neither coquetry nor self-interest to their relation, which was sedulously concealed. Nicolas Fouquet’s curiosity in the matter was one of the causes of his disgrace. In February 1662 there was a storm when Louise refused to tell her lover the relations between Madame (Henrietta) and the comte de Guiche. She fled to an obscure convent at Chaillot, where Louis rapidly followed her. Her enemies, chief of whom was Olympe Mancini, comtesse de Soissons, Mazarin’s niece, sought her downfall by bringing her liaison to the ears of Queen Maria Theresa. She was presently removed from the service of Madame, and established in a small building in the Palais Royal, where in December 1663 she gave birth to a son Charles, who was given in charge to two faithful servants of Colbert. Concealment was practically abandoned after her return to court, and within a week of Anne of Austria’s death in January 1666, La Vallière appeared at mass side by side with Maria Theresa. But her favour was already waning. She had given birth to a second child in January 1665, but both children were dead before the autumn of 1666. A daughter born at Vincennes in October 1666, who received the name of Marie Anne and was known as Mlle de Blois, was publicly recognized by Louis as his daughter in letters-patent making the mother a duchess in May 1667 and conferring on her the estate of Vaujours. In October of that year she bore a son, but by this time her place in Louis’s affections was definitely usurped by Athénaïs de Montespan (q.v.), who had long been plotting against her. She was compelled to remain at court as the king’s official mistress, and even to share Mme de Montespan’s apartments at the Tuileries. She made an attempt at escape in 1671, when she fled to the convent of Ste Marie de Chaillot, only to be compelled to return. In 1674 she was finally permitted to enter the Carmelite convent in the Rue d’Enfer. She took the final vows a year later, when Bossuet pronounced the allocution.
Her daughter married Armand de Bourbon, prince of Conti, in 1680. The count of Vermandois, her youngest born, died on his first campaign at Courtrai in 1683.
La Vallière’s Réflexions sur la miséricorde de Dieu, written after her retreat, were printed by Lequeux in 1767, and in 1860 Réflexions, lettres et sermons, by M. P. Clement (2 vols.). Some apocryphal Mémoires appeared in 1829, and the Lettres de Mme la duchesse de la Vallière (1767) are a corrupt version of her correspondence with the maréchal de Bellefonds. Of modern works on the subject see Arsène Houssaye, Mlle de la Vallière et Mme de Montespan (1860); Jules Lair, Louise de la Vallière (3rd ed., 1902, Eng. trans., 1908); and C. Bonnet, Documents inédits sur Mme de la Vallière (1904).
LAVATER, JOHANN KASPAR (1741–1801), German poet and
physiognomist, was born at Zürich on the 15th of November
1741. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native town, where J. J. Bodmer and J. J. Breitinger were among his teachers. When barely one-and-twenty he greatly distinguished himself by denouncing, in conjunction with his friend, the painter H. Fuseli, an iniquitous magistrate, who was compelled to make restitution of his ill-gotten gains. In 1769 Lavater took orders, and officiated till his death as deacon or pastor in various churches in his native city. His oratorical fervour and genuine depth of conviction gave him great personal influence; he was extensively consulted as a casuist, and was welcomed with demonstrative enthusiasm in his numerous journeys through Germany. His mystical writings were also widely popular. Scarcely a trace of this influence has remained, and Lavater’s name would be
forgotten but for his work on physiognomy, Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (1775–1778). The fame even of this book, which found enthusiastic admirers in France and England, as well as in Germany, rests to a great extent upon the handsome style of publication and the accompanying illustrations. It left, however, the
study of physiognomy (q.v.), as desultory and unscientific as it found it. As a poet, Lavater published Christliche Lieder (1776–1780)
and two epics, Jesus Messias (1780) and Joseph von Arimathia (1794), in the style of Klopstock. More important and characteristic of the religious temperament of Lavater’s age are his introspective Aussichten in die Ewigkeit (4 vols., 1768–1778); Geheimes Tagebuch von einem Beobachter seiner
selbst (2 vols., 1772–1773) and Pontius Pilatus, oder der Mensch in allen Gestalten (4 vols., 1782–1785). From 1774 on, Goethe was intimately acquainted with Lavater, but at a later period he became estranged from him, somewhat abruptly accusing him of superstition and hypocrisy. Lavater had a mystic’s indifference to historical Christianity, and, although esteemed
by himself and others a champion of orthodoxy, was in fact only an antagonist of rationalism. During the later years of his life his influence waned, and he incurred ridicule by some exhibitions of vanity. He redeemed himself by his patriotic conduct during the French occupation of Switzerland, which brought about his
tragical death. On the taking of Zürich by the French in 1799, Lavater, while endeavouring to appease the soldiery, was shot through the body by an infuriated grenadier; he died after long sufferings borne with great fortitude, on the 2nd of January 1801.
