Son of a royal prosecutor, he was a novice in the Society of Jesus and, after a period of military life (1716-19), entered the Benedictines where he took vows and received Holy Orders. Sent as a preacher to Evreux and Paris, in Oct. 1728 he fled to England and Holland, where in 1731 he published the last three volumes of *Mémoires d'un homme de qualité qui s'est retiré du monde*: the first four had already appeared in Paris before his flight. The final of the fifteen tales included, *Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut*, met with immediate and wide success; the irresistible passion that binds the two protagonists, shattering every moral tie, is portrayed without the digressions and rhetorical flourishes of other works by the writer, who nonetheless felt compelled to warn of the frequent presence of “descriptions trop tendres et d'une certaine licence de sentiments et d'expression... qui ne laissent pas d'avoir quelque danger pour un lecteur inconsidéré qui s'en occupe trop et qui en est excessivement attendri.”
In England P. began publishing a journal, *Pour et contre*, which helped acquaint France, between 1733 and 1740, with British customs. In the autumn of 1734, P. was readmitted to his Order and returned to France; the following year he entered service as chaplain to the Prince of Conti. He continued to publish his voluminous novels: besides numerous translations from English, seventeen volumes of a *Histoire générale des voyages* (1745-61) and a French dictionary.