Character guide

Bernard Profitendieu

major

Also known as Bernard, Master Bernard, Profitendieu, Young Bernard Profitendieu, old Profitendieu

Bernard burns with the desire to prove he is not merely the product of the respectable Profitendieu household, and his flight from home becomes an experiment in self-invention. He talks his way into serving as Edouard's secretary, drawn to the writer's freedom even as he bristles against his cool detachment. His restless curiosity — about Edouard's journal, about Laura, about the Vedel-Azaïs school — makes him the engine that keeps the novel's middle chapters moving.

Olivier Molinier

major

Also known as Olivier, Molinier, Poor old Olivier

Olivier is the sensitive, admiring boy whom Edouard loves from a distance and whom Passavant collects with compliments. His vanity and craving for approval pull him away from the people who genuinely care for him, and Edouard's journal frets openly that by the time he intervenes it may be too late. His drift between these rival influences is the novel's central study in how a young soul can be shaped — or spoiled — by the company it keeps.

Edouard

major

Also known as Uncle Edouard, X, Edouard X

Edouard is uncle to Olivier, guardian-in-spirit to Bernard, and the diarist whose notebook gives the novel its shifting, self-aware texture. He is generous, curious, and maddeningly detached — he confesses his 'thirst' to anticipate and his inability to come to terms with it, and he treats the people he loves as material he might one day shape into a novel. His habit of watching rather than acting makes him both the book's conscience and its most evasive figure.

Laura Douviers

major

Also known as Laura, Douviers, the Douviers

Laura arrives in Paris pregnant, penniless, and abandoned by the lover she followed there, and Edouard's quiet assistance becomes her lifeline. Her husband Douviers, an excellent if unremarkable man, will raise the child as his own — a resolution Edouard finds tidy but which Bernard, who adores Laura, cannot hear discussed so coolly. She is the thread that ties Bernard, Edouard, and Vincent together, and her predicament exposes how differently each man responds to a woman in need.

Vincent Molinier

supporting

Also known as Vincent, Molinier, Lilian Vincent

Vincent has just finished his medical exams and is torn between science and the need to earn a living, a tension Passavant exploits by hiring him to attend his ailing father. He got Laura with child and left her without means, and the five thousand francs his mother saved for his career are slipping away. His evenings with Passavant and Lady Griffith — witty, hollow, faintly corrosive — show a fine mind being blunted by the company it keeps.

Robert de Passavant

supporting

Also known as The Comte de Passavant, Passavant, Comte Robert de Passavant

Passavant moves through Parisian society with an epigram for every occasion and a secret reason for every friendship — including his sudden interest in Vincent, whom he hires to tend his invalid father. He flatters Olivier, tolerates Vincent, and dismisses his own friends as proven imbeciles, all with the same polished smile. Edouard's journal calls him the type that spreads ruin and receives applause, and his influence over the Molinier brothers is the quiet menace running beneath the novel's social comedy.

Little Boris

supporting

Also known as Boris, little Boris, Mr. Boris, Master Boris

Boris trails after the angelic Bronja on the terrace, refusing walks and telescopes in the same breath, spinning nonsense syllables so no one can understand him. His lying is almost lyrical — a bid for attention, or for angels, from a child who suspects he will always be naughty. Sophroniska watches him with a physician's care, and the gap between her vigilance and his wild inventions makes him one of the novel's most unsettling small mysteries.

George Molinier

supporting

Also known as George, young George, Molinier, the procureur Molinier

George circulates false coins among schoolboys, half innocent tool, half willing delinquent, and the authorities decide to frighten him before he drags the case past the point of no return. His trouble forces Monsieur Profitendieu to Edouard's door, where the magistrate's professional warnings dissolve into sobs about his own runaway son. George matters less for what he did than for the scandal he opens — a boy's petty crime that exposes the rot running under the respectable family.

Strouvilhou

supporting

Also known as virtuous Strouvilhou, a certain Strouvilhou, Victor Strouvilhou, Cousin Strouvilhou

When Passavant decides he has tired of Olivier, it is Strouvilhou he writes to, ready to hand over the review to a man whose usefulness outweighs his scruples. Nicknamed 'virtuous' with unmistakable irony, he moves through the novel's criminal and literary circles with the same unhurried competence, a fixer for schemes that need a respectable face. His arrival marks the moment the counterfeit-coin affair and the world of letters begin to touch, and the moral weather of the book turns colder.

