Arnault left France during the Reign of Terror, but on his return, he was arrested by the revolutionary authorities.

He was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797 with the organization of the French rule in the Ionian Islands, and was nominated to the Institute and made secretary general of the university.

Elected to the Académie Française in 1803, he's excluded from it by ordinance in 1816, after the monarchy was restored, and reelected in 1829.

[1] Other plays of Arnault's are: Blanche et Moncassin, ou les Vénitiens (1798); and Germanicus (1816), the performance of which was the occasion of a disturbance in the parterre which threatened serious political complications.

Arnault collaborated a Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon 1er (1822), and wrote some very interesting Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire (4 vols, 1833), which contain much out-of-the-way information about the history of the years previous to 1804.