He accumulated pictures by old masters, and precious sculptures.

At fifty he had known all the most beautiful women of the stage, and many in society.

He enjoyed everything worldly with the brutality of his temperament and the shrewdness of his mind.
Poor Madame Montessuy, economical and careful, languished at Joinville, delicate and poor, under the frowns of twelve gigantic caryatides which held a ceiling on which Lebrun had painted the Titans struck by Jupiter.
There, in the iron cot, placed at the foot of the large bed, she died one night of sadness and exhaustion, never having loved anything on earth except her husband and her little drawing-room in the Rue Maubeuge.
She never had had any intimacy with her daughter, whom she felt instinctively too different from herself, too free, too bold at heart; and she divined in Therese, although she was sweet and good, the strong Montessuy blood, the ardor which had made her suffer so much, and which she forgave in her husband, but not in her daughter.
But Montessuy recognized his daughter and loved her.

Like most hearty, full-blooded men, he had hours of charming gayety.

Although he lived out of his house a great deal, he breakfasted with her almost every day, and sometimes took her out walking.