When he died in 1830, the year of the July Revolution, she moved to Paris for the society of other women writers, and to reunite with her older brother (esteemed clockmaker Henri Robert).

In 1845 she retired to the quiet of Abbaye-aux-Bois, a Catholic convent that also let rooms to women of high social standing; soon, however, she returned to her career.

While contemporary novelists drifted toward escapist fiction, her historical novels revisited themes of socialism and républicanisme.

Her views were shaped in part by the work of anti-Catholic socialist Eugène Sue (1804–1857).

[1][2][4] With Camille Leynadier, she compiled and edited the memoirs of Giuseppe Garibaldi, which they presented as a biography, dramatised in parts.