GUIGNES, JOSEPH DE (1721-1800), French orientalist, was born at Pontoise on the 19th of October 1721. He succeeded Fourmont at the Royal Library as secretary interpreter of the Eastern languages. A _Memoire historique sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs_, published by de Guignes in 1748, obtained his admission to the Royal Society of London in 1752, and he became an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions in 1754. Two years later he began to publish his learned and laborious _Histoire generale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares occidentaux_ (1756-1758); and in 1757 he was appointed to the chair of Syriac at the College de France. He maintained that the Chinese nation had originated in Egyptian colonization, an opinion to which, in spite of every argument, he obstinately clung. He died in Paris in 1800. The _Histoire_ had been translated into German by Dahnert (1768-1771). De Guignes left a son, Christian Louis Joseph (1759-1845), who, after learning Chinese from his father, went as consul to Canton, where he spent seventeen years. On his return to France he was charged by the government with the work of preparing a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary (1813). He was also the author of a work of travels (_Voyages a Pekin, Manille, et l'ile de France_, 1808). See Querard, _La France litteraire_, where a list of the memoirs contributed by de Guignes to the _Journal des savants_ is given. GUILBERT, YVETTE (1869- ), French _diseuse_, was born in Paris. She served for two years until 1885 in the Magasin du Printemps, when, on the advice of the journalist, Edmond Stoullig, she trained for the stage under Landrol. She made her debut at the Bouffes du Nord, then played at the Varietes, and in 1890 she received a regular engagement at the Eldorado to sing a couple of songs at the beginning of the performance. She also sang at the Ambassadeurs. She soon won an immense vogue by her rendering of songs drawn from Parisian lower-class life, or from the humours of the Latin Quarter, "_Quatre z'etudiants_" and the "_Hotel du numero trois_" being among her early triumphs. Her adoption of an habitual yellow dress and long black gloves, her studied simplicity of diction, and her ingenuous delivery of songs charged with _risque_ meaning, made her famous. She owed something to M. Xanrof, who for a long time composed songs especially for her, and perhaps still more to Aristide Bruant, who wrote many of her _argot_ songs. She made successful tours in England, Germany and America, and was in great request as an entertainer in private houses. In 1895 she married Dr M. Schiller. In later years she discarded something of her earlier manner, and sang songs of the "pompadour" and the "crinoline" period in costume. She published the novels _La Vedette_ and _Les Demi-vieilles_, both in 1902.