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 refrain voicing the miseries of marriage. Evidence in favour of La Sale’s authorship is brought forward by M. E. Gossart (Bibliophile belge, 1871, pp. 83-7), who quotes from his didactic treatise of La Salle a passage paraphrased from St Jerome’s treatise against Jovinian which contains the chief elements of the satire. Gaston Paris (Revue de Paris, Dec. 1897) expressed an opinion that to find anything like the malicious penetration by which La Sale divines the most intimate details of married life, and the painful exactness of the description, it is necessary to travel as far as Balzac. The theme itself was common enough in the middle ages in France, but the dialogue of the Quinze Joyes is unusually natural and pregnant. Each of the fifteen vignettes is perfect in its kind. There is no redundance. The diffuseness of romance is replaced by the methods of the writers of the fabliaux.

In the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles the Italian novella is naturalized in France. The book is modelled on the Decameron of Boccaccio, and owes something to the Latin Facetiae of the contemporary scholar Poggio; but the stories are rarely borrowed, and in cases where the Nouvelles have Italian parallels they appear to be independent variants. In most cases the general immorality of the conception is matched by the grossness of the details, but the ninety-eighth story narrates what appears to be a genuine tragedy, and is of an entirely different nature from the other contes. It is another version of the story of Floridam et Elvide already mentioned.

Not content with allowing these achievements to La Sale, some critics have proposed to ascribe to him also the farce of Maître Pathelin.

The best editions of La Sale’s undoubted and reputed works are:—Petit Jehan de Saintré by J. M. Guichard (1843); Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles by Thomas Wright (Bibl. elzévérienne, 1858); Les Quinze Joyes de mariage by P. Jannet (Bibl. elzév., 1857). La Salade was printed more than once during the 16th century. La Salle was never printed. For its contents see E. Gossart in the Bibliophile belge (1871, pp. 77 et seq.). See also the authorities quoted above, and Joseph Nève, Antoine de la Salle, sa vie et ses ouvrages suivi du Réconfort de Madame de Fresne et de fragments et documents inédits (1903), who argues for the rejection of Les Quinze Joyes and the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles from La Sale’s works; Pietro Toldo, Contributo allo studio della novella francese del XV e XVI secolo (1895), and a review of it by Gaston Paris in the Journal des Savants (May 1895); L. Stern, “Versuch über Antoine de la Salle,” in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, vol. xlvi.; and G. Raynaud, “Un Nouveau Manuscrit du Petit Jehan de Saintré,” in Romania, vol. xxxi.

 LASALLE, ANTOINE CHEVALIER LOUIS COLLINET, (1775–1809), French soldier, belonged to a noble family in Lorraine. His grandfather was Abraham Fabert, marshal of France. Entering the French army at the age of eleven, he had reached the rank of lieutenant when the Revolution broke out. As an aristocrat, he lost his commission, but he enlisted in the ranks, where his desperate bravery and innate power of command soon distinguished him. By 1795 he had won back his grade, and was serving as a staff-officer in the army of Italy. On one occasion, at Vicenza, he rivalled Seydlitz’s feat of leaping his horse over the parapet of a bridge to avoid capture, and, later, in Egypt, he saved Davout’s life in action. By 1800 he had become colonel, and in one combat in that year he had two horses killed under him, and broke seven swords. Five years later, having attained the rank of general of brigade, he was present with his brigade of light cavalry at Austerlitz. In the pursuit after Jena in 1806, though he had but 600 hussars and not one piece of artillery with him, he terrified the commandant of the strong fortress of Stettin into surrender, a feat rarely equalled save by that of Cromwell on Bletchingdon House. Made general of division for this exploit, he was next in the Polish campaign, and at Heilsberg saved the life of Murat, grand duke of Berg. When the Peninsular War began, Lasalle was sent out with one of the cavalry divisions, and at Medina de Rio Seco, Gamonal and Medellin broke every body of troops which he charged. A year later, at the head of one of the cavalry divisions of the Grande Armée he took part in the Austrian war. At Wagram he was killed at the head of his men. With the possible exception of Curély, who was in 1809 still unknown, Napoleon never possessed a better leader of light horse. Wild and irregular in his private life, Lasalle was far more than a beau sabreur. To talent and experience he added that power of feeling the pulse of the battle which is the true gift of a great leader. A statue of him was erected in Lunéville in 1893. His remains were brought from Austria to the Invalides in 1891.

 LA SALLE, RENÉ ROBERT CAVELIER, (1643–1687), French explorer in North America, was born at Rouen on the 22nd of November 1643. He taught for a time in a school (probably Jesuit) in France, and seems to have forfeited his claim to his father’s estate by his connexion with the Jesuits. In 1666 he became a settler in Canada, whither his brother, a Sulpician abbé, had preceded him. From the Seminary of St Sulpice in Montreal La Salle received a grant on the St Lawrence about 8 m. above Montreal, where he built a stockade and established a fur-trading post. In 1669 he sold this post (partly to the Sulpicians who had granted it to him) to raise funds for an expedition to China by way of the Ohio, which he supposed, from the reports of the Indians, to flow into the Pacific. He passed up the St Lawrence and through Lake Ontario to a Seneca village on the Genesee river; thence with an Iroquois guide he crossed the mouth of the Niagara (where he heard the noise of the distant falls) to Ganastogue, an Iroquois colony at the head of Lake Ontario, where he met Louis Joliet and received from him a map of parts of the Great Lakes. La Salle’s missionary comrades now gave up the quest for China to preach among the Indians. La Salle discovered the Ohio river, descended it at least as far as the site of Louisville, Kentucky, and possibly, though not probably, to its junction with the Mississippi, and in 1669–1670, abandoned by his few followers, made his way back to Lake Erie. Apparently he passed through Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and some way down the Illinois river. Little is known of these explorations, for his journals are lost, and the description of his travels rests only on the testimony of the anonymous author of a Histoire de M. de la Salle. Before 1673 La Salle had returned to Montreal. Becoming convinced, after the explorations of Marquette and Joliet in 1673, that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, he conceived a vast project for exploring that river to its mouth and extending the French power to the lower Mississippi Valley. He secured the support of Count Frontenac, then governor of Canada, and in 1674 and 1677 visited France, obtaining from Louis XIV. on his first visit a patent of nobility and a grant of lands about Fort Frontenac, on the site of the present Kingston, Ontario, and on his second visit a patent empowering him to explore the West at his own expense, and giving him the buffalo-hide monopoly. Late in the year 1678, at the head of a small party, he started from Fort Frontenac. He established a post above Niagara Falls, where he spent the winter, and where, his vessel having been wrecked, he built a larger ship, the “Griffon,” in which he sailed up the Great Lakes to Green Bay (Lake Michigan), where he arrived in September 1679. Sending back the “Griffon” freighted with furs, by which he hoped to satisfy the claims of his creditors, he proceeded to the Illinois river, and near what is now Peoria, Illinois, built a fort, which he called Fort Crèvecœur. Thence he detached Father Hennepin, with one companion, to explore the Illinois to its mouth, and, leaving his lieutenant, Henri de Tonty (c. 1650–c. 1702), with about fifteen men, at Fort Crèvecœur, he returned by land, afoot, to Canada to obtain needed supplies, discovering the fate of the “Griffon” (which proved to have been lost), thwarting the intrigues of his enemies and appeasing his creditors. In July 1680 news reached him at Fort Frontenac that nearly all Tonty’s men had deserted, after destroying or appropriating most of the supplies; and that twelve of them were on their way to kill him as the surest means of escaping punishment. 