For the desertion of children see [Children, Law relating to]; [Infant].
(T. A. I.)
DES ESSARTS, EMMANUEL ADOLPHE (1839- ), French poet and man of letters, was born at Paris on the 5th of February 1839. His father, Alfred Stanislas Langlois des Essarts (d. 1893), was a poet and novelist of considerable reputation. The son was educated at the École Normale Supérieure, and became a teacher of rhetoric and finally professor of literature at Dijon and at Clermont. His works are: Poésies parisiennes (1862), a volume of light verse on trifling subjects; Les Élévations (1864), philosophical poems; Origines de la poésie lyrique en France au XVIe siècle (1873); Du génie de Chateaubriand (1876); Poèmes de la Révolution (1879); Pallas Athéné (1887); Portraits de maîtres (1888), &c.
DESFONTAINES, RENÉ LOUICHE (1750-1833), French botanist, was born at Tremblay (Île-et-Vilaine) on the 14th of February 1750. After graduating in medicine at Paris, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1783. In the same year he set out for North Africa, on a scientific exploring expedition, and on his return two years afterwards brought with him a large collection of plants, animals, &c., comprising, it is said, 1600 species of plants, of which about 300 were described for the first time. In 1786 he was nominated to the post of professor at the Jardin des Plantes, vacated in his favour by his friend, L. G. Lemonnier. His great work, Flora Atlantica sive historia plantarum quae in Atlante, agro Tunetano el Algeriensi crescunt, was published in 2 vols. 4to in 1798, and he produced in 1804 a Tableau de l’école botanique du muséum d’histoire naturelle de Paris, of which a third edition appeared in 1831, under the new title Catalogus plantarum horti regii Parisiensis. He was also the author of many memoirs on vegetable anatomy and physiology, descriptions of new genera and species, &c., one of the most important being a “Memoir on the Organization of the Monocotyledons.” He died at Paris on the 16th of November 1833. His Barbary collection was bequeathed to the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, and his general collection passed into the hands of the English botanist, Philip Barker Webb.
DESFORGES, PIERRE JEAN BAPTISTE CHOUDARD (1746-1806), French dramatist and man of letters, natural son of Dr Antoine Petit, was born in Paris on the 15th of September 1746. He was educated at the Collège Mazarin and the Collège de Beauvais, and at his father’s desire began the study of medicine. Dr Petit’s death left him dependent on his own resources, and after appearing on the stage of the Comédie Italienne in Paris he joined a troupe of wandering actors, whom he served in the capacity of playwright. He married an actress, and the two spent three years in St Petersburg, where they were well received. In 1782 he produced at the Comédie Italienne an adaptation of Fielding’s novel with the title Tom Jones à Londres. His first great success was achieved with L’Épreuve villageoise (1785) to the music of Grétry. La Femme jalouse, a five-act comedy in verse (1785), Joconde (1790) for the music of Louis Jaden, Les Époux divorcés (1799), a comedy, and other pieces followed. Desforges was one of the first to avail himself of the new facilities afforded under the Revolution for divorce and re-marriage. The curious record of his own early indiscretions in Le Poète, ou mémoires d’un homme de lettres écrits par lui-même (4 vols., 1798) is said to have been undertaken at the request of Madame Desforges. He died in Paris on the 13th of August 1806.
DESGARCINS, MAGDELEINE MARIE [Louise] (1769-1797), French actress, was born at Mont Dauphin (Hautes Alpes). In her short career she became one of the greatest of French tragédiennes, the associate of Talma, with whom she nearly always played. Her début at the Comédie Française occurred on the 24th of May 1788, in Bajazet, with such success that she was at once made sociétaire. She was one of the actresses who left the Comédie Française in 1791 for the house in the rue Richelieu, soon to become the Théâtre de la République, and there her triumphs were no less—in King Lear, Othello, La Harpe’s Mélanie et Virginie, &c. Her health, however, failed, and she died insane, in Paris, on the 27th of October 1797.