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Rh comic situation and incident, and a most amusing faculty of dialogue.

The first edition of Regnard’s works was published in 1731 (5 vols., Rouen and Paris). There is a good selection of almost everything important in the Collection Didot (4 vols., 1819), but there is no absolutely complete edition. The best is that published by Crapelet (6 vols., Paris, 1822). A selection by L. Moland appeared in 1893. See also a Bibliographie et iconographie des œuvres de J. F. Regnard (Paris, Rouquette, 1878); Le Poète J. F. Regnard en son chasteau de Grillon, by J. Guyot (Paris, 1907).

REGNAULT, HENRI (1843–1871), French painter, born at Paris on the 31st October 1843, was the son of (q.v.). On leaving school he successively entered the studios of Montfort, Lamothe and Cabanel, was beaten for the Grand Prix (1863) by Layraud and Montchablon, and in 1864 exhibited two portraits in no wise remarkable at the Salon. In 1866, however, he carried off the Grand Prix with a work of unusual force and distinction—“Thetis bringing the Arms forged by Vulcan to Achilles” (School of the Fine Arts). The past in Italy did not touch him, but his illustrations to Wey’s Rome show how observant he was of actual life and manners; even his “Automedon” (School of Fine Arts), executed in obedience to Academical regulations, was but a lively recollection of a carnival horse-race. At Rome, moreover, Regnault came into Contact with the modern Hispano-Italian school, a school highly materialistic and inclined to regard even the human subject only as one amongst many sources whence to obtain amusement for the eye. The vital, if narrow, energy of this school told on Regnault with ever-increasing force during the few remaining years of his life. In 1868 he had sent to the Salon a life-size portrait of a lady in which he had made one of the first attempts to render the actual character of fashionable modern life. While making a tour in Spain, he saw Prim pass at the head of his troops, and received that lively image of a military demagogue which he afterwards put on canvas, somewhat to the displeasure of his subject. But this work made an appeal to the imagination of the public, whilst all the later productions of Regnault were addressed exclusively to the eye. After a further flight to Africa, 'abridged by the necessities of his position as a pensioner of the school of Rome, he painted “Judith,” then (1870) “Salome,” and, as a work due from the Roman school, dispatched from Tangier the large canvas, “Execution without Hearing under the Moorish Kings,” in which the painter had played with the blood of the victim as if he were a jeweller toying with rubies. The war arose, and found Regnault foremost in the devoted ranks of Buzenval, where he fell on the 19th of January 1871.

REGNAULT, HENRI VICTOR (1810–1878), French chemist and physicist, was born on the 21st of July 1810 at Aix-la-Chapelle. His early life was a struggle with poverty. When a boy he went to Paris and obtained a situation in a large drapery establishment, where he remained, occupying every spare hour in study, until he was in his twentieth year. Then he entered the École Polytechnique, and passed in 1832 to the École des Mines, where he developed an aptitude for experimental chemistry. A few years later he was appointed to a professorship of chemistry at Lyons. His most important contribution to organic chemistry was a series of researches, begun in 1835, on the haloid and other derivatives of unsaturated hydrocarbons. He also studied the alkaloids and organic acids, introduced a classification of the metals according to the facility with which they or their sulphides are oxidized by steam at high temperatures, and effected a comparison of the chemical composition of atmospheric air from all parts of the world. In 1840 he was recalled to Paris by his appointment to the chair of chemistry in the École Polytechnique; at the same time he was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences, in the chemical section, in room of P. J. Robiquet (1780–1840); and in the following year he became professor of physics in the College de France, there succeeding P. L. Dulong, his old master, and in many respects his model. From this time Regnault devoted almost all his attention to practical physics; but in 1847 he published a four-volume treatise on Chemistry which has been translated into many languages.

Regnault executed careful redetermination of the specific heats of all the elements obtainable, and of many compounds—solids, liquids and gases. He investigated the expansibility of gases by heat, determining the coefficient for air as 0.003665, and showed that, contrary to previous opinion, no two gases had precisely the same rate of expansion. By numerous delicate experiments he proved that Boyle’s law is only approximately true, and that those gases which are most readily liquefied diverge most widely from obedience to it. He studied the Whole subject of thermometry critically; he introduced the use of an accurate air-thermometer, and compared its indications with those of a mercurial thermometer, determining the absolute dilatation of mercury by heat as a step in the process. He also paid attention to hydrometry and devised a hygrometer in which a cooled metal surface is used for the deposition of moisture.

In 1854 he was appointed to succeed J. J. Ebelmen (1814–1852) as director of the porcelain manufactory at Sévres. He carried on his great research on the expansion of gases in the laboratory at Sevres, but all the results of his latest work were destroyed during the Franco-German War, in which also his son Henri (noticed above) was killed. Regnault never recovered from the double blow, and, although he lived until the 19th of January 1878, his scientific labours ended in 1872. He wrote more than eighty papers on scientific subjects, and he made important researches in conjunction with other workers. His greatest work, bearing on the practical treatment of steam-engines, forms vol. xxi. of the Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences.

REGNAULT, JEAN BAPTISTE (1754–1829), French painter, was born at Paris on the 9th of October 1754, and died in the same city on the 12th of November 1829. He began life at sea in a merchant vessel, but at the age of fifteen his talent attracted attention, and he was sent to Italy by M. de Monval under the care of Bardin. After his return to Paris, Regnault, in 1776, obtained the Grand Prix, and in 1783 he was elected Academician. His diploma picture, the “Education of Achilles by Chiron,” is now in the Louvre, as also the “Christ taken down from the Cross,” originally executed for the royal chapel at Fontainebleau, and two minor works-the “Origin of Painting” and “Pygmalion praying Venus to give Life to his Statue.” Besides various small pictures and allegorical subjects, Regnault was also the author of many large historical paintings; and his school, which reckoned amongst its chief attendants Guérin, Crepin, Latitte, Blondel, Robert Lefevre and Menjaud, Was for a long while the rival in influence of that of David.

REGNAULT DE SAINT JEAN D’ANGÉLY, MICHEL LOUIS ÉTIENNE, (1761–1819), French politician, was born at Saint Fargeau (Yonne) on the 3rd of December 1761. Before the Revolution he was an avocat in Paris and lieutenant of the maritime provost ship of Rochefort. In 1789 he was elected deputy to the States General by the Third Estate of the sénéchaussée of Saint Jean d’Angély. His eloquence made him a prominent figure in the Constituent Assembly, where he boldly attacked Mirabeau, and settled the dispute about the ashes of Voltaire by decreeing that they belonged to the nation. But the moderation shown by the measures he proposed at the time of the flight of the king to Varennes, by his refusal to accede to the demands for the king’s execution, and by the articles he published in the Journal de Paris and the Ami des patriotes, marked him out for the hostility of the advanced parties. He was arrested after the revolution of the 10th of August 1792, but succeeded in escaping, and during the reaction which followed the fall of Robespierre was appointed administrator of the military hospitals in Paris. His powers of organization brought him to Bonaparte’s notice, and he took, part in the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire, year VIII. (9th of November 1799). Under the Empire he enjoyed the confidence of Bonaparte, and was made councillor of state, president of section in the Council of State,