SOULAS (Madame Amedee de), born Clotilde-Louise de Rupt in 1798, stern in features and in character, a blonde of the extreme type, was married, in 1815, to the Baron de Watteville, whom she managed with little difficulty. She did not find it so easy, however, to govern her daughter, Rosalie, whom she vainly tried to force to marry M. de Soulas. The pressure, at Besancon, of Albert Savarus, who was secretly loved by Mademoiselle de Watteville, gave a political significance to the salon of Rosalie's parents during the reign of Louis Philippe.
Tired of her daughter's obstinacy, Madame de Watteville, now a widow, herself married M. de Soulas; she lived in Paris, in the winter at least, and knew how to be mistress of her house there, as she always had been elsewhere. [Albert Savarus.]
SPARCHMANN, hospital surgeon at Heilsberg, attended Colonel Chabert after the battle of Eylau. [Colonel Chabert.]
SPENCER (Lord), about 1830, at Balthazar Claes's sale, bought some magnificent wainscoting that had been carved by Van Huysum, as well as the portrait of President Van Claes, a Fleming of the sixteenth century,--family treasures which the father of Mesdames de Solis and Pierquin was obliged to give up. [The Quest of the Absolute.]
SPIEGHALTER, a German mechanician, who lived in Paris on the rue de la Sante, in the early part of Louis Philippe's reign, made unsuccessful efforts, with the aid of pressure, hammering and rolling, to stretch the anomalous piece of shagreen submitted to him by Raphael de Valentin, at the suggestion of Planchette, professor of mechanics.
[The Magic Skin.]
SPONDE (Abbe de), born about 1746, was grand vicar of the bishopric of Seez. Maternal uncle, guardian, guest, and boarder of Madame du Bousquier--/nee/ Cormon--of Alencon; he died in 1819, almost blind, and strangely depressed by his niece's recent marriage. Entirely removed from worldly interests, he led an ascetic life, and an uneventful one, entirely consumed in thoughts of salvation, mortifications of the flesh, and secret works of charity. [Jealousies of a Country Town.]
STAEL-HOLSTEIN (Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne de), daughter of the famous Necker of Geneva, born in Paris in 1766; became the wife of the Swiss minister to France; author of "l'Allemagne," of "Corinne," and of "Delphine"; noted for her struggle against Napoleon Bonaparte; mother-in-law of the Duc Victor de Broglie and grandmother of the generation of the Broglies of the present day; died in the year 1817.
At various times she lived in the Vendomois in temporary exile. During one of her first stays in the Loire, she was greeted with the singular formula of admiration, "Fameuse garce!" [The Chouans.] At a later period, Madame de Stael came upon Louis Lambert, then a ragged urchin, absorbed in reading a translation of Swedenborg's "Heaven and Hell."
She was struck with him, and had him educated at the college of Vendome, where he had the future minister, Jules Dufaure, as his boon companion; but she forgot her protege, who was ruined rather than benefited by this passing interest. [Louis Lambert.] About 1823 Louise de Chaulieu (Madame Marie Gaston) believed that Madame de Stael was still alive, though she died in 1817. [Letters of Two Brides.]
STANHOPE (Lady Esther), niece of Pitt, met Lamartine in Syria, who described her in his "Voyage en Orient"; had sent Lady Dudley an Arabian horse, that the latter gave to Felix de Vandenesse in exchange for a Rembrandt. [The Lily of the Valley.] Madame de Bargeton, growing weary of Angouleme in the first years of the Restoration, was envious of this "blue-stocking of the desert." Lady Esther's father, Earl Charles Stanhope, Viscount Mahon, a peer of England, and a distinguished scholar, invented a printing press, known to fame as the Stanhope press, of which the miserly and mechanical Jerome-Nicholas Sechard expressed a contemptuous opinion to his son. [Lost Illusions.]
STAUB, a German, and a Parisian tailor of reputation; in 1821, made for Lucien de Rubempre, presumably on credit, some garments that he went in person to try on the poet at the Hotel du Gaillard-Bois, on the rue de l'Echelle. Shortly afterwards, he again favored Lucien, who was brought to his establishment by Coralie. [A Distinguished Provincial at Paris.]
STEIBELT, a famous musician, during the Empire was the instructor of Felicite des Touches at Nantes. [Beatrix.]
STEINBOCK (Count Wenceslas), born at Prelie (Livonia) in 1809; great-nephew of one of Charles XII.'s generals. An exile from his youth, he went to Paris to live, and, from inclination as much as on account of his poverty, he became a carver and sculptor. As assistant to Francois Souchet, a fellow-countryman of Laginski's, Wenceslas Steinbock worked on the decorations of the Pole's mansion, on the rue de la Pepiniere.
