SANDOZ (PIERRE), a famous novelist whose youth was spent at Plassans, where at school he was the inseparable companion of Claude Lantier and Dubuche.  The favourite amusement of the boys was walking, and together they took long excursions, spending whole days in the country.  After the death of his father Sandoz went to Paris, where he got employment at a small salary at the Mairie of the fifth arrondissement, in the office for registration of births; he was chained there by the thought of his mother, whom he had to support, and to whom he was tenderly attached.  Presently he published his first book:  a series of mild sketches, brought with him from Plassans, among which only a few rougher notes indicated the mutineer, the lover of truth and power.  He lived at this time with his mother in a little house in Rue d’Enfer, and there he received each Thursday evening his old friends from Plassans, Claude Lantier and Dubuche, and with them Fagerolles, Mahoudeau, Jory, Gagniere, now reunited at Paris, and all animated by the same passion for art.  He was still obsessed by a desire for literary glory, and had thoughts of writing a poem on some vast subject, but at last he hit on a scheme which soon took form in his mind.  With reference to it he said, “I am going to take a family, and I shall study its members, one by one, whence they come, whither they go, how they react upon one another—­in short, humanity in a small compass, the way in which humanity grows and behaves.  On the other hand, I shall set my men and women in a determined period of history, which will provide me with the necessary surroundings and circumstances, a slice of history—­you understand, eh?  A series of fifteen or twenty books, episodes that will cling together although having each a separate framework, a suite of novels with which I shall be able to build myself a house for my old age if they don’t crush me.”  The first of the novels met with some success, and Sandoz having resigned his appointment, and put his trust entirely in literature, married a young girl named Henriette, the daughter of middle-class parents, and removed his house to Rue Nollet.  In course of time his circumstances became still more comfortable, and he again removed to a large house in Rue de Londres.  When Claude Lantier fell into misery and despair, a gradual separation came about between him and his friends, but Sandoz remained true to the old companionship.  He was one of the few mourners who attended the funeral of the unfortunate artist.  L’Oeuvre.

SANDOZ (MADAME HENRIETTE), wife of the preceding.  She was an orphan, the daughter of a small shop-keeper, without a penny, but pretty and intelligent.  She occupied herself much with the affairs of the kitchen, being specially proud of some of her dishes.  Even later, when the family was more prosperous and had removed to a large flat in Rue de Londres, Henriette continued to take personal charge, out of affection for her husband, whose only fault was a tendency to gluttony.  L’Oeuvre.