Gustave Flourens

At 25 years of age Flourens undertook in 1863, on behalf of his father, a course of lectures at the Collège de France, on the subject of the history of humankind.

Gustave Flourens then spent some time in Italy, where an article of his in the Fe polo d'Italia caused his arrest and imprisonment, and finally, having returned to France, nearly lost his life in a duel with Paul de Cassagnac, editor of the Pays.

[3] In Paris he devoted his time to the cause of "red republicanism", and begin writing articles in the La Marseillaise weekly newspaper.

Gustave Flourens was one of the most active leaders of the insurrection, and after a sortie against the Versailles troops in the morning of 3 April, he fled into an inn near the bridge that separates Chatou and Rueil.

[8] In her autobiography, My Double Life (p. 220), the actress Sarah Bernhardt described him as follows: "I also knew and frequently saw a mad sort of fellow, full of dreams and Utopian follies.