Hégésippe Moreau

[1] His father, Claude-François Moreau, born in Poligny Jura, took a post of professor in the collège of Provins (Seine-et-Marne) in 1810, but died of tuberculosis on May 16, 1814.

In Paris, he was habitually houseless, and exposed himself to the dangers of a cholera hospital in the great epidemic of 1832 simply to obtain shelter and food.

[2] In 1833, ailing, he returned to Madame Guérard's in Provins to recuperate and began a kind of satirical serial called Diogène (named after the Greek Cynic Diogenes) modelled on the journal La Némésis published by Auguste-Marseille Barthélemy, but a lack of readership in the provincial town and creative rivalties made the venture a failure.

From 1834 to 1838, he lived in great misery in Paris, and entirely ruined in his health, he was forced to take lodgings in a refuge of the destitute (Hôpital de la Charité).

Moreau wrote some charming prose stories: Le Gui de chene, La Souris blanche, etc.