"L'Espagne me montrait ses couvents, ses bastilles;

Burgos, sa cathédrale aux gothiques aiguilles;

_Irun, ses toits de bois_; Vittoria, ses tours;

Et toi, Valladolid, tes palais de familles,

Fiers de laisser rouiller des chaînes dans leurs cours.

Mes souvenirs germaient dans mon âme échauffée;

J'allais chantant des vers d'une voix étouffée,

Et ma mère, en secret observant tous mes pas,

Pleurait et souriait, disant: 'C'est une fée

Qui lui parle et qu'on ne voit pas!'"

The manner of travelling, too, made a deep impression on the brain of

the child who, as a man, was to possess the descriptive faculty in the

very highest degree! How well one can picture the five hundred men

who formed the advance-guard; the thousand escorting the heavy, noisy

waggons; the great carriage with its gilding half worn off, that came

next, drawn by six mules, reinforced, in difficult places, by two and

even four oxen, led by a _mayoral_,[1] escorted by two _zagales!_[2]

Think of the burning sun, the parching dust, the arms sparkling

in the glowing atmosphere, of villages laid waste and the hostile

and threatening populations, the unspeakably terrible and bloody

recollections which seemed to belong rather to the isles of the Pacific

than to a European continent!--and we shall have some idea of scenes

which we cannot attempt to describe, which only Hugo himself could

relate.

The first day they went three leagues! The second day, they halted for

the night at the village of Ernani. In the poet's recollections, the

name of the village is changed to that of a man. Everyone knows the

romantic bandit, lover of Doña Sol, adversary of Charles V., and rival

of Ruy Gomez. On the third day, a curious spectacle met the travellers'

gaze: a battalion of _écloppés._ A battalion of _écloppés_ was a

gathering of soldiers of all arms, the débris of a score of combats,

or, may be, of a single battle; for, in those days, battles were

barbarously conducted: often, two, three or four regiments were wiped

out; as many as a thousand, fifteen hundred or two thousand wounded

would be picked up from the field of battle; a leg would be cut off

here, an arm there, a bullet extracted from one, splinters pulled ont

of another. All these would go to the rear and, when cured, or nearly

so, from the débris of four or five different regiments would be formed

a battalion of _écloppés_ (cripples), which was sent back to France

and left to defend itself on the way thither. The poor fellows had to

extricate themselves from the terrible game of war as best they could.

Our cortège, then, met one of these battalions at Salinas. It was

composed of Light Infantry, Cuirassiers, Carabineers and Hussars. Not a

man among them but had lost an arm or a leg, a nose or an eye; but they

were gay, and sang and shouted "Vive l'empereur!" The children were

particularly struck by the fact that every man carried a parroquet or a

monkey on his shoulder or at his saddle-bow; some even had both. They

had come from Portugal, where they had left their limbs behind them,

and whence they had brought this menagerie.

At Mondragon, two or three leagues before Salinas, thanks to the

devotion of the soldiers, they escaped a very serious danger. By

"they," I mean Madame Hugo and her three children. But a slight

explanation will be necessary before giving an account of this

incident. The soldiers received their rations every three days;

according to their usual custom, they consumed the three days' rations

in the first twenty-four hours, or flung away what food burdened

them; so that the whole cortège usually fasted one day, at least, out

of three. This fast was the more painful to bear--especially in the

matter of liquids, which were not thrown away but usually consumed

prematurely--as they journeyed over arid plains, under a burning

sun and in suffocating air. They started at break of day, to avail

themselves of the cool air, halted at noon, to eat and drink and then

they set off again and travelled till nightfall. The soldiers camped

round the waggons; the officers and travellers lodged in the villages

or towns on billet; Madame Hugo was generally lodged with the Alcade.

