PIUS VII. (Barnabas Chiaramonti), lived from 1740 till 1823; pope. Having been asked by letter in 1806, if a woman might go /decollete/ to the ball or to the theatre, without endangering her welfare, he answered his correspondent, Madame Angelique de Granville, in a manner befitting the gentle Fenelon. [A Second Home.]

PIEDEFER (Abraham), descendant of a middle class Calvinist family of Sancerre, whose ancestors in the sixteenth century were skilled workmen, and subsequently woolen-drapers; failed in business during the reign of Louis XVI.; died about 1786, leaving two sons, Moise and Silas, in poverty. [The Muse of the Department.]

PIEDEFER (Moise), elder son of the preceding, profited by the Revolution in imitating his forefathers; tore down abbeys and churches; married the only daughter of a Convention member who had been guillotined, and by her had a child, Dinah, later Madame Milaud de la Baudraye; compromised his fortune by his agricultural speculations; died in 1819. [The Muse of the Department.]

PIEDEFER (Silas), son of Abraham Piedefer, and younger brother of the preceding; did not receive, as did Moise Piedefer, his part of the small paternal fortune; went to the Indies; died, about 1837, in New York, with a fortune of twelve hundred thousand francs. This money was inherited by his niece, Madame de la Baudraye, but was seized by her husband. [The Muse of the Department.]

PIEDEFER (Madame Moise), sister-in-law of the preceding, unaffable and excessively pious; pensioned by her son-in-law; lived successively in Sancerre and at Paris with her daughter, Madame de la Baudraye, whom she managed to separate from Etienne Lousteau. [The Muse of the Department.]

PIERQUIN, born about 1786, successor to his father as notary in Douai; distant cousin of the Molina-Claes of rue de Paris, through the Pierquins of Antwerp; self-interested and positive by nature; aspired to the hand of Marguerite Claes, eldest daughter of Balthazar, who afterwards became Madame Emmanuel de Solis; finally married Felicie, a younger sister of his first choice, in the second year of Charles X.'s reign. [The Quest of the Absolute.]

PIERQUIN (Madame), wife of the preceding, born Felicie Claes, found, as a young girl, a second mother in her elder sister, Marguerite. [The Quest of the Absolute.]

PIERQUIN, brother-in-law of the preceding; physician who attended the Claes at Douai. [The Quest of the Absolute.]