Imagine a historical figure who didn't just witness
one of the most tumultuous revolutions in history,
but helped write the script for it. I mean, literally.
Right. An actor who becomes a powerful politician,
a poet whose words become actual law, a man who
was. ambitious enough to try and rename time
itself, and who then dies alongside one of the
biggest names of the reign of terror. That's
the radical change we are diving into today.
We're peeling back the layers on Philippe -Francois
-Nazaire Fabre d 'Aiglantine, a figure who I
think just embodies the intoxicating promise
and, well, the ultimate moral squalor of the
French Revolution's most intense phase. Okay.
The mission of this deep dive is to really unpack
the sources on this multi -talented, complex,
and ultimately tragic figure. And we want to
focus intensely on that strange and often contradictory
intersection of his artistic life and his political
life. Because for him, they weren't separate
things at all. Not at all. For Faber, they were
entirely inseparable. You know, two sides of
the same rapidly spinning revolutionary coin.
OK, let's unpack this, because when you look
at his resume, it's a study in dramatic, almost
unbelievable extremes. He was a professional
actor who toured the provinces, a celebrated
dramatist, a poet and eventually a highly powerful
Montagnard politician. But the two things he
is most famous for today seem wildly, almost
schizophrenically. On one hand, he invented the
lyrical, nature -based names of the months in
the French Republican calendar, names like Floreal,
the month of flowers, and Thermidor, the month
of heat. Beautiful names. Absolutely beautiful.
And on the other hand, he wrote a simple, utterly
timeless song that remains a popular French nursery
rhyme. Il pleut, il pleut, bergère. It is raining,
it is raining, shepherdess. It's the ultimate
revolutionary contradiction, isn't it? I mean,
here's a figure trying to impose rational, systemic...
radical nature -based change on the entire organization
of time for a nation. A huge top -down project.
While also leaving behind a legacy of pure, simple,
sentimental folk art. The two things just don't
seem to compute. So what does this all mean?
The core question for us, and for you, the listener,
is this. How did a touring actor with literary
aspirations, who initially struggled so mightily
to find a foothold in the Parisian literary scene,
rise up to become a key political player, Georges
Denton's private secretary, no less, in the inner
radical circle of the revolution, only to meet
the exact same tragic fate as his powerful allies?
We're tracing that improbable path from the stage
lights of a provincial theater to the very real
scaffold of the guillotine. The trajectory of
Fabre. We have to recognize that he was driven
by this powerful, almost desperate need for recognition
and fame. It's all about ambition. Completely.
Philippe -Francois Nazaire Fabre was born in
Carcassonne, Ode, in 1750. His original family
name was just Fabre. He wasn't born into the
elite. He was a climber, constantly trying to
escape his provincial roots. And the Deglantines.
It sounds incredibly grand, almost like a stage
name, but it actually has a purely literary origin
story, which I think speaks volumes about his
priorities from day one. Exactly. The addition
of Deglantine was a self -styled commemoration.
He was marking a significant early achievement,
one that he clearly felt validated his poetic
ambitions. So what was it? He received a silver
wild rose. the French word for wild rose being
Eglantine, as a literary prize from Clémence
Isor at the Academy of the Jeu Floreau in Toulouse.
Okay, so the Jeu Floreau, what was that exactly
for people who haven't heard of it? It was a
very prestigious literary competition in the
south of France, sort of the poetic Olympics
of the region. Winning a prize there was a real
feather in the cap for a young, ambitious poet.
So it's important to clarify this was not a noble
title, right? He wasn't pretending to be an aristocrat.
No, not at all. He wasn't claiming aristocracy,
but you could argue he was claiming intellectual
aristocracy. He physically adopted a poetic trophy
as part of his identity. It showed a deep, almost
over -the -top yearning for literary recognition
right from the very start. He didn't just want
to be known, he wanted to be known for his words.
And that yearning fueled his early career, but
it definitely did not guarantee success. The
sources detail his early struggles in Paris.
