342 



LACIIAISE LACLOS. 



made Lace'ped*' a member of tlie conservative senate, , 

 ami conferred on Jiim the dignity of grand chancel- 

 lor of the legion of honour. Lacepede became one of 

 the most zealous adherents of the emperor, ami dur- 

 ing tlie ten years of the imperial reign, few public 

 celebrations occurred at which he did not appear as 

 an orator. His benevolence and his inattention to 

 his own affairs involved him in debt. Napoleon, 

 therefore, gave him a salary of 40,000 francs. After 

 the first restoration, Lace'pede lost his situation of 

 grand chancellor of the legion of honour, but was 

 raised to the peerage by the king. During the 

 hundred days, the emperor appointed him grand 

 master of the university ; but he declined this office, 

 and devoted himself solely to the sciences. In 1817, 

 he published a new edition of Button's works, and 

 announced, at the same time, that, at the desire of 

 his deceased friend Lagrangc, he intended to publish 

 his Theory on the Formation of Comets. He likewise 

 published a continuation of the work on theCetacea, 

 commenced by his great predecessors. His History 

 of Fishes (5 volumes, 4to.), is considered his princi- 

 pal work. The complete collection of his works, in 

 which are included two small novels, which appeared 

 anonymously, and the opera Omphale, is voluminous. 

 Lace'pede could adorn the driest subjects with the 

 graces of a brilliant style. Ho died Oct. 6, 1825, at 

 his country-seat Epinay, near St Denis, of the small- 

 pox. Villeneuve wrote his Eloge H is/or ique (Paris, 

 1826). Of Lacepede's very defective Histoire Civile 

 et Militaire tie f Europe (from the end of the fifth, till 

 the middle of the eighteenth century), in eighteen 

 volumes, tlie two first volumes appeared after his 

 death Paris, 1826. 



LACIIAISE, FRANCOIS D'Aix DE, confessor of 

 Louis XIV., member of the congregation of Jesuits, 

 was born in the chateau tCAix, in August, 1624. 

 Tlie family D'Aix de Lachaise was one of the most 

 respectable in France, and a grand uncle of Frangois 

 de Lachaise, father Cotton, had been confessor of 

 Henry IV. In the Jesuit college at Rohan, which 

 had been founded by one of his ancestors, Lachaise 

 commenced his course of studies, and finished it at 

 Lyons. He was the provincial of his order, when 

 Louis, on the death of his former confessor, father 

 Ferrier, appointed Lachaise his successor. This 

 appointment occasioned surprise, because, on the one 

 hand, the disputes between the parties of Jansenists, 

 Molinists, &c., divided the court of Louis XIV., 

 already infected, by the example of the king, with a 

 sickly kind of devotion, as also the capital, which 

 fluctuated, in imitation of the court, between licen- 

 tiousness and bigotry ; and, on the other hand, no 

 Jesuit, since father Cotton, had been chosen to this 

 important situation. The new confessor was soon 

 involved in a web of court intrigues. Mine, de 

 Montespan and Mme. de Maintenon, the Jansenists 

 and Jesuits, stood opposed to each other, and Louis, 

 moved by sensuality and superstition, wavered like a 

 reed between these parties. Nevertheless, Lachaise 

 maintained his ground, although, he was equally 

 obnoxious to Mme. de Montespan and Mme. de 

 Maintenon, who frequently expressed their dislike 

 to him in bitter sarcasms. On every occasion at 

 the famous declaration of the French clergy respect- 

 ing the liberties of the Gallican church, at the revo- 

 ntion of the edict of Nantes, on occasion of the dis- 

 putes of the Quietists, at the marriage of Mme. de 

 Maintenon with the king (1686), and similar impor- 

 tant events of the time father Lachaise, in conse- 

 quence of his office, was more or less forced to play 

 a part ; and, although he reflected well on every 

 step he took, he constantly received the severest 

 reproaches from both parties. The most intelligent 

 men, however, never judged unfavourably of his pri- 



vate character ami his conduct; and St Simon, who 

 was no friend to the Jesuits, as well as Voltaire, in 

 liis account of the age of Louis XIV., De Boza, 

 Spon, and others, acknowledge, that the confessor of 

 the vainest monarch, and the mediator between the 

 most exasperated parties, knew how to conduct 

 himself, tinder all circumstances, with address, cool- 

 ness, ami sagacity, and that, although a zealous 

 Jesuit, he never allowed himself to be drawn into 

 violent measures against his opponents. That Louis 

 formally married Mme. de Maintenon, Voltaire attri- 

 butes principally to the counsels of Lachaise; but 

 that this marriage remained secret, and was not 

 publicly acknowledged, according to the desire of 

 that ambitious woman, may likewise be attributed to 

 Lachaise, who, on this account, had constantly to 

 endure her hatred. Lachaise, maintaining his ground 

 in the favour of his monarch till his end, and acting 

 as his counsellor, even when age and weakness had 

 almost converted him into a living skeleton, and 

 weakened his faculties, died January, 1709, at the 

 age of eighty-five. He left philosophical, theologi 

 cal, and archaeological works. His taste for the study 

 of numismatics, and the great share which he had in 

 the improvement of this branch of science in France, 

 are well known. Louis XIV. had a country-house 

 built for him at the end of the present 'Boulevard 

 nett/s, which, at that time, owing to its situation on 

 a hill, received the name of Mount-Louis. Its exten- 

 sive garden now forms the cemetery of J'ere 

 Lachaise, the largest in Paris. (See Cemetery.) 

 Many splendid monuments now adorn the place, 

 where, formerly, the courtiers of Louis XIV. used to 

 meet, to pay their respects to the confessor of their 

 absolute master. The situation of the burying- 

 place, on the declivity of a hill, affords one of the 

 most delightful views of a principal part of the city 

 and its suburbs. At the approach of the allies, in 

 1814, this burial-place was fortified, and defended by 

 the students of the polytechnical and veterinary 

 school. The Russians, in storming it, did it great 

 injury : the shaded walks, particularly, suffered by 

 the bivouac of the troops, but have since been 

 repaired. A short time previous to the second 

 taking of Paris (1815), viz. from June 24 till July 

 8, no burials took place in the cemetery of Pi-re 

 Lachaise, on account of the troops which surrounded 

 the capital. During this time, the dead were buried 

 in the cemetery of Ste. Marguerite, situated in the 

 town, which had been long out of use. 



LACHRYMvE CHRISTI (Latin, tears of Christ); 

 a superior kind of Italian wine, so called, it is said, 

 because it drops like tears from the press, before the 

 grapes are subjected to any pressure except their 

 own weight. It is dark-red, and the grape grows at 

 the foot, and to a certain height, on the sides, of 

 mount Vesuvius. On several of the Greek islands, 

 also, a kind of wine is produced in the same way. 



LACHRYMATORIES (i. e. tear-bottles; from 

 lachryma, Latin, a tear); small glass or earthen ves- 

 sels found in tombs, so called, because they were 

 supposed to have been used by the, ancient Romans 

 to collect the tears of the friends of the deceased. 

 Some of them contain the impression of one or of 

 two eyes. They are now considered to have been 

 used for containing aromatic liquids, to be poured 

 upon the funeral pile. 



LACLOS, PIERRE-FRANCOIS CHODKRI.OS DE, author 

 of the famous romance Lus Liaisons tj<tgcrei(scs, 

 which first appeared in 1782, was born at Amiens, in 

 1741, and, before the revolution, was a French 

 officer of artillery, and secretary to the duke of 

 Orleans. Laclos was considered, when he was 

 young, as one of the most talented and agreeable, 

 ami, in a moral point of view, as one of the most 



