On the 29th of December 1790 Camille had married Lucile Duplessis, and among the witnesses of the ceremony are observed the names of Brissot, Pétion and Robespierre. The only child of the marriage, Horace Camille, was born on the 6th of July 1792. Two days afterwards Desmoulins brought it into notice by appearing with it before the municipality of Paris to demand “the formal statement of the civil estate of his son.” The boy was afterwards pensioned by the French government, and died in Haiti in 1825. Lucile, Desmoulins’s accomplished and affectionate wife, was, a few days after her husband, and on a false charge, condemned to the guillotine. She astonished all onlookers by the calmness with which she braved death (April 13, 1794).
See J. Claretie, Œuvres de Camille Desmoulins avec une étude biographique ... &c. (Paris, 1874), and Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins, étude sur les Dantonistes (Paris, 1875; Eng. trans., London, 1876); F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention (Paris, 1905, 2nd ed.): G. Lenôtre, “La Maison de Camille Desmoulins” (Le Temps, March 25, 1899).
[1] In April 1792 Desmoulins founded with Stanislas Fréron a new journal, La Tribune des patriotes, but only four numbers appeared.
[2] This is borne out by the register of his birth and baptism, and by words in his last letter to his wife,—“I die at thirty-four.” The dates (1762-1794) given in so many biographies of Desmoulins are certainly inaccurate.
DESNOYERS, JULES PIERRE FRANÇOIS STANISLAS (1800-1887), French geologist and archaeologist, was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou, in the department of Eure-et-Loir, on the 8th of October 1800. Becoming interested in geology at an early age, he was one of the founders of the Société Géologique de France in 1830. In 1834 he was appointed librarian of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. His contributions to geological science comprise memoirs on the Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary Strata of the Paris Basin and of Northern France, and other papers relating to the antiquity of man, and to the question of his co-existence with extinct mammalia. His separate books were Sur la Craie et sur les terrains tertiaires du Cotentin (1825), Recherches géologiques et historiques sur les cavernes (1845). He died in 1887.
DESOR, PIERRE JEAN ÉDOUARD (1811-1882), Swiss geologist, was born at Friedrichsdorf, near Frankfort-on-Main, on the 13th of February 1811. Associated in early years with Agassiz he studied palaeontology and glacial phenomena, and in company with J. D. Forbes ascended the Jungfrau in 1841. Desor afterwards became professor of geology in the academy at Neuchâtel, continued his studies on the structure of glaciers, but gave special attention to the study of Jurassic Echinoderms. He also investigated the old lake-habitations of Switzerland, and made important observations on the physical features of the Sahara. Having inherited considerable property he retired to Combe Varin in Val Travers. He died at Nizza on the 23rd of February 1882. His chief publications were: Synopsis des Échinides fossiles (1858), Aus Sahara (1865), Der Gebirgsbau der Alpen (1865), Die Pfahlbauten des Neuenburger Sees (1866), Échinologie helvétique (2 vols., 1868-1873, with P. de Loriol).