Right. After traveling extensively in the provinces
as an actor, often barely making a living, he
arrived in the capital determined to conquer
the Parisian stage, which was the ultimate test
for any French dramatist. He married Marie Strasburg,
Nicole Godin in 1778 and continued his writing
efforts, including a poem called Etude de la
Nature in 1783. But the establishment. They just
resisted him. This is crucial context for his
later political radicalization, isn't it? Because
rejection is often a powerful engine for revolutionary
fervor. He tried twice definitively to break
into the established theater system and failed
both times. Yes, his comedy, Les Gens de l 'être
de Provincial à Paris, which he produced in 1787,
was just. It was unsuccessful. And this was a
crucial time when Parisian theaters were still
heavily influenced by old regime tastes and societal
expectations. So what he was writing didn't fit
the mold. Exactly. Faber's style, which was already
beginning to incorporate a sharper, more critical
eye towards social hypocrisy, simply wasn't what
the established audience or the critics wanted
to see. And it wasn't just comedy, right? His
failure extended to serious drama. The tragedy,
Augusta. Yes, Augusta. It was produced at the
highly prestigious, state -backed Théâtre Francais,
and it also proved to be a failure. This wasn't
just a bad review. This was a personal and professional
rejection by the central institution of French
dramatic art. You can just feel the bitterness
building up. Oh, you really see that pattern
of rejection fueling a deep -seated rivalry.
He had other works, like Présent 2 in 1789, that
failed to win audience applause, especially when
you compare it to the success his rival, Jean
-François Collin de Roliville, was receiving
for works like Chateau on His Spine. So he's
watching someone else succeed with what he probably
considers inferior work. Exactly. I mean, imagine
the psychological toll. You believe you're a
genius. You literally change your name to commemorate
a poetic triumph. And yet you're forced to watch
these other talents succeed while you remain
an unsuccessful touring actor, basically drowning
in Paris. So he was struggling professionally
just as the political atmosphere was heating
up. Here's where the narrative of Fabre de Glontine
gets really interesting. Despite these early
struggles, or maybe because of them, because
the existing structures had so completely failed.
him the sources highlight this major turning
point the revolution wasn't just a political
change for him it was a gigantic national stage
that he couldn't get access to before he transitioned
almost overnight from being this unsuccessful
touring actor to being recognized as one of the
most important playwrights during the French
Revolution that's the key The old regime rejected
his art. The revolution validated his ideology.
The world he was trying to critique through his
drama suddenly became the world he was actively
trying to tear down and rebuild through politics
and, well, political theater. That rapid, dramatic
transition in his career is the defining engine
of his life from 1789 onward. So the moment Faber
truly found literary and theatrical success coincided
perfectly with the political upheaval. His most
popular play was Filante, or La Suite de Misanthrope,
which premiered in 1790. Now, this wasn't just
a new play. It was marketed as a continuation
of Molière's 17th century classic, Le Misanthrope.
Why use Molière? Well, because using Molière
gave him instant cultural legitimacy while also
allowing him to subvote tradition. It was a very
clever move. So he's borrowing brand recognition,
essentially. He is. And what's fascinating here
is that Fabre didn't just write a simple sequel.
He injected revolutionary dogma directly into
one of the most beloved works of the French canon.
The sources clarify that Fabre fundamentally
shifted the thematic meaning of the original
characters to align with the new political realities.
Okay, so how did he do that? In Faber's version,
the hero of the piece, Falente, who Moliere had
painted as the reasonable, balanced man, was
recast not as reasonable, but as a pure and simple
egotist. Wow. Okay, so this is where the play
becomes a political litmus test, a kind of pamphlet
delivered through dialogue. In the revolutionary
context, where virtue and political allegiance
were absolutely everything, Faber made sure the
audience understood who the villains were. Precisely.
His character Alceste, who represents the Patriot
citizen in Faber's sequel, receives the highest
praise and admiration. Meanwhile... The seemingly
polite and moderate Filante is explicitly depicted
as a dangerous aristocrat in disguise. A dangerous
aristocrat in disguise? I mean, that's not subtle.
There's no subtlety. It's a remarkable example
of how culture was weaponized during this period.
The stage for Faber was no longer a place for
mere entertainment or even for gentle satire.
