WAHLENFER or WALHENFER, wealthy German merchant who was murdered at the "Red Inn," near Andenach, Rhenish Prussia, October, 1799. The deed was done by Jean-Frederic Taillefer, then a surgeon and under- assistant-major in the French army, who suffered his comrade, Prosper Magnan, to be executed for the crime. Wahlenfer was a short, heavy-set man of rotund appearance, with frank and cordial manners. He was proprietor of a large pin-manufactory on the outskirts of Neuwied. He was from Aix-la-Chapelle. Possibly Wahlenfer was an assumed name. [The Red Inn.]
WALLENROD-TUSTALL-BARTENSTILD (Baron de), born in 1742, banker at Frankfort-on-the-Main; married in 1804, his only daughter, Bettina, to Charles Mignon de la Bastie, then only a lieutenant in the French army; died in 1814, following some disastrous speculations in cotton. [Modeste Mignon.]
WATSCHILDINE, a London firm which did business with F. de Nucingen, the banker. On a dark autumn evening in 1821, the cashier, Rodolphe Castanier, was surprised by the satanic John Melmoth, while he was in the act of forging the name of his employer on some letters of credit drawn on the Watschildine establishment. [Melmoth Reconciled.]
WATTEBLED, grocer in Soulanges, Bourgogne, in 1823; father of the beautiful Madame Plissoud; was in middle class society; kept a store on the first floor of a house belonging to Soudry, the mayor. [The Peasantry.]
WATTEVILLE (Baron de), Besancon gentleman of Swiss descent; last descendant of the well known Dom Jean de Watteville, the renegade Abbe of Baumes (1613-1703); small and very thin, rather deficient mentally; spent his life in a cabinet-maker's establishment "enjoying utter ignorance"; collected shells and geological specimens; usually in good humor. After living in the Comte, "like a bug in a rug," in 1815 he married Clotilde-Louise de Rupt, who domineered over him completely. As soon as her parents died, about 1819, he lived with her in the beautiful Rupt house on rue de la Prefecture, a piece of property which included a large garden extending along the rue du Perron. By his wife, the Baron de Watteville had one daughter, whom he loved devotedly, so much, indeed, that he lost all authority over her. M. de Watteville died in 1836, as a result of his fall into the lake on his estate of Rouxey, near Besancon. He was buried on an islet in this same lake, and his wife, making great show of her sorrow, had erected thereon a Gothic monument of marble like the one to Heloise and Abelard in the Pere-Lachaise. [Albert Savarus.]
WATTEVILLE (Baronne de), wife of the preceding, and after his death of Amedee de Soulas. (See Soulas, Madame A. de.)
WATTEVILLE (Rosalie de), only daughter of the preceding couple; born in 1816; a blonde with colorless cheeks and pale-blue eyes; slender and frail of body; resembled one of Albert Durer's saints. Reared under her mother's stern oversight, accustomed to the most rigid religious observances, kept in ignorance of all worldly matters, she entirely concealed uner her modesty of manner and retiring disposition her iron character, and her romantic audacity, so like that of her great-uncle, the Abbe de Watteville; and which was increased by the resoluteness and pride of the Rupt blood; although destined to marry Amedee de Soulas, "la fleur de pois"[*] of Besancon, she became enamoured of the attorney, Albert Savaron de Savarus. By successfully carrying out her schemes she separated him from the Duchesse d'Argaiolo, although these two were mutually in love--a separation which caused Savarus great despair. He never knew of Rosalie's affection for him, and withdrew to the Grande Chartreuse. Mademoiselle de Watteville then lived for some time in Paris with her mother, who was then the wife of Amedee de Soulas. She tried to see the Duchesse d'Argaiolo, who, believing Savarus faithless, had given her hand to the Duc de Rhetore. In February, 1838, on meeting her at a charity ball given for the benefit of the former civil pensioners, Rosalie made an appointment with her for the Opera ball, when she told her former rival the secret of her manoeuvres against Madame de Rhetore, and of her conduct as regards the attorney. Mademoiselle de Watteville retired finally to Rouxey--a place which she left, only to take a trip in 1841 on an unknown mission, from which she came back seriously crippled, having lost an arm and a leg in a boiler explosion on a steamboat. Henceforth she devoted her life to the exercises of religion, and left her retreat no more. [Albert Savarus.]
[*] Title of one of the first editions of "A Marriage Settlement."