Character guide

Paul de Manerville

major

Also known as Paul, Comte de Manerville, Count Paul, Monsieur Paul, Le Comte Paul de Manerville

Paul is the eligible heir of Lanstrac, a man whose elegance is real but second-rate: his servants are well drilled, his suppers succeed, and he has never once been the fashion. Having burned through his father's savings on embassies, racecourses, and a bachelor's den among the seven or eight finest in Paris, he returns to Guienne resolved on marriage as a form of wisdom. His friend de Marsay calls this the one step that will make him ridiculous; the novel's early arc is the slow, costly test of which man is right.

Madame Evangelista

major

Also known as Natalie, Madame Natalie Evangelista, the prodigal Madame Evangelista

Madame Evangelista presides over the Evangelista household as its true strategist, weighing Paul de Manerville's title and acres against her Natalie's dowry with the precision of a notary. Her past — whispered of as prodigal — and her determination that her daughter marry brilliantly give her a hunger that polite Bordeaux only half conceals. She matters because the marriage settlement is not a romance but a negotiation, and she is the one holding the pen.

Mathias

supporting

Also known as old Mathias, Maître Mathias, good Maître Mathias, dear Mathias

Mathias served Paul's avaricious father, managed Lanstrac while the heir toured Naples, Madrid, and London, and preserved the revenues his master was busy spending. He is the novel's voice of patient provincial sense — the man who knows the land, the contracts, and the true state of the fortune. As the settlement is drafted, his loyalty to Paul collides with his suspicion of the Evangelista side, and his caution becomes the reader's best guide to what is really at stake.

Mademoiselle Natalie Evangelista

major

Also known as Natalie, Mademoiselle Evangelista, Evangelista, Dear Natalie

Natalie Evangelista has been raised by her mother to be the perfect match: lovely, well-bred, and equipped with a fortune that makes her the object of Bordeaux's most ambitious calculations. Around her the notaries circle, the suitors present themselves, and the settlement is argued clause by clause, while she herself remains poised between obedience and something harder to name. Her presence turns a financial transaction into a question the novel keeps asking: who, in this marriage, is really being acquired?

Maître Solonet

supporting

Also known as Solonet, that contentious little Solonet

Solonet is the Evangelista family's man of business, a sharp-tongued provincial attorney who treats the marriage settlement as a battlefield and each article as a position to be defended. Where old Mathias counsels patience, Solonet presses, disputes, and maneuvers, turning what should be a formality into a contest of professional pride. His rivalry with Mathias gives the negotiation its comic and its dangerous edge, since the fortune being divided is Paul's future.

Henri de Marsay

supporting

Also known as de Marsay, Monsieur de Marsay, Marquis Henri de Marsay

De Marsay is the brilliant, cold-eyed man of the world whose long speech against marriage opens the book's central argument. He knows Paul's weaknesses exactly — the good horseman who cannot hold the reins of a household — and predicts, with cruel accuracy, a wife who will gallop him into the ditch. He is not a villain but a mirror: his cynicism frames the question of whether Paul's domestic ambitions are wisdom or self-delusion.

Madame de Manerville

minor

Also known as Madame la Comtesse de Manerville, Comtesse de Manerville

Paul's mother, concerned about her son's marriage.

Josette

minor

A maid in the Evangelista household.

Comte de Manerville

minor

Also known as Monsieur de Manerville, Monsieur le Comte, le Comte, that nincompoop Manerville

Paul's father, a traditional nobleman with conservative views.

Auguste de Maulincour

minor

Also known as Auguste

A young officer and friend of the Manerville family.

Élie Magus

minor

A wealthy art collector and moneylender.

Monsieur Evangelista

minor

Also known as Evangelista

The deceased father of Natalie, a Spanish merchant.

Baronne de Maulincour

minor

Also known as Madame la Baronne de Maulincour, Madame de Maulincour

Auguste's mother, a friend of Madame de Manerville.

Félix de Vandenesse

minor

Also known as Félix, Vandenesse

A diplomat and acquaintance of Paul de Manerville.

Miss Stevens

minor

Also known as Dinah, Miss Dinah Stevens

An English governess to Natalie Evangelista.

Marquise de Listomère

minor

A society figure mentioned in the marriage negotiations.

Madame de Gyas

minor

A noblewoman and acquaintance of the Manerville family.

Montriveau

minor

A general and friend of de Marsay.