ABSTRACT
On 5 August 1868 Auguste Potron, an engineer freshly graduated from the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, married Cecile Frottin, the only living child of the richest notary in Paris, in the church of La Madeleine. Édouard Jean-Pierre Frottin had accumulated a considerable fortune: buildings in Paris and elsewhere in France, shares of the Banque de France (then a private institution), assets, bonds and rents. His daughter’s marriage contract, adorned by the elegantly curled signatures of about fifty family members and friends, had been signed a few weeks before the wedding. On Auguste’s side we find the autographs of his father, a barrister, of his elder sister Elise, who was married to the rich landowner Emile Leemans, and of many prominent citizens. On Cécile’s side the signatures of both parents were surrounded by those of acquaintances representing the law, the army and the Church. The contract was signed in Frottin’s apartment in the first district of Paris, 368 rue Saint-Honore. Frottin owned all of ‘the 368’, as this four-storey building surrounding a large courtyard was affectionately known, and the newly wedded couple also settled there, in an apartment located on the third floor.
