of their mentor having been marginalized, Macedonski had expressed his dissatisfaction with the cultural environment long before that moment, and was still a respected figure even after the incidents took place. First Paris sojourn and Poezia viitorului Having been stripped of his administrative office by the new Brătianu cabinet, Macedonski faced financial difficulties, and was forced to move into a house on the outskirts of Bucharest, and later moved between houses in northern Bucharest. According to Călinescu, the poet continued to cultivate luxury and passionately invested in the decorative arts, although his source of income, other than the supposed assistance "of [European] ruling houses", remains a mystery. Arguing that Macedonski was "always in need of money" to use on his luxury items, poet Victor Eftimiu claimed: "He did not shy away from sending emphatic notes to the potentates of his day [...], flattering some, threatening others. He would marry off or simply mate some of his disciples with aging and rich women, and then he would squeeze out their assets." Macedonski eventually left Romania in 1884, visiting Paris. On his way there, he passed through Craiova, where he met aspiring author Traian Demetrescu, whose works he had already hosted in Literatorul and who was to become his friend and protégé. Demetrescu later recalled being gripped by "tremors of emotion" upon first catching sight of Macedonski. In France, Macedonski set up contacts within the French literary environment, and began contributing to French or Francophone literary publications—including the Belgian Symbolist platforms La Wallonie and L'Élan littéraire. His collaboration with La Wallonie alongside Albert Mockel, Tudor Vianu believes, makes Alexandru Macedonski one in the original wave of European Symbolists. This adaptation to Symbolism also drew on his marked Francophilia, which in turn complemented his tendencies toward cosmopolitanism. He became opposed to Carol I, who, in 1881, had been granted the Crown of the Romanian Kingdom. In addition to his admiration for Cuza and the 1848 Wallachian revolutionaries, the poet objected to the King's sympathy for France's main rival, the German Empire. In January 1885, after having returned from the voyage, he announced his retirement from public life, claiming that German influence and its exponents at Junimea had "conquered" Romanian culture, and repeating his claim that Eminescu lacked value. In the meantime, Literatorul went out of print, although new series were still published at irregular intervals until 1904 (when it ceased being published altogether).