BESNUS (CLARISSE), an actress at the Theatre des Varietes, where she played the part of Iris in the Blonde Venus, and Geraldine in the Petite Duchesse.  She was mistress of Hector de la Faloise for a time.  Nana.

BESSIERE, station-master at Barentin.  He saw the Roubauds in the Havre express on the evening of the murder of President Grandmorin, and his evidence confirmed their alibi.  La Bete Humaine.

BEULIN-D’ORCHERE (M.) was a member of a legal family.  After being public prosecutor at Orleans and advocate-general at Rouen, he came to Paris as counsellor at the Appeal Court, of which he afterwards became president.  His sister Veronique married Eugene Rougon.  He was appointed first president of the Court of Paris after Rougon’s return to office.  Son Excellence Eugene Rougon.

BEULIN-D’ORCHERE (VERONIQUE), a quiet, subdued woman about thirty-six years of age, who lived with her brother and seldom went out except to attend Low Mass at Saint-Sulpice.  She married Eugene Rougon, to whom she brought a considerable fortune.  Son Excellence Eugene Rougon.

BIBI-LA-GRILLADE, the sobriquet of one of Coupeau’s fellow-workmen, with whom he was on intimate terms.  He was one of the party at Coupeau’s wedding with Gervaise Macquart.  L’Assommoir.

BIJARD, a drunken locksmith, who killed his wife by systematic ill-usage.  On the rare occasions when he worked, he always had a bottle of alcohol beside him, from which he took large draughts every half-hour.  After the death of his wife, he transferred his cruelty to his little daughter Lalie, who did not long survive.  L’Assommoir.

BIJARD (MADAME) lived with her husband and their children in the same tenement as the Coupeaus and Lorilleux.  She was a hard-working woman who did washing for Gervaise Coupeau’s laundry, but her husband, a drunken brute, abused her to such an extent that she ultimately died of injuries received at his hands, or, more accurately, feet.  The poor woman, in order to save her husband from the scaffold, said before she died that she had hurt herself by falling on the edge of a tub.  L’Assommoir.

BIJARD (LALIE), daughter of the preceding, a child of eight when her mother died, had acted as the little mother of the family.  “Without a word said, quite of her own accord, she took the dead woman’s place, to such an extent that her foolish brute of a father, to make the likeness complete, battered about the daughter now as he had battered the mother before.  When he came in drunk, he felt the need of a woman to attack.  He did not even notice what a tiny little thing Lalie was; he hit her as he would have hit a grown woman.  He beat her shamelessly, he kicked her for a yes or no; and she took it all with a resigned look in her beautiful eyes, without a murmur.  Then when her father was tired of kicking her from corner to corner of the room, she waited until she had the strength to pick herself up, and then went back to her work.  It was part of her daily task to be beaten.”  As the result of this infamous treatment the child died, but again the man unfortunately escaped punishment.  L’Assommoir.