It was a mechanism for political clarification
and moral instruction. And he used it to settle
old scores, too, didn't he? Oh, absolutely. He
even used the preface of the play, which is usually
a space for artistic reflection, not just to
explain his choices, but as a space for brutal
political score settling. He specifically used
it to satirize l 'optimist by his old rival,
Jean -Francois Collin d 'Orléville. Furrow was
using his newfound success to solidify his standing
both as an artist and, crucially, as a true patriot.
But his ambitions went far beyond just one successful
play. His dramatic philosophy was revolutionary
in itself. He believed that the entire old regime
society, and crucially its comedy, which relied
on hidden motives, social games, disguise, were
utterly bankrupt. Yes. He saw his mission as
redeeming French drama itself, creating a theater
worthy of the new republic. Yes. He sought to
fashion a necessary, a vital place for theater
within the new revolutionary culture. His approach
was to develop a new form of drama that actively
promoted the new social order, founded on equality
and fraternity. This wasn't passive entertainment.
This was civic religion, revolutionary instruction.
It had to be didactic, moral, and absolutely
unambiguous. And he didn't just pull this idea
out of thin air. He found his philosophical framework
by building upon one of the most powerful critiques
of the time, Jean -Jacques Rousseau's deep -seated
critique of theatricality. This is critical.
Why did Rousseau hate theater, and how did Faber
twist that rejection into an embrace? That is
the essential insight here. It's a bit complex,
but... Rousseau argued that theater, by its very
nature, was immoral and corrupting for a republic
that was supposed to be based on virtue. Why?
Because it's fake. Essentially, yes. For Rousseau,
theater was fundamentally about illusion, about
characters hiding their true intentions, about
private interests being celebrated over the public
good. It relied on dissimulation disguise and
therefore was inherently opposed to the revolutionary
concept of public virtue and transparency. So
if Rousseau says theater is based on lies and
therefore poisons the republic, how does Faber,
a playwright, respond to that? That's a direct
attack on his entire profession. Well, this is
the genius of his argument. Faber argued that
the old regime theater was indeed bankrupt because
it celebrated those lies and disguises. But he
proposed that the revolutionary theater could
be regenerated if it adopted the very principle
Rousseau demanded of public life, transparency.
That concept of transparency is so central to
the revolutionary ethos, erasing secrets, eliminating
disguise, forcing public virtue to be displayed
openly. For Faber, putting that on stage was
essential. But how do you create transparent
theater? Isn't all theater based on some level
of illusion? Faber advocated for a radical shift
in how characters were presented. The playwright,
he argued, must immediately expose the true moral
and political allegiance of every single character.
There can be no ambiguity. So the audience is
in on it from the start. Exactly. In Philanth,
the audience knows from the first scene that
Philanth is the dangerous aristocrat in disguise.
The dramatic tension doesn't come from discovering
the truth, but from watching the patriot citizen
Alceste force that truth into the open. The play
becomes a public exercise in rooting out hypocrisy,
making the audience participants in this act
of revolutionary purification. So if we connect
this to the bigger picture, Fabre had this profoundly
regenerative role for theater in mind. He believed
that a regenerated revolutionary theatrical culture
would redeem the work of art and ultimately generate
a new, virtuous, revolutionary society. It's
a profound reversal of typical thinking, isn't
it? He wasn't waiting for political institutions
like the National Convention to shape the theater
through censorship or funding. He thought the
theater itself, by enforcing transparency and
promoting virtue, would shape the political institutions
and the moral character of the entire nation.
It's an incredibly ambitious philosophy for a
man who, just a few years earlier, had suffered
the ultimate professional indignity. A tragedy
flopping at the Théâtre Francais. He took his
artistic failure under the old regime. and turned
it into his defining revolutionary principle.
It's an amazing pivot. Having found his voice
and his platform through politically charged
drama, Fabio de Glantin's transition into outright
political leadership was, well, it was rapid
and absolute. He stepped off the revolutionary
stage and directly into the core engine of the
terror. His political affiliations are impressive,
and they show he was deeply integrated into the
most radical wing of the revolution, the Montagnards.
He served as both president and secretary of
the powerful club of the Cordilliers. Which was
Danton's stronghold. Danton's stronghold, exactly.
