M. Dambreuse

M. Dambreuse belongs to the moneyed, conservative elite that Frederick Moreau spends his youth trying to penetrate, and his household becomes a stage on which the young man's social ambitions are tested. He is a man of influence rather than warmth, and his marriage to a much younger wife creates a quiet tension beneath the polished surface of his salon. His presence in the novel's middle stretch measures the distance between Frederick's dreams of grandeur and the cold machinery of wealth and position that actually governs Paris.