According to Louise Fusil, Saint Georges and his friend Lamothe had been absent from Paris for nearly two years. "I since learned that they had left for Saint-Domingue, then in full revolt; it was rumoured they had been hanged in a mutiny. I gave them up for dead and mourned them with all my heart, when one day, as I sat in the Palais Royal with a friend absorbed in a magazine ... I looked up and screamed, thinking I saw ghosts. They were Lamothe and Saint Georges who, clowning, sang to me 'At last there you are! You thought we've been hanged /For almost two years what became of you?' 'No, I was not sure that you were hanged, but I did take you for ghosts, come back to haunt me!' 'We nearly are they answered, for we come from very far indeed.'"