After his early novels *Le club des phoques* and *Mystères de Londres*, etc., there followed a period of inactivity due to his theatrical failure, *La fée des grèves* (1815), *Le tueur des tigres* (1854), *Le poisson d'or* (1863), *L'hôtel Carnavalet* (1877), etc. In 1863 he published his best drama, *Le bossu*, adapted from the novel of the same name. In the final years of his life, under the lash of misfortune and thanks to his wife’s piety, he became a fervent Catholic, and besides producing new works inspired by his return to the faith, he began to revise his earlier works to render them irreproachable; but illness and death prevented him from completing the task.
BIBL.: H. Glessener, *Le génie de P. F.*, *L'église* 1901.