[1] The son of a Norman hosier, he took holy orders in Rouen, took up his first post as a teacher of rhetoric at Vernon and in 1768 moved to the royal college in Nancy.
He renounced his religious vows while he was away from Paris, and shortly afterward married the daughter-in-law of the mayor of Givet, Marie-Odile Briquelet.
[2] His main task in the North was to deal with traitors and counter-revolutionaries, and he also erected a temple to Reason in Sedan.
[3] In April 1794 he returned to the Convention, joined the public education committee, and worked on new primary school textbooks.
Like many representants en mission who had made themselves unpopular outside Paris, he was denounced after the Thermidorean reaction and arrested on 9 August 1795, at the same time as Joseph Fouché.