 When he resigned his post as sub-commissioner of the customs (1872) he continued to devote himself to his studies.He tried to gather into one "Corpus" the Christian sarcophagi of which so many have been preserved in the south of France.In 1878 he published in Paris his "Etudes sur les sarcophages chrétiens de la ville d'Arles", which was followed by a second work "Etudes sur les sarcophages chrétiens de la Gaule" (Paris, 1886).