And he was also a member of the Jacobin Club,
the ultimate center of revolutionary power at
the time. And most critically, Georges Danton,
one of the three giants of the revolution alongside
Robespierre and Marat, chose Faberès as his private
secretary. This association put Faber right in
the inner circle, moving him from a struggling
artist to a key manipulator of political power.
He secured a seat in the National Convention,
serving from 1792 to 1794, and his voting record.
It really confirms his radical commitment. When
the question of King Louis VI's fate was put
to the convention, he voted decisively for the
king's death. No hesitation. No hesitation. Furthermore,
he supported the maximum legislation. We should
pause there and provide some context for the
listener. What was the maximum and why did supporting
it place him firmly on the extreme left of the
political spectrum? The maximum was essentially
a revolutionary measure imposing strict price
controls on essential goods like grain, flour,
and eventually a wider range of commodities.
Politically, it was a crucial measure for the
Montagnards, who drew their support from the
Parisian working class, the Sainte -Colottes,
who were suffering terribly from wartime inflation
and food shortages. about keeping the people
of Paris fed and on their side. Exactly. Supporting
the maximum meant prioritizing the needs of the
poor and the stability of the state over the
principles of a free market. It was a fiercely
debated, highly interventionist measure, and
Fabre's support showed his commitment to the
popular radical cause. And that radical commitment
extended to judicial measures as well. It did.
He backed a law that allowed for summary executions,
which essentially streamlined the process of
the Revolutionary Tribunal. The sources are absolutely
clear on this. He was a bitter enemy of the Girondins,
the slightly more moderate Federalist faction
whom the Montagnards eventually purged. Farbe
was actively participating in the machinery of
the terror. And his literary side never went
away, even in politics. No, his commitment was
not just political. It was literary. Following
the assassination of the ultra -radical journalist
Jean -Paul Marat on July 13, 1793, Fabre published
a piece titled Portrait de l 'ami du peuple,
a eulogy for Marat. He was constantly connecting
his political actions with his literary identity.
He was fighting the political fight with the
pen, just as he had promised the regenerated
theater would do. But the lasting mark he left
on the historical record, the thing that literally
changed the way every French citizen experienced
time, was his involvement in the French Republican
calendar. This is truly extraordinary. How does
an actor get tasked with rewriting the universal
concept of time? It's a fascinating reflection
of the revolution's hubris and its commitment
to total change. In 1793 The Gregorian calendar,
seen as tainted by its Christian monarchical
origins, was abolished. Faber sat on the committee,
entrusted with creating the replacement. Now,
we need to be careful with attribution here,
right? He didn't design the whole thing himself.
That's a key point. The calendar's fundamental
structure was designed by the politician and
agronomist Gilbert Rome, but Faber de Gontin
is usually credited with its fame because he
invented the magnificent, poetic, nature -based
names of the months. And the structural changes
were designed not just to be secular, but actively
anti -religious. The calendar featured a 10 -day
week, known as a decade. Yes, and that was specifically
designed so that Sunday would be forgotten as
a religious day. That is an immense imposition
on daily life. It's a radical act of cultural
engineering. Completely. The 10 -day week meant
that there were three decades in a month. The
10th day, the Dikadi. replaced the Christian
Sunday as the day of rest and civic celebration.
The revolutionary government mandated that all
citizens must observe the saccade. This must
have had a massive impact on workers. A huge
impact. They effectively worked nine days and
rested one, instead of working six days and resting
one, as under the Gregorian system. It was designed
to erase seven -day cycles and the religious
memory associated with them. Faber contributed
names not only for the months, but even for the
days within the decade, like primity, duody,
trity, and so on. So he was literally providing
the new vocabulary for the nation's daily existence.
But his most famous contribution was the naming
of the months. What was his philosophy behind
these conventions? His philosophy was to tie
French society directly back to the land and
the seasons, moving entirely away from history
or religious figures. The months were named after
the intrinsic qualities of the seasons. and were
organized into three groups, autumn, winter,
and spring -summer. This was a rationalist, agrarian
rejection of the divine. He formalized this reasoning
in his report on the subject to the National
Convention on October 24, 1793. And this report
is perhaps the most eloquent expression of revolutionary
ideology applied to daily life, replacing abstract
concepts with sensory and natural observation.
