LABRANCHOIR (Comte de), owner of an estate in Dauphine under the
Restoration, and, as such, a victim of the depredations of the
poacher, Butifer. [The Country Doctor.]

LA BRIERE (Ernest de). (See La Bastie la Briere.)

LACEPEDE (Comte de), a celebrated naturalist, born at Agen in 1756,
died at Paris in 1825. Grand chancelor of the Legion of Honor for
several years towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. This
well-known philosopher was invited to Cesar Birotteau's celebrated
ball, December 17, 1818. [Cesar Birotteau.]

LA CHANTERIE (Le Chantre de), of a Norman family dating from the
crusade of Philippe Auguste, but which had fallen into obscurity by
the end of the eighteenth century; he owned a small fief between Caen
and Saint-Lo. M. le Chantre de la Chanterie had amassed in the
neighborhood of three hundred thousand crowns by supplying the royal
armies during the Hanoverian war. He died during the Revolution, but
before the Terror. [The Seamy Side of History.]

LA CHANTERIE (Baron Henri Le Chantre de), born in 1763, son of the
preceding, shrewd, handsome and seductive. When master of petitions in
the Grand Council of 1788, he married Mademoiselle Barbe-Philiberte de
Champignelles. Ruined during the Restoration through having lost his
position and thrown away his inheritance, Henri Le Chantre de la
Chanterie became one of the most cruel presidents of the revolutionary
courts and was the terror of Normandie. Imprisoned after the ninth
Thermidor, he owed his escape to his wife, by means of an exchange of
clothing. He did not see her more than three times during eight years,