Lavater himself published two collections of his writings, Vermischte Schriften (2 vols., 1774–1781), and Kleinere prosaische Schriften (3 vols., 1784–1785). His Nachgelassene Schriften were edited by G. Gessner (5 vols., 1801–1802); Sämtliche Werke (but only poems) (6 vols., 1836–1838); Ausgewählte Schriften (8 vols., 1841–1844). See G. Gessner, Lavaters Lebensbeschreibung (3 vols., 1802–1803); U. Hegner, Beiträge zur Kenntnis Lavaters (1836); F. W. Bodemann, Lavater nach seinem Leben, Lehren und Wirken (1856; 2nd ed., 1877); F. Muncker, J. K. Lavater (1883); H. Waser, J. K. Lavater nach Hegners Aufzeichnungen (1894); J. K. Lavater, Denkschrift zum 100. Todestag (1902).
LAVAUR, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Tarn, 37 m. S.E. of Montauban by rail. Pop. (1906), town 4069; commune 6388. Lavaur stands on the left bank of the Agout, which is here crossed by a railway-bridge and a fine stone bridge of the late 18th century. From 1317 till the Revolution Lavaur was the seat of a bishopric, and there is a cathedral dating from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, with an octagonal bell-tower; a second smaller square tower contains a jaquemart (a statue which strikes the hours with a hammer) of the 16th century. In the bishop’s garden is the statue of Emmanuel Augustin, marquis de Las Cases, one of the companions of Napoleon at St Helena. The town carries on distilling and flour-milling and the manufacture of brushes, plaster and wooden shoes. There are a subprefecture and tribunal of first instance. Lavaur was taken in 1211 by Simon de Montfort during the wars of the Albigenses, and several times during the religious wars of the 16th century.
LAVEDAN, HENRI LÉON ÉMILE (1859– ), French
dramatist and man of letters, was born at Orleans, the son of Hubert Léon Lavedan, a well-known Catholic and liberal journalist. He contributed to various Parisian papers a series of witty tales and dialogues of Parisian life, many of which were collected in volume form. In 1891 he produced at the Théâtre Français Une Famille, followed at the Vaudeville in 1894 by Le Prince d’Aurec, a satire on the nobility, afterwards re-named Les Descendants. Later brilliant and witty pieces were Les Deux noblesses (1897), Catherine (1897), Le Nouveau jeu (1898), Le Vieux marcheur (1899), Le Marquis de Priola (1902), and Varennes (1904), written in collaboration with G. Lenôtre. He had a great success with Le Duel (Comédie Française, 1905), a powerful psychological study of the relations of two brothers. Lavedan was admitted to the French Academy in 1898.
LAVELEYE, ÉMILE LOUIS VICTOR DE (1822–1892), Belgian economist, was born at Bruges on the 5th of April 1822, and educated there and at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, a celebrated establishment in the hands of the Oratorians. He continued his studies at the Catholic university of Louvain and afterwards at Ghent, where he came under the influence of François Huet, the philosopher and Christian Socialist. In 1844 he won a prize with an essay on the language and literature of Provence. In 1847 he published L’Histoire des rois francs, and in 1861 a French version of the Nibelungen, but though he never lost his interest in literature and history, his most important work was in the domain of economics. He was one of a group of young lawyers, doctors and critics, all old pupils of Huet, who met once a week to discuss social and economic questions, and was thus led to