There, her distribution of rations was made her every night: it was the

same allowance as that given to her husband when he was on campaign,

namely, twenty rations. Now these portions were very large; great

mountains of bread and meat and more wine than she could possibly

consume, were piled up before her every night. The soldiers who marched

to right and left of her carriage, by the side of the six mules and

the immense chariot, amounted to about forty men. They were Dutch

grenadiers; for the French army, at that time, like the Roman legions

of the time of Augustus, was a mixture of all the nations of Europe.

These forty men shared the rations of Madame Hugo, who had no need of

twenty portions of bread, meat and wine for herself, her children and

her servants, since she and they were nearly always supplied with meals

by the host with whom they lodged; neither did the _mayoral_ and the

two _zagales_ need any, since they lived on a glass of water, a piece

of bread smeared with garlic and the smoke of their cigarettes. The

forty Dutchmen were accordingly deeply grateful to Madame Hugo, and

their gratitude found expression on two occasions. We will relate the

first at once: the second will come in due course.

Mondragon is left by a dark and steep tunnel which forms the gate of

the town; the roadway through this tunnel takes a sudden turn on the

right, by the side of a precipice. Some slight palings were placed

at the edge of the roadway to give any vehicles being carried over

the abyss a last chance to pull themselves up, if they happened,

by chance, to knock up against one of these barriers. Whether the

_mayoral_ and _zagales_ were unacquainted with the geography of the

district, or whether they were unable to control the heavy coach, when

the vehicle came out of the dark tunnel it was advancing at a rapid

pace, carried away by its own weight, towards the precipice, when the

Dutch grenadiers, perceiving Madame Hugo's danger, rushed to the heads

of the mules and, forcing them quickly to turn round, stopped the

carriage just as one of the wheels had begun to roll over the edge of

the precipice. For one instant the travellers were literally suspended

between life and death. But life gained the day. Two or three soldiers

were nearly flung off by the shock; but some of them clung to the

traces and others to the poles. And, as it happened, the only injuries

were a few bruises and sores, which did not prevent them making merry

that night with Madame Hugo's distribution of rations. The Duc de

Cotadilla, who was very gallant, in spite of his sixty years, and who

cantered by Madame Hugo's carriage door throughout the journey, added

some bottles of rum to that distribution, and there was a regular feast.

After about twelve or fourteen days' journey, they reached Burgos.

They had had frequent alarms since they left Bayonne, but had often

found that what they took for guerilleros were only quiet mule-drivers,

united into bands for their own protection. This mistake was easily

made, since the mule-drivers were armed almost like soldiers and could

not be distinguished from such, on account of the dust raised round

them, except at close quarters, when it would be seen they rode mules,

not horses. At Burgos a halt of three or four days was made, and Madame

Hugo took the opportunity these days offered to show her children the

cathedral, that wonderful pile of Gothic architecture, the gate of

Charles V. and the tomb of the Cid.

Of the tomb of the Cid, the soldiers had made a rifle-target. The

child left Burgos dazed and breathless with wonder. Young as he was,

he already possessed a passionate admiration for the _chefs-d'œuvre_

of architecture; and the cathedral of Burgos, with its sixty or eighty

bell-towers, is, indeed, a masterpiece of its kind. By a strange

coincidence, General Hugo, who was in command of the Spanish retreat

in 1813, knocked down three of these bell-towers when he blew up the

citadel of the town of Burgos, of which he was the last governor.

