out of charity the company allowed the afflicted woman to go underground again, though she was past the usual age, and found employment for her in the manipulation of a small ventilator.  Germinal.

MAHOUDEAU, a sculptor.  The son of a stonemason at Plassans, he attained great success at the local art competitions, and came to Paris as the laureat of his town, with an allowance of eight hundred francs per annum for four years.  In the capital, however, he found his level, failing in his competitions at the School of Arts, and merely spending his allowance to no purpose; so that in order to live he was obliged at the end of his term to enter the employment of a manufacturer of church statues.  Later, however, he met with Claude Lantier and other companions from Plassans, and under their influence his ambitions revived.  He installed himself in a studio in Rue du Cherche-Midi, and there set about the production of a colossal work entitled La Vendangeuse (the Vintage Girl), for which Madame Mathilde Jabouille served as model.  For a time Chaine, who also came from Plassans, lived with Mahoudeau, but they quarrelled over Mathilde, and ultimately separated.  After this Mahoudeau lived alone, in considerable poverty, until he got employment from a manufacturer of artistic bronzes.  He then began to produce work which suited the popular taste, and his productions began to be seen on middle-class chimney-pieces.  L’Oeuvre.