# The Monster — Character guide

> Key figures in The Monster by Edgar Saltus.

- [Leilah Verplank](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/leilah_verplank.md): A woman who consents to scandal with open eyes, insisting on daylight and no concealment even as she walks toward her last look at the world.
- [Violet Silverstairs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/violet_silverstairs.md): A mondaine who loves a splendidly obtuse husband without illusions, and who reads Leilah's karma and cigarettes with equal suspicion.
- [Barouffski](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/barouffski.md): A count who rolls a burning woman in tapestry to save her, then calls daily until Violet suspects he set the fire himself.
- [Howard Tempest](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/howard_tempest.md): A lord who answers fate with Madeira and a dead philosopher, gloved in silk and absent when the glass sweeps the house.
- [Aurelia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/aurelia.md): An ingénue who defines love as the affection of somebody else and keeps Buttercups engaged only on the condition that she may be again.
- [Gulian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/gulian.md): The man Leilah begs to kill her rather than leave her, whose trembling arms and hot flush undo every barricade she has raised.
- [De Fresnoy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/de_fresnoy.md): De Fresnoy belongs to the same gilded Parisian set as the Silverstairs, the Helley-Quetgens, and the Barouffskis, and his name surfaces at the Opéra as a marker of how quickly scandal is absorbed and replaced. His duel w
- [Count Kasimiérz Barouffski](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/count_kasimierz_barouffski.md): Barouffski moves through Leilah's life as both husband-figure and predator, having struck her physically and loosed the dogs on Verplank, yet he insists the law is on his side and that time will soften her memory of his 
- [D'Arcy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/d_arcy.md): D'Arcy is the newest figure in Leilah's orbit, seated at her right at the Opéra and seen with her in the Champs Élysées, a proximity Violet Silverstairs insists no honest woman could permit. He neither eats nor drinks, k
- [Emmanuel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/emmanuel.md): A servant or attendant who observes the main events.
- [Mrs. Verplank](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/mrs_verplank.md): Mrs. Verplank is the woman at the center of the Verplank affair — the one who told Gulian she had taken Barouffski as a barricade between them, then flushed when he pressed her, revealing relations and consequences she h
- [Lady Silverstairs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/lady_silverstairs.md): The mother of Violet Silverstairs, a social arbiter.
- [Lord Buttercups](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/lord_buttercups.md): A bumbling aristocrat who provides comic relief.
- [Madame Barouffska](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/madame_barouffska.md): The countess, wife of the elder Barouffski.
- [Lord Silverstairs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/lord_silverstairs.md): The father of Violet, a quiet but influential lord.
- [Marie de Fresnoy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/marie_de_fresnoy.md): A young woman of the Fresnoy family.
- [Camille de Joyeuse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/camille_de_joyeuse.md): A young member of the Joyeuse family.
- [M. Verplank](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/m_verplank.md): A male member of the Verplank family.
- [Baron de Fresnoy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters/baron_de_fresnoy.md): The baron of the Fresnoy family.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_monster_se/characters