The farther they advanced, the more frequent did traces of destruction

become apparent. After Burgos, they stopped at a village which had once

been Celadas; it was a heap of ruins from one end to the other; and,

as though it had been feared that the place might revive, the ruins

had been thoroughly set fire to. Nothing could be sadder than to see

that fire-destroyed village in the middle of the sunburnt plains. A few

wall sides stood crumbling and roofless and, of these, the children

belonging to the caravan made a fortress, soon dividing their small

party into besiegers and besieged. War, which was, in those days, the

trade of the fathers, was the play of the children. Little Victor and

his two brothers formed part of the besieging party. Just when they

were scaling a breach to enter the town, and Victor, who always loved

high places, was running along the top of a wall, doubtless to make a

diversion during the attack, he lost his footing and fell head foremost

from the top of the wall into an uncovered cellar, and his head struck

against the corner of a stone with such violence that he was stunned

and lay where he fell. No one had seen him fall: his descent had been

effected too rapidly for him to cry out. So the assault was carried on

as though the besiegers had not lost one of their number. When the town

was taken, vanquishers and vanquished counted their numbers, and only

then did they discover that one of them, young Victor Hugo, was left

gloriously on the field of battle. They began to search for him, Abel

and Eugène at the head, and so carefully did they hunt into every nook

and corner, that they soon discovered the wounded victim in the depths

of a cellar. They thought he was dead, as he did not give any signs of

life, and they rushed off with him amidst great lamentations to Madame

Hugo, who soon saw he was still alive.

We have forgotten to mention that there were specimens of all kinds of

humanity in the convoy, including six or eight Councillors of State,

whom Napoleon was sending ready-made to his brother! So a doctor was

easily found. The doctor attended to the child and, luckily, the shock

had been worse than the actual blow; the wound was therefore more

terrifying to look at than dangerous and, although the mark of the cut

can even to-day be plainly seen, where Hugo parts his hair, by the next

day the child had forgotten all about it; and like Kléber after the

capture of Alexandria, he was ready to take part in besieging a fresh

town.

So far, nothing serious had disturbed the march of the caravan.

Occasionally, a bullet from a hidden guerillero would bury itself in

the thickness of the panels of one of the carriages, or break the glass

of a door; and Colonel Montfort would send a score of hussars to search

among the undergrowth from whence the stray shot had come; but it was

easy enough in that part of the country through which the travellers

were then passing for the culprit to slip down the sides of a ravine or

gain a mountain gorge and put himself beyond reach.

One night, however, they had a genuine alarm, and expected this time

that they were really face to face with a formidable enemy. They had

traversed nearly two-thirds of their way and had reached the small town

of Valverde, a collection of sombre-looking houses with high walls and

no windows, looking like a nest of fortresses of the time of Louis

XIII. As usual, the escort had set up its camp at the entrance to the

town, sentinels had been posted in all directions and the travellers

and officers had received their billeting papers for the houses of the

principal inhabitants. Madame Hugo, as usual, lodged with the Alcade.

As he left her, the Duc de Cotadilla said--

"Be on your guard, madame; we are in the heart of the insurrection,

and your host has not only a very bad reputation but also a very

evil-looking face."

Madame Hugo could only judge of the face, and her opinion thereon

entirely coincided with that of the Duc de Cotadilla. Moreover, the

inside of the house accorded with the appearance of the town and with

her host: doors were barred with iron and lined with sheet-lead; there

were severe-looking vestibules as dark as the passages in a convent,

huge bare-walled rooms with only the earth for flooring on the ground

floor and bricks on the first floor; and the furniture was composed of

wooden benches and leather arm-chairs. When Madame Hugo had seen over

the whole house to select the rooms that suited her best, she decided

on an immense low room on the ground floor, lighted by a branch of

pinewood burning in an iron hand which was attached to the wall; she

drew ont her bed from the immense portmanteau which enclosed it during

the day, and put the children to sleep on a dozen sheepskins, placed

M. du Saillant in a recess adjoining the large room and, when night

fell, awaited what might happen. The outlook was not a cheerful one;

the events that might be expected were terrible to contemplate, for the

Spanish had been steadily gaining a reputation for ferocity since the

beginning of the war; and the tortures they invented for the wretched

Frenchmen who fell into their hands were unmentionably horrible. Among

primitive peoples, who are wholly savage, like the Turks, for instance,

you know what to expect; it will be one of their three methods of

torture and execution--chopping off heads, strangulation or impalement;

