Returning to Madrid, Espronceda was soon concerned in more conspiracies, and escaped to Gibraltar, whence he passed to Lisbon. A suggestion of the Byronic pose is found in the story (of his own telling) that, before landing, he threw away his last two _pesetas_, "not wishing to enter so great a town with so little money." In Lisbon he met with that Teresa who figures so prominently in his life; but the Government was once more on his track, and he fled to London, where Byron's poems came upon him with the force of a revelation. In England he found Teresa, now married, and eloped with her to Paris, where, on the three "glorious days" of July 1830, he fought behind the barricades. The overthrow of Charles X. put such heart into the Spanish _emigrados_ that, under the leadership of the once famous Chapalangarra—Joaquín de Pablo—they determined to raise all Spain against the monarchy. The attempt failed, Chapalangarra was killed in Navarre, and Espronceda did not return to Spain till the amnesty of 1833. He obtained a commission in the royal bodyguard, and seemed on the road to fortune, when he was cashiered because of certain verses read by him at a political banquet. He turned to journalism, incited the people to insurrection by articles and speeches, held the streets against the regular army in 1835-36, shared in the liberal triumph of 1840, and, on the morrow of the successful revolution which he had organised, pronounced in favour of a republic. He was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague in 1841, returning to Spain shortly afterwards on his election as deputy for Almería. He died after four days of illness on May 23, 1842, in his thirty-third year, exhausted by his stormy life. A most formidable journalist, a demagogue of consummate address, a man-at-arms who had rather fight than not, Espronceda might have cut out for himself a new career in politics—or might have died upon the scaffold or at the barricades. But, so far as concerns poetry, his work was done: an aged Espronceda is as inconceivable as an elderly Byron, a venerable Shelley. Byron was the paramount influence of Espronceda's life and works. The Conde de Toreno, a caustic politician and man of letters, who was once asked if he had read Espronceda, replied: "Not much; but then I have read all Byron." The taunt earned Toreno—"insolent fool with heart of slime"—a terrific invective in the first canto of _El Diablo Mundo_:— "_Al necio audaz de corazón de cieno, Á quien llaman el Conde de Toreno._"