He stated that the commission's goal was nothing
less than to substitute for visions of ignorance
the realities of reason and for sacerdotal prestige
the truth of nature. They wanted to anchor the
republic in observable, universal natural law,
not in superstitious tradition. And the practical
application was specifically designed to exalt
labor and agriculture. Absolutely. He explicitly
aimed to exalt the agricultural system by marking
the days and the divisions of the year with intelligible
or visible signs taken from agriculture and rural
life. The idea was that every time a peasant
or a citizen referred to a month, they would
be reminded of the specific physical labor or
state of nature appropriate to that time. Let's
go through some of them because they are so evocative.
We have the autumn months. The month of the grape
harvest. Then brumaire, the month of mists. And
frimaire, the month of cold or frost. And the
winter months. Niveaux from snow. Cluvios from
rain. And ventos from wind. These are harsh,
tangible meteorological conditions. Very real.
And his spring contributions, the months that
sound the most poetic to me. Germinal. Germination.
Floral. Blooming. And prairie. For meadows, often
associated with the first hay harvest, he was
translating the French landscape and climate
into a poetic chronology. This wasn't just poetry.
It was propaganda aimed at rooting the citizen's
identity in the soil of the republic, making
time itself a constant reminder of rural productivity
and rationality. He was, in a sense, the poet
laureate of reason. So Father de Galantin had
reached this pinnacle of ideological influence.
He was Danton's powerful right -hand man, a celebrated
revolutionary poet, and the architect of the
rational calendar. And this is the moment in
the narrative where the fatal flaw, that contradiction
between the idealist philosopher of transparency
and the morally weak politician, just violently
emerges. The sources tell us that his undoing
was not his radicalism. That was expected, even
celebrated, but a deeply venal and surprisingly
complex financial fraud known as the East India
Company scandal. This is where the narrative
tension needs to peak, because this crime ultimately
brought down the entire Dantonist faction. This
is truly the closing act of the tragic comedy
that was Faber's life. A very noble goal on the
surface. On the surface. And this liquidation
was being overseen by a committee of the convention.
Okay. Let's unpack the scheme step by step, because
it was audacious and required high -level political
access. The initial decree for liquidation was
legitimate, but a cabal of convention members,
including Fabra, forged and inserted a falsified
article into the decree after it was officially
voted on and signed. Yes. That's the critical
part. The forged article altered the details
of the liquidation process to make it vastly
more advantageous to the former company directors.
The scam was brilliant and cynical. The directors
of the company were then blackmailed by Fabra
and his co -conspirators. Blackmailed how? They
were forced to turn over a massive half million
lever profit, some equivalent to millions today,
from this manipulated liquidation exercise directly
to the cabal of convention members responsible
for the fraud. It was pure high level. corruption
disguised in bureaucratic procedure. The man
who championed the concept of political transparency
on the revolutionary stage was caught orchestrating
a dense financial forgery designed entirely for
personal secret enrichment. The irony is just
staggering. And the exposure came not through
an audit, but through panic and betrayal. The
whistleblower was Francois Chabot. a Montagnard
deputy, and a former capuchin friar who was involved
in the conspiracy, but whose nerve broke under
the escalating atmosphere of the terror. You
can just picture the scene. Dramatize that moment
for us. This happened the morning of November
14, 1793. Chabot decides the only way to save
himself from the guillotine is to confess. But
he doesn't go to the police. He goes straight
to the ultimate symbol of revolutionary incorruptibility.
