1785, on July 2Oth, two months before due; he was so small that a bon-bon box was extemporised as his cradle. Indeed, it was supposed that he was dead, and he was to have been carried to burial in his bon-bon box, when his father, who was a surgeon, stooping over him, heard a faint sigh, and preparations for the funeral were stopped. He became secretary to the Count de Cessola, president of the Senate of Nice, and then under-secretary of the Tribunal of Commerce, an office he retained till his death in 1843. He wrote songs and composed music to them, also a little vaudeville, and a poem "La Nemaida," which was serio-comic, and turned on a local incident, a dispute between the beadles and sacristans of the church of Ste. Françoise de Paule. His little vaudeville led to his imprisonment. It had been composed for performance before King Charles Felix and his queen, Marie Christine, when they were at Nice at Christmas, 1829. He ventured without authorisation to introduce on the stage his nephew, aged nine, dressed as a peasant, and to set him to play a little piece on the violin. This had not been submitted to the proper authority and allowed; accordingly the Count de Faverger, Governor of Nice, ordered the incarceration of the audacious poet. But this bit of red-tapism was too much, and Rancher was released in a couple of hours. He revenged himself on the governor by a satirical and burlesque song, that ran like wildfire through the town. A street in Nice bears Rancher's name.
Nice was the scene of the sacrilegious rascalities of a rogue, Collet, whose story, as he operated at Fréjus and at Draguignan as well as at Nice, may be told.
Collet was born at Belley, in the department of Aine,
