A frequenter of _cafés_, living fast, bitter with journalists, hail-fellow with comedians, he lavished his wit for the benefit of minor theatres, and expended the exuberance of his patrician blood in comic odes. Dispensing thus some of his strength in such pieces as the _Vieillesse de Brididi_, the _Foire aux Grotesques_, and _Un Monsieur Bien-Mis_, in 1868 he founded the _Lanterne_, and thenceforth became the most ardent champion of the revolutionary party; and in the brilliant articles we all know, he cast its light on the follies of others under the pretext that they were his own. This satirical production reached the eleventh number, when its author, overstepping all bounds, took Napoleon by the horns and the gendarmes by the nose, and committed other extravagances, until the Government fined him to the amount of ten thousand francs penalties, and ordered him a short repose in the prison of Sainte-Pélagie. The notoriety attaching to his name dates from that period, and the events which accompanied the violent death of Victor Noir tended to augment his popularity and to convert him into the leader of a party, or the bearer of a flag, around which rallied all the elements of the struggle against established authority. He escaped to Belgium, and studied socialism, which he expounded later to an admiring audience of seventeen to eighteen thousand electors at Belleville. Elected deputy by the 20th Arrondissement, M. de Rochefort became, in 1869, a favourite representative of that class of the Parisian population whose bad instincts he had flattered and whose tendencies to revolt against authority he had encouraged, and in virtue of these claims he was chosen to form part of the Government of the National Defence. As President of the Commission of Barricades, after the 4th of September, during the siege of Paris, in the midst of the difficulties of all sorts caused to the Government of the National Defence by the investment of the capital, M. De Rochefort, making more and more common cause with the revolutionary party, separated himself from his colleagues in the Government who refused to permit the establishment of a second Government, the Commune, within a besieged city. By this act he openly declared himself a partisan of the Commune, and immediately after the acceptance of the preliminaries of peace he resigned his position as a deputy, alleging that his commission was at an end, and retired to Arcachon.