Towards the end of the First Empire, he was proprietor of the Journal de la littérature et des arts, which he transformed at the Restoration into a political journal of Liberal tendencies, the Nain jaune, in which Louis XVIII himself had little satirical articles, secretly inserted.
After the return from Elba, the Nain jaune became Bonapartist and fell into discredit.
[1] Cauchois-Lemaire then threw himself impetuously into the Liberal agitation, and had to take refuge in Brussels in 1816, and in the following year at the Hague, whence he was expelled for publishing an Appel à l'opinion publique et aux Etats-Généraux en faveur des patriotes français.
After the revolution of July 1830, he refused a pension of 6000 francs offered to him by King Louis Philippe, on the ground that he wished to retain his independence even in his relations with a government which he had helped to establish.
He soon, however, abandoned journalism for history and, having no private means, in 1840, accepted the post of head of a department in the Royal Archives.