Studies in Paris

In July 1848, Verne left Nantes again for Paris, where his father intended him to finish law studies and take up law as a profession.
He obtained permission from his father to rent a furnished apartment at 24 Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, which he shared with
Édouard Bonamy, another student of Nantes origin.


(On his 1847 Paris visit, Verne had stayed at 2 Rue Thérèse, the house of his

aunt Charuel, on the Butte Saint-Roch.)

Verne arrived in Paris during a time of political upheaval: the French Revolution of 1848. In February, Louis Philippe I had been

overthrown and had fled; on 24 February, a provisional government of the French Second Republic took power, but political

demonstrations continued, and social tension remained. In June, barricades went up in Paris, and the government sent Louis-Eugène

Cavaignac to crush the insurrection. Verne entered the city shortly before the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte as the first

president of the Republic, a state of affairs that would last until the French coup of 1851, in which Bonaparte had himself crowned

ruler of the Second French Empire. In a letter to his family, Verne described the bombarded state of the city after the recentJ une Days

Uprising but assured them that the anniversary ofB astille Day had gone by without any significant conflict[.31]

Verne used his family connections to make an entrance into Paris society. His uncle Francisque de Chatêaubourg introduced him into

literary salons, and Verne particularly frequented those of Mme de Barrère, a friend of his mother's.[32] While continuing his law

studies, he fed his passion for the theatre, writing numerous plays. Verne later recalled: "I was greatly under the influence of Victor

Hugo, indeed, very excited by reading and re-reading his works. At that time I could have recited by heart whole pages of Notre

Dame de Paris, but it was his dramatic work that most influenced me."[33] Another source of creative stimulation came from a

neighbor: living on the same floor in the Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie apartment house was a young composer, Aristide Hignard, with

whom Verne soon became good friends, and Verne wrote several texts for Hignard to set asc hansons.[34]