1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beffroy de Reigny, Louis Abel

BEFFROY DE REIGNY, LOUIS ABEL (1757–1811), French dramatist and man of letters, was born at Laon on the 6th of November 1757. Under the name of “Cousin Jacques” he founded a periodical called Les Lunes (1785–1787). The Courrier des planètes ou Correspondance du Cousin Jacques avec le firmament (1788–1792) followed. Nicodème dans la lune, ou la révolution pacifique (1790) a three-act farce, is said to have had more than four hundred representations. In spite of his protests against the evils of the Revolution he escaped interference through the influence of his brother, Louis Étienne Beffroy, who was a member of the Convention. Of La Petite Nanette (1795) and several other operas he wrote both the words and the music. His Dictionnaire néologique (3 vols., 1795–1800) of the chief actors and events in the Revolution was interdicted by the police and remained incomplete. Beffroy spent his last years in retirement, dying in Paris on the 17th of December 1811.