Favras took into his confidence certain officers by whom he was betrayed; and, with his wife, he was arrested on Christmas Eve 1789 and imprisoned in the Abbaye.
He took refuge in the house of a washerwoman, but was discovered, haled before the Legislative Assembly, and imprisoned in the Abbaye, where he perished in the September massacres.
He was accused, though proof is lacking, of having been an accomplice in the massacres in the prison of the Abbaye.