government with
similar missions to Syria and the Red Sea. He was made chevalier of the
Legion of Honour in 1875. After serving as vice-consul at Jaffa from 1880
to 1882, he returned to Paris as "secretaire-interprete" for oriental
languages, and in 1886 was appointed consul of the first class. He
subsequently accepted the post of director of the Ecole des Langues
Orientales and professor at the College de France. In 1889 he was elected
a member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, of which he
had been a correspondent since 1880. In 1896 he was promoted to be
consul-general, and was minister plenipotentiary in 1906. He was the first
in England to expose the famous forgeries of Hebrew texts offered to the
British Museum by M.W. Shapira (q.v.) in 1883, and in 1903 he took a
prominent part in the investigation of the so-called "tiara of
Saitapharnes." This tiara had been purchased by the Louvre for 400,000
francs, and exhibited as a genuine antique. Much discussion arose as to
the perpetrators of the fraud, some believing that it came from southern
Russia. It was agreed, however, that the whole object, except perhaps the
band round the tiara, was of modern manufacture.

His chief publications, besides a number of contributions to journals,
are:--_Palestine inconnue_ (1886), _Etudes d'archeologie orientale_
(1880, &c.), _Les Fraudes archeologiques_ (1885), _Recueil
d'archeologie orientale_ (1885, &c.), _Album d'antiquites orientales_
(1897, &c.).

CLERMONT-L'HERAULT, or CLERMONT DE LODEVE, a town of southern France in
the department of Herault, 10 m. S.S.E. by rail of Lodeve. Pop. (1906)
4731. The town is built on the slope of a hill which is crowned by an
ancient castle and skirted by the Rhonel, a tributary of the Lergue. It
has an interesting church of the 13th and 14th centuries. The chief
manufacture is that of cloth for military clothing, and woollen goods,
an industry which dates from the latter half of the 17th century.
Tanning and leather-dressing are also carried on, and there is trade in
wine, wool and grain. Among the public institutions are a tribunal of
commerce, a chamber of arts and manufactures, a board of
trade-arbitration and a communal college. The town was several times
taken and retaken in the religious wars of the 16th century.

CLERMONT-TONNERRE, the name of a French family, members of which played
some part in the history of France, especially in Dauphine, fro