ietes. She sold liquor to
the employees at the theatre. Nana.

BRU, an old house-painter who lived in a garret in the same
tenement-house as the Coupeaus, where he starved with cold and hunger.
He had lost three sons in the Crimea, and he lived on what he could
pick up, now that for two years past he could hold a brush no longer.
Gervaise Coupeau showed him some kindness and asked him to her famous
birthday party. Things having gone from bad to worse with him, he was
found one morning lying dead in his garret. L'Assommoir.

BRULE (LA), mother of La Pierronne. She was the widow of a miner who had
been killed in the pit, and lived with her daughter at the settlement
known as the Deux-Cent-Quarante. A terrible old woman, frantic to
revenge on the masters the death of her husband, she was the leader in
the outrages perpetrated by the strikers in the Montsou district. It was
she who gave the signal for the attack on the troops, but at the first
volley fired by the soldiers she fell back stiff and crackling like
a bundle of dry faggots, stammering one last oath in the gurgling of
blood. Germinal.

BRUNET (LES), a bourgeois family in the new quarter of Plassans, of whom
Madame Felicite Rougon was jealous. La Fortune des Rougon.

BUDIN (LES), peasants of Rognes, whose daughter was said to have been
cured of a fever by Sourdeau, who cut a live pigeon in two, and applied
the halves to her head. La Terre.

BUQUIN-LECOMTE, a deputy at the Corps Legislatif. He desired leave of
absence. Son Excellence Eugene Rougon.

BURGAT, a blacksmith, one of the band of insurgents which entered
Plassans in December, 1851. La Fortune des Rougon.

BURNE, an English jockey who rode a horse called Spirit in the Grand
Prix de Paris. Nana.

BUSCH, a man of German origin who came to Paris, and engaged in business
of a shady character on the fringe of the Bourse. "In addition to usury
and a secret traffic in jewels and precious stones, he particularly
occupied himself with the purchase of 'bad debts.'" In pursuit of
creditors he was unsparing, and his methods were not infrequently of the
nature of blackmail. Jordon, Madame de Beauvilliers, and Saccard himself
fell into his power, though Saccard refused to submit to extortion.
Another of Busch's lines of business was the purchase of depreciated
shares and debentures, thousands of which he collected together,
selling them to bankrupts who found difficulty in accounting for real or
imaginary losse