According to some biographers, he was mistaken for Baudray, owner of the "cafe des Bains chinois" on the boulevard des Italiens. Despite his protests, he was deported to Cayenne, where he served as clerk of court, notary and responsible for keeping the civil registers. At the proclamation of the First French Empire, he refused to swear allegiance to Napoleon and resigned before retiring with his wife to the United States, where he saw the work of his hands for thirteen years. Leaving New York, he returned to France in 1817, where he had to belie newspapers and biographies saying he died in Guyana in 1801. Admitted to the hospital for old men of Bicêtre, while his wife was admitted in another home, he died during the 1829–51 cholera pandemic at the age of 83.