Armand Vedel

supporting

Also known as Armand, Mr. Armand, Armand Vedel

In the Vedel household, where family constraint breeds revolt, Armand cultivates a facile contempt for domestic virtue and watches Sarah's rebellions with an indulgence that feels like a trap. He dreads his own sarcasms being turned on him, yet wields them freely, and his cynicism is less a philosophy than a wound. As Sarah slips out to meet Bernard and Edouard, Armand's empty room and his absent judgment hang over the scene, a reminder that in this family even encouragement is a form of surveillance.

Monsieur Profitendieu

supporting

Also known as Profitendieu, Monsieur Profitendieu

Monsieur Profitendieu runs his household and his court with the same unbending sense of superiority, until Bernard's letter — announcing that he knows he is a bastard and is leaving — reduces him to stamping his foot and weeping before Edouard. The counterfeit-coin case brings him to Edouard's door ostensibly to warn young George, but his real errand is to speak of Bernard, whose desertion has unmade him. His restrained grief, all the more sincere because it was never obligatory, forces the novel's central question: whether Bernard was right to go.

Sarah Vedel

minor

Also known as Sarah, Vedel, Mademoiselle Sarah Vedel

Armand's sister, a free-spirited young woman.

Pauline

minor

Olivier's mother, a caring but anxious figure.

Mme Sophroniska

minor

Also known as Sophroniska, Mme, Madame Sophroniska

A doctor who treats Boris at Saas-Fee.

Madame de La Pérouse

minor

Also known as La Pérouse, Madame de La Pérouse, old La Pérouse

The elderly wife of Monsieur de La Pérouse.

Rachel

minor

Also known as Miss Rachel

A governess or teacher at the Vedel household.

Azaïs

minor

Also known as Monsieur Azaïs, old Azaïs, dear old Azaïs

The elderly head of the Vedel pension.

Ghéridanisol

minor

Also known as Léon, Léon Ghéridanisol, young Ghéridanisol

A young man involved with the Passavant circle.

Monsieur de La Pérouse

minor

Also known as Monsieur de La, La Pérouse, old La Pérouse

An old music master, Edouard's acquaintance.

Lady Lilian

minor

Also known as Lilian, Lady Lilian, Lady Griffith

A wealthy Englishwoman involved with Vincent.

Phiphi

minor

Also known as Master Phiphi

A young boy at the Saas-Fee sanatorium.

Gontran de Passavant

minor

Also known as young Gontran, Gontran, young Passavant

Passavant's younger brother.

Lucien Bercail

minor

Also known as Lucien, Bercail, Little Bercail, little Bercail

A schoolmate of Bernard and Olivier.

Dhurmer

minor

Also known as Mr. Solomon Dhurmer

A jeweler involved in a counterfeiting scheme.

Little Bronja

minor

Also known as Bronja

A sickly child at the sanatorium, friend of Boris.

Madame Profitendieu

minor

Also known as Profitendieu

Bernard's mother.

Felix Douviers

minor

Also known as Felix, Felix Douviers

Laura's husband.

Oscar Molinier

minor

Also known as Oscar Molinier, Molinier, Oscar

Olivier's father, a magistrate.

Philippe Adamanti

minor

Also known as Adamanti, Philippe

A young man associated with the Argonauts group.

Madame Vedel

minor

Also known as Vedel, Seeing Vedel

The mother of the Vedel family.

Antoine

minor

A servant or minor character in the Profitendieu household.

Marguerite

minor

A minor female character, possibly a servant.

Caloub

minor

A young boy mentioned in the narrative.

Séraphine

minor

Also known as the faithful Séraphine

A servant in the Profitendieu household.

Albéric Profitendieu

minor

Bernard's brother.

Justinien

minor

A minor character, possibly a schoolmaster.

Charles

minor

A minor character, possibly a friend of the Moliniers.

Audibert

minor

A minor character mentioned in the novel.

Pastor Vedel

minor

Also known as Pastor Prosper Vedel, Prosper, Vedel

The father of the Vedel family, a pastor.

Madame Molinier

minor

Also known as Molinier

Olivier's mother, also known as Pauline.

Cécile

minor

A minor female character.

Germaine

minor

A minor female character.

Hildebrant

minor

A minor character, possibly a friend of the Argonauts.