This article contains a previously unpublished biography of Gabriel (Gavriil/
Gavrila) L’Abbé Deslondes (1773–1830), a well-known teacher of French and
Latin who served in various educational institutions of St Petersburg. The
information found in the Russian State Historical Archive and the Central State
Historical Archive makes it possible to clarify the facts of life and the motives
behind the actions of a French teacher. L’Abbé Deslondes lived in the Russian
Empire of the early nineteenth century; the material helps discover some
details of professional competition in this field, mechanisms of promotion,
and vicissitudes of relations within the professional community of teachers and
French expatriates. These reasons make the published documents a valuable
historical source that helps put forward the hypothesis that Gabriel L’Abbé
Deslondes, whose life was intertwined with the lives of many St Petersburg
aristocrats, was Pushkin’s inspiration for Monsieur l’Abbé, “француз убогой”
(a starving Gaul (Spalding), a threadbare Frenchman (Mitchell), a poor wretch
of a Frenchman (Nabokov)) that has traditionally been considered a purely
fictional character of Eugene Onegin. An account of L’Abbé Deslondes’s life gives reasons to disprove the school’s interpretation of the Russian epithet
“убогий” interpreted as “заурядный” (mediocre).