Orphaned at age 13, he was raised by his maternal uncle, pastor of Pithiviers who sent him to the college of Meung-sur-Loire to complete the humanities that he had begun with the Jesuits of Orléans.

In 1772 he published a Temple de Gnide composed a decade earlier, adapted from Montesquieu, as the poem by Nicolas-Germain Léonard appeared shortly before.

The Mémoires Secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la République des Lettres en France[1] attributed the death of the writer to a venereal disease contracted during a fleeting relationship with a "courtesan ungrateful and treacherous".

[3] Marie was unable to make provisions for her education and the Dauphine took Aurore from her mother to be educated in a convent: after the death of Marshal Saxe (1750) Marie's name is associated in the chronicles of the time with a number of gentlemen among whom there is the enduring presence of Denis Joseph Lalive d'Epinay, from a family of fermiers généraux, husband of Louise d'Epinay (who was a lover of Louis Dupin Francueil Aurore, future husband and grandfather of George Sand).

The romance of Marie with Colardeau—a penniless poet—was an all too brief interlude, and poor Charles-Pierre was first requested "to leave for two years" to make way for a richer protector and then finally returned to his desk.

The chronicle of Mémoires ... for the year of his death informs us that, once convinced of his disgrace, Charles-Pierre circulated in Paris a "bloody satire" in which Marie was cruelly treated.

It seems that the marquise fought hard to get her poet made a member of the Académie française but bear in mind that—again according to the authors of Mémoires ...—Colardeau had a reputation in the world of letters for writing very little but to be the best versifier in France.