In one day all the usual orders were conferred on him, and even the great preacher Massillon consented to take part in the ceremonies. His next aim was the cardinalate, and, after long and most profitable negotiations on the part of Pope Clement XI., the red hat was given to him by Innocent XIII. (1721), whose election was largely due to the bribes of Dubois. It is estimated that this cardinalate cost France about eight million francs. In the following year he was named first minister of France (August). He was soon after received at the French Academy; and, to the disgrace of the French clergy, he was named president of their assembly.
When Louis XV. attained his majority in 1723 Dubois remained chief minister. He had accumulated an immense private fortune, possessing in addition to his see the revenues of seven abbeys. He was, however, a prey to the most terrible pains of body and agony of mind. His health was ruined by his debaucheries, and a surgical operation became necessary. This was almost immediately followed by his death, at Versailles, on the 10th of August 1723. His portrait was thus drawn by the duc de St Simon:—“He was a little, pitiful, wizened, herring-gutted man, in a flaxen wig, with a weasel’s face, brightened by some intellect. All the vices—perfidy, avarice, debauchery, ambition, flattery—fought within him for the mastery. He was so consummate a liar that, when taken in the fact, he could brazenly deny it. Even his wit and knowledge of the world were spoiled, and his affected gaiety was touched with sadness, by the odour of falsehood which escaped through every pore of his body.” This famous picture is certainly biassed. Dubois was unscrupulous, but so were his contemporaries, and whatever vices he had, he gave France peace after the disastrous wars of Louis XIV.
In 1789 appeared Vie privée du Cardinal Dubois, attributed to one of his secretaries, Mongez; and in 1815 his Mémoires secrets et correspondance inédite, edited by L. de Sevelinges. See also A. Cheruel, Saint-Simon et l’abbé Dubois; L. Wiesener, Le Régent, l’abbé Dubois et les Anglais (1891); and memoirs of the time.
DUBOIS, JEAN ANTOINE (1765–1848), French Catholic missionary in India, was ordained in the diocese of Viviers in 1792, and sailed for India in the same year under the direction of the Missions Étrangères. He was at first attached to the Pondicherry mission, and worked in the southern districts of the present Madras Presidency. On the fall of Seringapatam in 1799 he went to Mysore to reorganize the Christian community that had been shattered by Tipu Sultan. Among the benefits which he conferred upon his impoverished flock were the founding of agricultural colonies and the introduction of vaccination as a preventive of smallpox. But his great work was his record of Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies. Immediately on his arrival in India he saw that the work of a Christian missionary should be based on a thorough acquaintance with the innermost life and character of the native population. Accordingly he abjured European society, adopted the native style of clothing, and made himself in habit and costume as much like a Hindu as he could. He gained an extraordinary welcome amongst people of all castes and conditions, and is still spoken of in many parts of South India with affection and esteem as “the prince’s son, the noblest of Europeans.” Although Dubois modestly disclaimed the rank of an author, his collections were not so much drawn from the Hindu sacred books as from his own careful and vivid observations, and it is this, united to a remarkable prescience, that makes his work so valuable. It is divided into three parts: (1) a general view of society in India, and especially of the caste system; (2) the four states of Brahminical life; (3) religion—feasts, temples, objects of worship. Not only does the abbé give a shrewd, clear-sighted, candid account of the manners and customs of the Hindus, but he provides a very sound estimate of the British position in India, and makes some eminently just observations on the difficulties of administering the Empire according to Western notions of civilization and progress with the limited resources that are available. Dubois’s French MS. was purchased for eight thousand rupees by Lord William Bentinck for the East India Company in 1807; in 1816 an English translation was published, and of this edition about 1864 a curtailed reprint was issued. The abbé, however, largely recast his work, and of this revised text (now in the India Office) an edition with notes was published in 1897 by H. K. Beauchamp. Dubois left India in January 1823, with a special pension conferred on him by the East India Company, and on reaching Paris was appointed director of the Missions Étrangères, of which he afterwards became superior (1836–1839). He translated into French the famous book of Hindu fables called Panchatantra, and also a work called The Exploits of the Guru Paramarta. Of more interest were his Letters on the State of Christianity in India, in which he asserted his opinion that under existing circumstances there was no human possibility of so overcoming the invincible barrier of Brahminical prejudice as to convert the Hindus as a nation to any sect of Christianity. He acknowledged that low castes and outcastes might be converted in large numbers, but of the higher castes he wrote: “Should the intercourse between individuals of both nations, by becoming more intimate and more friendly, produce a change in the religion and usages of the country, it will not be to turn Christians that they will forsake their own religion, but rather ... to become mere atheists.” He died in 1848.
DUBOIS, PAUL (1829–1905), French sculptor and painter, was born at Nogent-sur-Seine on the 18th of July 1829. He studied law to please his family, and art to please himself, and finally adopted the latter, and placed himself under Toussaint. After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, Dubois went to Rome. His first contributions to the Paris Salon (1860) were busts of “The Countess de B.” and “A Child.” For his first statues, “St John the Baptist” and “Narcissus at the Bath” (1863), he was awarded a medal of the second class. The statue of “The Infant St John,” which had been modelled in Florence in 1860, was exhibited in Paris in bronze, and was acquired by the Luxemburg. “A Florentine Singer of the Fifteenth Century,” one of the most popular statuettes in Europe, was shown in 1865; “The Virgin and Child” appeared in the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1867; “The Birth of Eve” was produced in 1873, and was followed by striking busts of Henner, Dr Parrot, Paul Baudry, Pasteur, Gounod and Bonnat, remarkable alike for life, vivacity, likeness, refinement and subtle handling. The chief work of Paul Dubois was “The Tomb of General Lamoricière” in the cathedral of Nantes, a brilliant masterpiece conceived in the Renaissance spirit, with allegorical figures and groups representing Warlike Courage, Charity, Faith and Meditation, as well as bas-reliefs and enrichments; the two first-named works were separately exhibited in the Salon of 1877. The medallions represent Wisdom, Hope, Justice, Force, Rhetoric, Prudence and Religion. The statue of the “Constable Anne de Montmorency” was executed for Chantilly, and that of “Joan of Arc” (1889) for the town of Reims. The Italian influence which characterized the earlier work of Dubois disappeared as his own individuality became clearly asserted. As a painter he restricted himself mainly to portraiture. “My Children” (1876) being probably his most noteworthy achievement. His drawings and copies after the Old Masters are of peculiar excellence: they include “The Dead Christ” (after Sebastian del Piombo) and “Adam and Eve” (after Raphael). In 1873 Dubois was appointed keeper of the Luxemburg Museum. He succeeded Guillaume as director of the École des Beaux-Arts, 1878, and Perraud as member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Twice at the Salon he obtained the medal of honour (1865 and 1876), and once at the Universal Exhibition (1878). He also won numerous other distinctions, and was appointed grand cross of the Legion of Honour. He was made a member of several European orders, and in 1895 was elected an honorary foreign academician of the Royal Academy of London. He died at Paris in 1905.
DUBOIS, PIERRE (c. 1250–c. 1312), French publicist in the reign of Philip the Fair, was the author of a series of political pamphlets embodying original and daring views. He was known to Jean du Tillet in the 16th, and to Pierre Dupuy in the 17th century, but remained practically forgotten until the
