e. He delighted
in the most extravagant toilettes until he was publicly rebuked by the
duc de Montausier, when he retired for some time to the provinces, using
his disguise to assist his numerous intrigues. He had been made an abbe
in his childhood, and poverty, induced by his extravagance, drove him to
live on his benefice at Sainte-Seine in Burgundy, where he found among
his neighbours a kindred spirit in Bussy-Rabutin. He visited Rome in the
suite of the cardinal de Bouillon in 1676, and shortly afterwards a
serious illness brought about a sudden and rather frivolous conversion
to religion. In 1685 he accompanied the chevalier de Chaumont on a
mission to Siam. He was ordained priest, and received various
ecclesiastical preferments. He was admitted to the Academy in 1687, and
wrote a number of historical and religious works, of which the most
notable are the following:--_Quatre dialogues sur l'immortalite de
l'ame_ ... (1684), written with the Abbe Dangeau and explaining his
conversion; _Traduction de l'Imitation de Jesus-Christ_ (1692);
_Histoire de France sous les regnes de Saint Louis ... de Charles V et
Charles VI_ (5 vols., 1688-1695); and _Histoire de l'Eglise_ (11 vols.,
1703-1723) He is remembered, however, by his gossiping _Memoires_
(1737), which contain striking and accurate pictures of his time and
remarkably exact portraits of his contemporaries, although he has
otherwise small pretensions to historical accuracy.

The _Memoires_ passed through many editions, and were edited in 1888
by M. de Lescure. Some admirable letters of Choisy are included in the
correspondence of Bussy-Rabutin. Choisy is said to have burnt some of
his indiscreet revelations, but left a considerable quantity of
unpublished MS. Part of this material, giving an account of his
adventures as a woman, was surreptitiously used in an anonymous
_Histoire de madame la comtesse de Barres_ (Antwerp, 1735), and again
with much editing in the _Vie de M. l'abbe de Choisy_ (Lausanne and
Geneva, 1742), ascribed by Paul Lacroix to Lenglet Dufresnoy; the text
was finally edited (1870) by Lacroix as _Aventures de l'abbe de
Choisy_. See also Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du lundi_, vol. iii.

CHOLERA (from the Gr. [Greek: chole], bile, and [Greek: rheein], to
flow), the name given to two distinct forms of disease, simple cholera
and malignant cholera. Although essentially different both as to their
causation and their pathologica