Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to the British Isles. There he wrote his last work, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", a long poem commemorating prison life. Living in a Paris hotel, he was destitute, with little money and few friends. His last memorable words were: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go". He died of cerebral meningitis in Paris at the age of forty-six.