The violent personalities of a pamphlet entitled Marie Joseph Chenier et le prince des critiques (1844), in reply to Jules Janin, brought him a six months' sojourn in La Pelagic, in the cell just quitted by Lamennais.
His father, Louis Chenier, a native of Languedoc, after twenty years of successful commerce in the Levant as a cloth-merchant, was appointed to a position equivalent to that of French consul at Constantinople.
But the glamour of the military life was as soon exhausted by Chenier as it was by Coleridge.
But Chenier is always far more than an imitator.
A strong constitutionalist, Chenier took the view that the Revolution was already complete and that all that remained to be done was the inauguration of the reign of law.