Pierre François Tissot

At the age of eighteen he entered the service of a solicitor of the Châtelet, in order to learn the practice of the law, but he was more attracted to literature, and, as a handsome youth, was occasionally invited to the fêtes of the Petit Trianon.

His connection with the Jacobin party caused him to be condemned to deportation after the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise, but Napoleon Bonaparte, having been persuaded to read his translation of the Eclogues of Virgil, struck his name off the list.

Prior to this moment, he had lived on the income derived from a factory of horn lanterns in the Faubourg Saint Antoine; finally in fairly comfortable circumstances, he devoted himself to literature.

[1] He was removed from this post, however, in 1821, following the publication of a Précis sur les guerres de la Révolution, which, in the context of the Bourbon Restoration, had ventured to say that the Convention had saved France and vanquished the First Coalition during the French Revolutionary Wars.

[1] In 1840 a carriage accident almost cost him his sight; he had to find an assistant, and passed the last years of his life in circumstances of increasing suffering, amid which, however, he preserved his optimism.