CAYLUS, ANNE CLAUDE, COMTE DE, Marquis d'Ester nay, baron de Bransac (1692-1765), French archaeologist and man of letters, was born in Paris. His mother, the comtesse de Caylus (1673-1729), was a cousin of Mme. de Maintenon, who brought her up like her own daughter. She wrote valuable memoirs of the court of Louis XIV. entitled Souvenirs; these were edited by Voltaire (1770) and by many later editors, notably by Ch. Asselineau (186o). Caylus was on active service with the French army from 1709-14. After the Peace of Rastadt he trav elled in Italy, Greece, the East, England and Germany. He be came an active member of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture and of the Academy of Inscriptions. Among his works are Recueil d'antiquites egyptiennes, etrusques, grecques, romaines et gaul oises (6 vols. 1752-55), Numismata Aurea lmperatorum Roman oruin, and a Memoire (17 5 5) on the method of encaustic painting with wax mentioned by Pliny, which he claimed to have redis covered. Caylus was himself an admirable engraver; he also caused engravings to be made of Bartoli's copies from ancient pictures. He encouraged young artists, but his patronage was somewhat capricious. Diderot expressed this fact in an epigram in his Salon of 1765: "La mort nous a delivres du plus cruel des ama teurs." The Comte de Caylus had quite another side to his char acter. He had a thorough acquaintance with the gayest and most disreputable sides of Parisian life, and left a number of more or less witty stories dealing with it. These were collected (Am sterdam, 1787) as his Oeuvres badines completes. The best of them is the Histoire de M. Guillaume, cocker (c. 173o).