Fabre d’Eglantine

Philippe-François-Nazaire Fabre, known as Fabre d’Églantine (1750-1794), was a French actor, playwright, poet, and politician. After leading a turbulent life as a traveling actor in France and Europe, he wrote and staged several plays in Paris. At the outbreak of the Revolution, he wrote other plays, inspired by politics, which were received with mixed reviews by the public. He became friends with Danton, who, having become Minister of Justice, hired him as his secretary general. But involved in several major scandals involving the misuse of public funds, he appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal at the same time as Danton for corruption, trafficking in opinion, and attempting to divide and destroy the national representation. He was convicted and guillotined with Danton in April 1794.
According to legend, on the cart taking him to the scaffold, he hummed a famous song he had composed years earlier: Il pleut, il pleut, bergère… (It’s raining, it’s raining, shepherdess…)