Two years later he was saved from the conscription and enabled to publish his first volume – Les Deux Anges – through the exertions of a kinsman and of Pierre Lebrun.

Gounod's appreciation of his peasant song, Les Bœufs (1846), settled his vocation as a songwriter.

He had no theoretical knowledge of music, but he composed both the words and the melodies of his songs, the two processes being generally simultaneous.

He himself remained so innocent of musical knowledge that he had to engage Ernest Reyer to write down his airs.

He sang his own songs, as they were composed, at the workmen's concerts in the Salle de la Fraternité du Faubourg Saint-Denis; the public performance of his famous "Le chant du pain" was forbidden; "Le chant des ouvriers" (1846) was even more popular; and in 1851 he paid the penalty of having become the poet laureate of the socialistic aspirations of the time by being condemned to seven years of exile from France.