HOURDEQUIN (LEON), son of Alexandre Hourdequin. He had an intense hatred of the soil and became a soldier, being promoted Captain after Solferino. He did not visit his home more than once a year, and was much annoyed to discover the liaison between his father and Jacqueline Cognet. He endeavoured to get the latter into disgrace, but the only effect was to make a complete breach between his father and himself. La Terre.
HOURDEQUIN (MADEMOISELLE), the second child of Alexandre Hourdequin. She was a delicate and charming girl, tenderly loved by her father. She died young, a short time after her mother. La Terre.
HOUTELARD, a fisherman of Bonneville, whose house was washed away after the destruction by the sea of the barricade erected by Lazare Chanteau. La Joie de Vivre.
HUBERT, a chasuble-maker who lived in a house immediately adjoining the cathedral of Beaumont. “For four hundred years the line of Huberts, embroiderers from father to son, had lived in this house.” At twenty years of age he fell in love with a young girl of sixteen, Hubertine, and as her mother refused to give her consent to their union they ran away and were married. On the morning after Christmas, 1860, he found the child Angelique lying in a fainting condition in the snow outside the cathedral door. Having taken her into his house, he and his wife soon became attached to her, and as they had no children, ultimately adopted her as their daughter. Le Reve.
HUBERTINE, wife of the preceding. At the age of sixteen she fell in love with Hubert, the chasuble-maker, and as her mother, widow of a magistrate, would not give her consent, they ran away and were married. A year later she went to the deathbed of her mother, who, however, disinherited her and gave her her curse. “So affected was she by the terrible scene that her infant, born soon after, died.” The Huberts had no other children, and after twenty-four years they still mourned the little one they had lost. She warmly approved of the adoption by her husband and herself of the foundling child Angelique, whom she treated with the greatest kindness. From the bitterness of her own experience she had a horror of disobedience to parents, and when she found that the consent of Monseigneur d’Hautecoeur could not be obtained to a marriage between his son Felicien and Angelique, she did all she could to sever the lovers. In this she was successful for a time, until the illness of Angelique, and her miraculous recovery, induced the Bishop to give his consent. Le Reve.