“ LAGRANGE-CHANCEL [Chancel] , FRANÇOIS JOSEPH (1677–1758) , French dramatist and satirist, was born at Périgueux on the 1st of January 1677. He was an extremely precocious boy, and at Bordeaux, where he was educated, he produced a play when he was nine years old. Five years later his mother took him to Paris, where he found a patron in the princesse de Conti, to whom he dedicated his tragedy of Jugurtha or, as it was called later, Adherbal (1694) . Racine had given him advice and was present at the first performance, although he had long lived in complete retirement. ”

“ He was part author of a Histoire de Périgord left unfinished, and made a further contribution to history, or perhaps, more exactly, to romance, in a letter to Élie Fréron on the identity of the Man with the Iron Mask. Lagrange’s family life was embittered by a long lawsuit against his son. He died at Périgueux at the end of December 1758. ”