Chabot literally burst into Maximilien Robespierre's
bedroom, dragging the incorruptible leader from
his bed in the pre -dawn hours. He was frantic,
waving a hundred thousand livres in his signet
notes, the revolutionary paper currency, which
he claimed proved a royalist plot. He's trying
to frame it as something else. He is. He confessed
that this money was given to him by royalist
plotters specifically to buy Faber -Deglantin's
vote, along with the votes of others, to facilitate
the stock liquidation. It's an unbelievable scene,
a former friar panicking, weaving a massive wad
of cash in the face of the one man who preached
virtue above all else, and he's blaming his conspirator
Faber for bringing him into the plot. Chabot
tried to paint himself as an unwitting dupe corrupted
by monarchist gold, but his ultimate goal was
to sacrifice Faber and save his own skin. And
Robespierre, well, Robespierre was the personification
of revolutionary virtue. He viewed financial
criminality, especially when masked by political
zeal, as the absolute worst crime. In 1794, once
Robespierre gained sufficient evidence, he publicly
denounced Fab. And what was his language? He
specifically targeted Faber for what he viewed
as a particular heinous crime, calling it criminality
disguised by patriotism. Criminality disguised
by patriotism. That phrase, criminality disguised,
perfectly inverted Faber's own philosophy of
theatrical transparency. The man who wanted no
masks in theater was found wearing the most dangerous
mask of all in politics, the mask of the patriot.
The political fallout was immediate and devastating,
far beyond just Faber's reputation. Faber was
arrested on January 12, 1794, by order of the
Committee of Public Safety, charged with a malversation
and forgery related to the East India Company.
And this arrest wasn't just about him. It had
wider implications. It was critical because it
was the beginning of the end for the entire moderate
wing of the Montagnards, the Dantonist faction.
The sources note that this arrest struck a hard
blow to the Montagnards and sent them on their
way to extinction in the convention. Faber's
crime exposed deep -seated corruption at the
heart of the ruling faction, providing the moral
pretext Robespierre needed to launch his final
push for political purity, a push that would
ultimately devour Danton himself just weeks later.
During his trial, the dramatist tried one final
performance, attempting to twist the facts around,
accusing other people, desperately trying to
shift blame to Chabot and others, but he was
unsuccessful. No. His theatrical tricks and his
ability to spin a narrative could not save him
from the unforgiving logic of the Revolutionary
Tribunal. And so he died under the guillotine
on April 5, 1794, alongside his mentor, Georges
Danton, and the other Dantonists. But even facing
the scaffold, the actor in him couldn't help
but add some dramatic flair to his final scene.
This is where the story becomes folklore, really.
According to the popular account, Fabre showed
the greatest calmness right up to the end. And
what did he do? He sang his own well -known song,
that simple nursery rhyme. Il pleut, il pleut,
berger, rentre tes blancs moutons. He even distributed
his handwritten poems to the people lining the
route on his way to the scaffold. A final, beautiful,
simple literary effort, contrasting so starkly
with the revolutionary dogma he had espoused.
But the sources also provide a very dark piece
of dialogue regarding his final moments with
Danton, a conversation that encapsulates the
entire tragedy of their shared ambition. Legend
has it that Fabre was complaining bitterly about
the injustice done to him, the irony of the revolutionary
poet being undone by a simple financial crime,
as they rode in the cart to the scaffold. And
this prompted Danton's supreme biting sarcasm.
What did Danton say? Danton looked at the complaining
poet, who was so obsessed with his own injustice
and his final verses, and supposedly replied,
That's devastating, and we need to clarify the
language for anyone listening. For non -French
speakers, ver is the word that creates the entire
dark joke. It can mean either verses the poem's
fob was so desperately trying to distribute.
Or it can mean worms. It's the ultimate revolutionary
mic drop. It really is. Danton, facing his own
end, was reminding the poet that in less than
a week, he would be providing far more poetry,
or far more likely, being consumed by a greater
number of worms than he desired. It was a truly
fitting, dark and cynical joke for the ultimate
revolutionary ending, contracting the grand aspirations
of the mind with the brutal reality of physical
dissolution. Despite the ignoble circumstances
of his death, executed as a corrupt forger, Faber
de Glantin's artistic ideas about revolutionary
regeneration didn't immediately vanish, which
is kind of surprising. No, they didn't. The immediate
aftermath of his death, though completely overshadowed
by the subsequent fall of Robespierre, ironically
led to a brief literary resurgence for him. His
posthumous play, Les Plécepteurs, which means
The Tudors, was performed just a few months after
his execution on September 17, 1794. And how
was it received? It met with an enthusiastic
reception. The enthusiasm might have been due
to its thematic content, right? As it drew heavily
on the ideas of Jean -Jacques Rousseau's famous
work, Emile, or on education. So it seems his
final work carried forward that revolutionary
ideal of a regenerated society and education
that he had championed earlier. That literary
success confirms that even if his political legacy
ended in corruption and execution, his dramatic
philosophy that theater should be a moral instrument
for education and regeneration was genuine and
resonated with the culture he helped to create.
