# Madame d'Espard — Shorts from Scenes from Private Life character guide

> Madame d'Espard in Shorts from Scenes from Private Life by Honoré de Balzac.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** the late lamented Madame Popinot, Madame d’Espard, Popinot, Madame Popinot

**First appearance:** 0020-the-commission-in-lunacy

## Snapshot

A fashionable marquise whose fragile beauty and self-pity mask an iron constitution and a talent for cold manipulation.

## Who they are

Madame d'Espard presides over one of those brilliant Parisian drawing-rooms where wit sparkles and reputations quietly die. Dr. Bianchon sees through her: the delicate chestnut-haired woman pitying herself is, he insists, a creature of wolfish appetite and tigerish cowardice, capable of sacrificing genuine feeling to social power. Her scheming against her husband and her mastery of appearances make her the story's study in how fashionable women weaponize frailty, and her presence turns a medical conversation into an anatomy of the world's corruption.

## In the story

### [Another Study of Woman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/chapters/another-study-of-woman)

Mentioned as a peer of historical salonnières like Madame Doublet and Madame du Deffant.

### [The Commission in Lunacy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/chapters/the-commission-in-lunacy)

Judge Popinot investigates the Marquis d'Espard's case, moved by his honesty and nobility, while his own secret charitable work among the poor is revealed.

### [The Commission in Lunacy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/chapters/the-commission-in-lunacy)

Madame d'Espard is portrayed as cold, ambitious, and manipulative; she abandons her children and seeks to have her husband declared insane.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/characters/madame_despard
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/shorts_from_scenes_from_private_life_se/characters