Wearing Polish caps, Fauchery and Félix and Adrien Tournachon tried to join the Polish Legion in 1848. Along with Murger and Champfleury, Antoine Fauchery was part of the Rue des Canettes group He contributed to the Corsaire-Satan and several other small newspapers.
As someone who "succumbed easily to dreams," as Nadar wrote, he had a more surprising existence than his comrades. In 1852, he went to Australia to look for gold. Once back in Paris, he published his Lettres d’un mineur en Australie (Letters from an Australian Gold Miner), with a forward by Théodore de Banville. In 1858, he went back to Australia, as a photographer this time, first in Melbourne, before embarking for Manilla. A war correspondent during the French expedition in China, he fell ill and had to leave for Japan, where he died, in Yokohama.
In 1858 he had sent this cheerfully provocative souvenir to the man who taught him photography.