He briefly was the private tutor of the young son of Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, a collector and bibliophile.

While in Paris, he also became close to Samuel Morland, an English inventor and polymath who was working with Joseph Sauveur, a mathematician, on the Machine de Marly.

He founded an Académie de Musique at Strasbourg in 1687 and arranged Lully's Alceste for performance there.

In 1724, he offered his very rich library, together with its annotated catalogue, to Louis XV, in exchange for a pension.

Among the items in the collection were the unpublished manuscripts of his late friend Étienne Loulié, and his own set of four motets Leçons des mortes, written in 1696-7.