PHELLION, born in 1780, husband of a La Perche woman, who bore him three children, two of whom were sons, Felix and Marie-Theodore, and one a daughter, who became Madame Burniol; clerk in the Ministry of Finance, Xavier Rabourdin's bureau, division of Flamet de la Billardiere, a position which he held until the close of 1824. He upheld Rabourdin, who, in turn, often defended him. While living on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques near the Sourds-Muets, he taught history, literature and elementary ethics to the students of Mesdemoiselles La Grave. The Revolution of July did not affect him; even his retirement from service did not cause him to give up the home in which he remained for at least thirty years. He bought for eighteen thousand francs a small house on Feuillantines lane, now rue des Feuillantines, which he occupied, after he had improved it, in a serious Bourgeois manner. Phellion was a major in the National Guard.
For the most part he still had the same friends, meeting and visiting frequently Baudoyer, Dutocq, Fleury, Godard, Laudigeois, Rabourdin, Madame Poiret the elder, and especially the Colleville, Thuillier and Minard families. His leisure time was occupied with politics and art.
At the Odeon he was on a committee of classical reading. His political influence and vote were sought by Theodose de la Peyrade in the interest of Jerome Thuillier's candidacy for the General Council; for Phellion favored another candidate, Horace Bianchon, relative of the highly-honored J.-J. Popinot. [The Government Clerks. The Middle Classes.]
PHELLION (Madame), wife of the preceding; belonged to a family who lived in a western province. Her family being so large that the income of more than nine thousand francs, pension and rentals, was insufficient, she continued, under Louis Philippe, to give lessons in harmony to Mesdemoiselles La Grave, as in the Restoration, with the strictness observed in her every-day life.
PHELLION (Felix), eldest son of the preceding couple, born in 1817; professor of mathematics in a Royal college at Paris, then a member of the Academy of Sciences, and chevalier of the Legion of Honor. By his remarkable works and his discovery of a star, he was thus made famous before he was twenty-five years old, and married, after this fame had come to him, Celeste-Louise-Caroline-Brigette Colleville, the sister of one of his pupils and a woman for whom his love was so strong that he gave up Voltairism for Catholicism. [The Middle Classes.]
PHELLION (Madame Felix), wife of the preceding; born Celeste-Louise-
Caroline-Brigitte Colleville. Although M. and Madame Colleville's daughter, she was reared almost entirely by the Thuilliers. Indeed, M.
L.-J. Thuillier, who had been one of Madame Flavie Colleville's lovers, passed for Celeste's father. M., Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier were all determined to give her their Christian names and to make up a large dowry for her. Olivier Vinet, Godeschal, Theodose de la Peyrade, all wished to marry Mademoiselle Colleville. Nevertheless, although she was a devoted Christian, she loved Felix Phellion, the Voltairean, and married him after his conversion to Catholicism. [The Middle Classes.]
PHELLION (Marie-Theodore), Felix Phellion's younger brother, in 1840 pupil at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees. [The Middle Classes.]
PHILIPPART (Messieurs), owners of a porcelain manufactory at Limoges, in which was employed Jean-Francois Tascheron, the murderer of Pingret and Jeanne Malassis. [The Country Parson.]
PHILIPPE, employed in Madame Marie Gaston's family; formerly an attendant of the Princesse de Vauremont; later became the Duc Henri de Chaulieu's servant; finally entered Marie Gaston's household, where he was employed after his wife's decease. [Letters of Two Brides. The Member for Arcis.]
PICHARD (Mademoiselle), house-keeper of Niseron, vicar of Blangy in Bourgogne. Prior to 1789 she brought her niece, Mademoiselle Arsene Pichard, to his house. [The Peasantry.]
PICHARD (Arsene), niece of the preceding. (See Rigou, Madame Gregoire.) [The Peasantry.]
PICOT (Nepomucene), astronomer and mathematician, friend of Biot after 1807, author of a "Treatise on Differential Logarithms," and especially of a "Theory of Perpetual Motion," four volumes, quarto, with engravings, Paris, 1825; lived, in 1840, No. 9 rue du Val-de-
Grace. Being very near-sighted and erratic, the prey of his thieving servant, Madame Lambert, his family thought that he needed a protector. Being instructor of Felix Phellion, with whom he took a trip to England, Picot made known his pupil's great ability, which the boy had modestly kept secret, at the home of the Thuilliers, Place de la Madeleine, before an audience composed of the Collevilles, Minards and Phellions. Celeste Colleville's future was thus determined. As Picot was decorated late in life, his marriage to a wealthy and eccentric Englishwoman of forty was correspondingly late. After passing through a successful operation for a cancer, he returned "a new man," to the home of the Thuilliers. He was led through gratitude to leave to the Felix Phellions the wealth brought him by Madame Picot. [The Middle Classes.]
PICQUOISEAU (Comtesse), widow of a colonel. She and Madame de Vaumerland boarded with one of Madame Vauquer's rivals, according to Madame de l'Ambermesnil. [Father Goriot.]
PIUS VII. (Barnabas Chiaramonti), lived from 1740 till 1823; pope.
Having been asked by letter in 1806, if a woman might go /decollete/ to the ball or to the theatre, without endangering her welfare, he answered his correspondent, Madame Angelique de Granville, in a manner befitting the gentle Fenelon. [A Second Home.]
