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He became popular with King Joseph, and followed him to Madrid. He was a French Micawber, without the domestic affections of his English counterpart, but with far more brilliant chances. His wife was left to struggle at Marseilles with her own boy to support, and with a host of step-children. What she would have done but for the kindness of her mother, Madame Arnic, it is hard to tell.
His appearance was by no means aristocratic or dignified if seen from a distance, but his defects of person were redeemed by the wondrous sparkle in his eyes. The family of his mother, on the maternal side, was named Lhommaça, and was of Greek origin. It came from the Levant, and its members spoke Greek among themselves. Madame Thiers' father was named Arnic, and his descent was also Levantine.
Mademoiselle Arnic made a love-match in espousing Thiers, a widower, who after the 9th Thermidor had taken refuge under her father's roof. A writer who obtained materials for a sketch of Thiers from the Thiers himself, says,
Meantime Adolphe was adopted and educated by Madame Arnic. She had provided him from his birth with influential patrons in the persons of two well-to-do godfathers. The boy was brought up in one of those beautiful bastides, or sea-and-country villas, which adorn the shores of Provence. There he ran wild with the little peasant boys, and subsequently in Marseilles with the gamins of the city.
But Madame Thiers felt out of place in her son's life, and preferred to return to the property given to Madame Arnic, where she spent the rest of her days with the old lady. Lamartine tells a pretty anecdote of Thiers' relations with his mother. The poet and the statesman had been dining together at a friend's house, in 1830, when Thiers was already a cabinet officer.
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