Charles Bataille was a talented journalist in the world of the small presses. Gifted both for chronicles and for controversy, he often composed "letters from Paris" for large and samll papers alike. He wrote several articles about Nadar. Their unswerving friendship dated back to 1849, when they both lived on Rue Neuve-des-Martyrs and enjoyed playing practical jokes, getting into snowball fights, and tossing oyster shells at each other from the windows of their rooms under the eaves. The following year, writing under the pseudonym Paul Dyas, Bataille published his first collection of poems, Verses. It included a dark poem about Bohemia in which, years before he slipped into madness, he wrote, "Joyful children of Bohemia / Let us laugh at fate and its blows! / Everyone knows / Our loving society / in its piety / Is keeping for the fateful hour / in a tower / beds for us all / in a madhouse's hall!"