Pascal Sabès died at the age of eighty-seven, and Pétion buried him and moved his goldsmith’s workshop to his mother’s house.

The death of M. Sabès, who died at 87, on 6 December 1789, came to give still more gravity and weight to Pétion’s character. Although the old man had not given him his name at the baptismal font, any more perhaps than he had given it to Suzanne herself, Pétion religiously took it on himself to have him buried with all the decency that the fortune of the family allowed. Then he carried his tools to his mother’s hearth and set up his workshop there. Sheltered from want, without being rich, he had to work more than ever to help with his mother’s expenses and above all to satisfy his excessive inclination to oblige others, for from that time his purse was that of his friends.