[2] At this point, having led (in the words of historian Jules Bertaut) "a most disreputable life", and being an agitator by temperament, d'Axa gravitated towards the anarchist movement.

[2] He founded the famous anarchist newspaper L'EnDehors in May 1891 in which numerous contributors such as Jean Grave, Louise Michel, Sébastien Faure, Octave Mirbeau, Tristan Bernard and Émile Verhaeren developed libertarian ideas.

[7] Anarchists, he wrote, "had no need to hope for distant better futures, they know a sure means of plucking the joy immediately: destroy passionately!

", d'Axa proclaimed of his contemporaries, "If our extraordinary flights (nos fugues inattendues) throw people out a little, the reason is that we speak of everyday things as the primitive barbarian would, were he brought across them.

"[9] D'Axa was a bohemian who "exulted in his outsider status",[7] and praised the anti-capitalist lifestyle of itinerant anarchist bandit precursors of the French illegalists.