In Vilna he met a dashing, aristocratic but reckless 26 year old Chevalier Guard officer Michael Lunin (1787-1845), later famous as a political philosopher, revolutionary, and Decembrist. For Auger it was love at first sight. As he later wrote in his memoirs: "the soft look, playful mouth, quick animation, imperturable manner offered, depending on the case, whatever you were looking for." Lunin wanted to distance himself from his father, and in 1816 they decided to head to South America to join Bolivar's Liberadores. They only got as far as Paris, where they shared a tiny garret, Lunin penning a novel about "False" Dmitri, a 17th-century pretender to the Russian throne who may have been gay, while Auger introduced him to Jesuits, Saint-Simonians, and theatre acquaintances.