A fanatical democrat, born in Neuchatel, his father an Italian, his mother a Genevese; studied and practised medicine, came to Paris as horse-leech to Count d'Artois; became infected with the revolutionary fever, and had one fixed idea: "Give me," he said, "two hundred Naples bravoes, armed each with a good dirk, and a muff on his left arm by way of shield, and with them I will traverse France and accomplish the Revolution," that is, by wholesale massacre of the aristocrats; he had more than once to flee for his life, and one time found shelter in the sewers of Paris, contracting thereby a loathsome skin disease; he was assassinated one evening as he sat in his bath by Charlotte Corday, but his body was buried with honors in the Pantheon by a patriot people, "that of Mirabeau flung out to make room for him," to be some few months after himself cast out with execration (1743-1793).