# 813 — Character guide

> Key figures in 813 by Maurice Leblanc.

- [Arsène Lupin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/arsene_lupin.md): Lupin moves through Paris as Prince Sernine, André Beauny, or whatever name suits the hour, commanding devoted lieutenants and taunting the Sûreté with letters to the press. Yet the Kesselbach affair unsettles him: he mo
- [M. Lenormand](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/m_lenormand.md): Lenormand is the one policeman Lupin genuinely respects, which is precisely why the prefect and the deputy-chief Weber are content to see him fail. Struck down by illness at the moment the Kesselbach case demands him mos
- [Rudolf Kesselbach](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/rudolf_kesselbach.md): Kesselbach arrives in Paris chasing a young man named Pierre Leduc and a grand-duchy called Veldenz, carrying a plan he shares with no one — not even the wife he adores. His trust in Dolores is total, inscribed on every 
- [Dolores Kesselbach](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/dolores_kesselbach.md): To Paris she is the pitiable Mrs. Kesselbach, prostrate on her sofa, too frail to be questioned; to her accomplices she is Letitia, the joy of Rudolf's life and the author of his death. She moves between the two selves w
- [Pierre Leduc](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/pierre_leduc.md): Leduc is startled on a Paris street by a man who remembers him from Versailles and informs him, cheerfully, that he belongs body and soul to Arsène Lupin. He is the Pierre Leduc whom Kesselbach was seeking and Dolores wa
- [Baron Altenheim](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/baron_altenheim.md): Altenheim operates from a room at the Palace Hotel and a villa in the suburbs, orchestrating kidnappings — old Steinweg snatched from the Palais de Justice itself — with a baron's calm. He is Dolores's brother, bound to 
- [M. Weber](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/m_weber.md): Weber is the detective-service functionary whose identity Lupin borrows after dismissing him in a mocking open letter signed with his own name. His professional humiliation becomes one of the novel's slyest running jokes
- [Count von Waldemar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/count_von_waldemar.md): Waldemar moves through the intrigue as a figure of almost operatic size, trusted enough to ride beside an emperor and answer for a donkey's temper as for his own. His presence ties the Kesselbach affair to grand-duchy po
- [Steinweg](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/steinweg.md): Steinweg is Kesselbach's old confidant, a poor, hunted-looking man who has been three months abroad and knows nothing of the murder. His reunion with Mrs. Kesselbach is one of the novel's cruelest scenes: he greets her c
- [Louis de Malreich](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/louis_de_malreich.md): Malreich belongs to the ruined clan of de Malreich, brother to Altenheim and Isilda, and his conduct during the ambush at Mrs. Kesselbach's house shows a mind that plans in ambushes rather than moves. He is the ghost Lup
- [Isilda de Malreich](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/isilda_de_malreich.md): Isilda is sister to Altenheim and to Dolores de Malreich, part of a family driven from the little realm of Veldenz and consumed by the scheme to return. She is remembered as "Little Isilda," which makes her fate in the n
- [Chapman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/chapman.md): Chapman serves Kesselbach in the ordinary way of a private secretary, close enough to the household to know its rhythms and its visitors. His murder, coming so soon after his employer's, turns a single crime into a patte
- [Marco](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/marco.md): Marco belongs to the rough crew Lupin assembles for the night's work, muscle rather than mind, the kind of man who lifts a marble chimneypiece on command and asks no questions. His loyalty is transactional and his nerve 
- [Geneviève Ernemont](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/geneviewe_ernemont.md): Geneviève moves through the affair as a woman alone in a house full of watching strangers, confessing to a visitor that she is afraid of everything, of today and tomorrow and the day after. Her fear is not vague: she has
- [M. Formerie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/m_formerie.md): Formerie sits at the official center of the Kesselbach-Altenheim investigation, the man whose signatures and interrogations are supposed to give the affair a shape. But the evidence keeps sliding, witnesses keep vanishin
- [Valenglay](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/valenglay.md): Valenglay stands at the top of the official pyramid, the minister to whom the police and the magistrates ultimately answer, and therefore the person most embarrassed when Arsène Lupin announces he is resuming the post of
- [Jean Doudeville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/jean_doudeville.md): Jean Doudeville is the respectable face of Lupin's operation, the man who can sit in a fashionable restaurant with the serious air of a magistrate and attract no attention at all. He takes his orders, shares the cigars, 
- [Jacques Doudeville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/jacques_doudeville.md): Jacques Doudeville belongs to the handful of men Lupin keeps close, the ones who are sent on errands, posted as guards, and trusted with the parts of a plan that cannot be written down. He is not a name the newspapers kn
- [Octave](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/octave.md): Octave belongs to the small circle of attendants who follow Lupin into the crumbling Renaissance palace and the tense interview with the Emperor. His role is quiet but constant: he is the pair of hands and eyes that Lupi
- [Leon Massier](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/leon_massier.md): A friend of Kesselbach.
- [Sergeant Gourel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/sergeant_gourel.md): Police sergeant working under Lenormand.
- [Grand-Duke Hermann III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/hermann_iii.md): A German grand-duke involved in the plot.
- [Dominique Lecas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/dominique_lecas.md): A character in the story.
- [Herlock Sholmes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters/herlock_sholmes.md): The famous English detective, briefly mentioned.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/813_se/characters