“ After serving an apprenticeship to a mason in his native town, he went in 1810 to Paris, and studied for some years at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a favourite pupil of Bélanger, the government architect, who in 1814 appointed him his principal inspector. Succeeding Bélanger as government architect in 1818, he designed many important public and private buildings in Paris and also in the south of France. ”