He was attempting to leave a lasting blueprint
for a moral citizenry. Other plays are also notable
footnotes in his career, cementing his position
as a fixture in revolutionary theater. These
include Le Convalescent de Qualité, or The Distinguished
Invalid, from 1791, and L 'Entrigue Epistolaire,
The Epistolary Plot, also from 1791. And it's
interesting to note that L 'Entrigue Epistolaire
supposedly included a depiction of the famous
painter Jean -Baptiste Cruz, who was highly regarded
for his moral and sentimental scenes. This further
links Fabre's dramatic output to the era's obsession
with morality and virtue. Even as he was engaging
in the backroom political machinations that would
destroy him, the contradiction is always there.
It's always there. And his literary work wasn't
entirely lost to time. His collected works, the
oeuvre, melee, et posthume, miscellaneous, and
posthumous works, were first published in Paris
in 1802 across two volumes. Which is significant.
I mean, he went from being a failed playwright,
rejected by the old regime, to having his collected,
edited works published shortly after his death.
He suggests his contribution to revolutionary
culture was taken seriously by subsequent generations
of writers. And his dramatic life, the struggle,
the sudden political rise, the corruption and
the tragic swift death has naturally lent itself
to fiction. His complexity makes him a perfect
foil for exploring the contradictions of the
revolution. Absolutely. He appears as a major
character in Hilary Mantel's acclaimed novel
about the French Revolution, A Place of Greater
Safety. Right, a key figure in that book. And
he also pops up as a secondary character in Emma
Ordsey's novel, The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel,
suggesting that even in the popular imagination
a century later, his persona was still viewed
as a quintessential, if flawed, figure of the
terror. He became a literary figure of the very
history he tried to rename. He is remembered
less for his rational calendar and more for the
dramatic, emotional and corrupt choices he made.
So we have traced the improbable journey of Philippe
-Francois Nazaire, Fabre de Glantine. It's a
story that started with a silver wild rose prize
and ended with a dark joke about worms. He was
a man who sought to revolutionize both the aesthetic
of the theater and the fundamental structure
of the calendar, ultimately embodying the explosive
ambition and the cynical, fatal corruption of
the French Revolution. The contrast is truly
stark, isn't it? On one side, you have the idealist
Fab, the one who penned the calendar report,
exalting the agricultural system, attempting
to replace sacerdotal prestige with the truth
of nature. A structure designed to be pure, rational
and transparent. Exactly. And on the other, you
have the politician Faber, whose undoing was
the ignoble crime of malversation and forgery
related to corporate fraud, a crime built on
secrecy, illusion and greed. It's the purity
of ideology betrayed instantly by the squalor
of human greed. Which Robespierre correctly identified
as criminality disguised by patriotism. That's
the perfect epitaph for him. He tried to etch
his name into the very fabric of time by creating
a rational, nature -based calendar designed to
force the French people to forget the religious
past by erasing Sundays and marking time by seasons.
Yet decades later, when the calendar was itself
abolished, we chiefly remember him for one simple,
enduring children. rhyme, Il pleut, Il pleut,
Bergère, a song of pure, simple sentimentality
and the political crime that swiftly and dramatically
erased his future. Which raises an important
question, something for you to mull over long
after this deep dive concludes. What does this
reversal say about the enduring power of simple,
emotional, relatable art versus ambitious, often
oppressive, imposed political systems? Favre
tried to legislate virtue and rename the seasons
of the year, but his most reliable legacy survives
in a four -line song. about a shepherdess and
her sheep, a song that requires no political
context or philosophical understanding to endure.
Perhaps in the end, the simple, honest verse
is more revolutionary than the calendar designed
to change the world.