[citation needed] In St Petersburg, Auger befriended the aristocrat Filipp Vigel, a famous Russian memoirist and friend of Pushkin.
With the return of Napoleon, Auger's position as a Frenchman in society became awkward, and following Vigel's advice he left St Petersburg.
In Vilna[3] he met a dashing, aristocratic but reckless 26 year old Chevalier Guard officer Michael Lunin (1787-1845), later famous as a political philosopher, revolutionary, and Decembrist.
They only got as far as Paris, where they shared a tiny garret, Lunin penning a novel about "False" Dmitri, a 17th-century pretender to the Russian throne who may have been gay, while Auger introduced him to Jesuits, Saint-Simonians, and theatre acquaintances.
[1] Back in France, in 1827 Auger befriended the Saint-Simonians Hippolyte Carnot and Philippe Buchez and took an active part in their conferences.
After the scandal of Custine's book had subsided, the Tsar decided it was best not to remind the public of it, and the project was abandoned,[1] but Auger remained some time in St. Petersburg.
Published posthumously in 1891 as Mémoires d'Auger (1810-1859, they were of remarkable frankness; his exploits confirming the presence of his name on the register of homosexuals then maintained by the Paris police.