Akelaitis again fled to Paris where he lived until his death. He married a French woman and had three children. Living in poverty, he still worked for the Polish and Lithuanian causes, contributing articles various periodicals, including to Polish "Gazeta Warszawska", "Kurjer Warszawski", and Lithuanian ' and "Aušra" (contributed an article on the names of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania). He had a regular column in the Polish ' where he wrote about Parisian art exhibitions, French science and culture, Exposition Universelle (1878), etc. He edited the Lithuanian section of trilingual newspaper "Zmowa – Kupos susitarimas – Hromadzki zhowor" which appeared in 1870 (after the first issue, its publication was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War). He helped edit and publish a Lithuanian translation of "Livre du peuple" by Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais in 1870. In 1886, he founded and chaired until his death the Želmuo Society (literally: "shoot") of Lithuanian emigrants. Initially, it was more a cultural organization to preserve Lithuanian language and culture among the "émigrés". He did not abandon ideas of an armed struggle against the Russian Empire – a Russian informant reported in 1866 that Akelaitis was writing a Lithuanian-language "revolutionary catechism" that would be published in Switzerland and smuggled to Russia. He died in 1887 and was buried at the Cimetière parisien de Pantin. His short obituaries were published in "Tygodnik Illustrowany", "Biblioteka Warszawska", "Ateneum".