Source note

NOURRISSON (Madame), was formerly, under the Empire, attached to the service of the Prince d'Ysembourg in Paris. The sight of the disorderly life of a "great lady" of the times decided Madame Nourrisson's profession. She set up shop as a dealer in old clothes, and was also known as mistress of various houses of shame. Intimate relations with Jacqueline Collin, continued for more than twenty years, made this two-fold business profitable. The two matrons willingly exchanged, at times, names and business signs, resources and profits. It was in the old clothes shop, on the rue Neuve-Saint-Marc, that Frederic de Nucingen bargained for Esther van Gobseck. Towards the end of Charles X.'s reign, one of Madame Nourrisson's establishments, on rue Saint-Barbe, was managed by La Gonore; in the time of Louis Philippe another—a secret affair—existed at the so-called "Pate des Italiens"; Valerie Marneffe and Wenceslas Steinbock were once caught there together. Madame Nourrisson, first of the name, evidently continued to conduct her business on the rue Saint-Marc, since, in 1845, she narrated the minutiae of it to Madame Mahuchet before an audience composed of the well-known trio, Bixiou, Lora and Gazonal, and related to them her own history, disclosing to them the secrets of her own long past beginnings in life. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. Cousin Betty. The Unconscious Humorists.]