and the imagination of the executioners does not exceed those three

ways of killing. But with a civilised people like the Spanish, who

had their Charles V., Philip II. and the Inquisition, it is another

matter: the miserable man under sentence of death may be roasted

over a slow fire, sawed between two planks, put on the rack, hung by

the feet; or have his entrails unravelled like a skein of cotton;

or his body slashed in slices like a sixteenth-century doublet; or

his eyes put out, his nose, his tongue or his hands cut off. Spanish

executioners are men of resource! Besides, if they had exhausted their

own imagination, there remained the resources of the Inquisition, for

it should be borne in mind that the men who fought against us were

Catholics first and foremost, priests and saints!

In spite of reflections like these, dispiriting enough to a mother who

is answerable to her husband for the safety of herself and their three

children, Madame Hugo began to fall asleep, envying the tranquillity

of Colonel du Saillant, who had been asleep a long time in the recess

they had discovered adjoining this low room, when, suddenly, the cry

"To arms!" and the noise of sharp firing roused her. She had gone

to bed with very few clothes off, especially after the warning she

had received, and she was up in an instant. The fusillade went on

continuously, though somewhat irregularly directed, and the cries "To

arms!" redoubled. In the midst of these cries, someone knocked on the

outside shutters of the large low room, loud enough to be heard, but

meant evidently to be reassuring. Madame Hugo opened the shutter. It

was Colonel Montfort, who had knocked on the shutters with the hilt of

his sword.

"It is I, madame," he said, "Colonel Montfort, who have the honour to

address you. The enemy has attacked us, but we have taken measures to

give it a warm reception, therefore be tranquil. In any case, please

barricade yourself in here, and only open to the Duc de Cotadilla or to

myself."

Madame Hugo thanked Colonel Montfort for his attentive care; M. du

Saillant went out to him, and she shut the door fast behind him,

barricaded it, with every available precaution, and waited further

developments. The firing continued for some time, and even occasionally

seemed to increase; finally it decreased and gradually died out. Which

had been victorious? French or Spaniards? She did not know as yet, but

she had good hopes that the French had won, and soon there came a fresh

rapping on the shutters, and, amidst shouts of laughter, which Madame

Hugo recognised as coming from the Duc de Cotadilla, Colonel Montfort

and her husband's aide-de-camp, she was asked to open the great door.

This done, the three officers entered.

A trumpeter of the hussars had discovered, just outside the town, a

bit of meadow where he thought that his horse, to which he was greatly

attached, could find a little fresh grass when the sentinels had been

placed, he had picketed his horse in this tiny oasis. A peasant had

noticed and wondered at this confidence and, when night fell, he had

slipped from bush to bush, in order to steal the horse; the animal had

allowed him to approach until he felt the picket detached, when, with a

violent shake, he freed himself from his thief, and rushed off neighing

and rearing back to the French camp. The sentinel advanced shouting,

"Who goes there?" And the horse, of course, went past him without

replying. The sentinel fired and fell back on the first outpost,

crying, "To arms!" The first outpost fired and cried, "To arms!" and

then the soldiers in their turn had run to their piled and loaded

muskets, fired and shouted, "To arms!" Hence the alarm, the firing,

the fearful tumult, which for an hour had filled the little town of

Valverde with fire, smoke and noise.

Nobody dreamt of trying to sleep again for the remainder of that night,

so Madame Hugo and the three officers spent it together, and next

morning, at daybreak, they continued their march.

The following day, another scene almost as grotesque as the alarming

incident of the previous night, was in preparation for the travellers,

under the rays of the hot noontide sun. They were halting at that hour

in the middle of a great plain. The soldiers were covered with dust,

and streaming with perspiration, under a sun of 35 degrees Centigrade,

having finished their meal, when a courier arrived for the Duc de

Cotadilla, to announce that the queen, who was also on her way under an

escort to rejoin her husband, would soon pass by the cortège. The Duc

de Cotadilla thanked the courier for his information and, when he had

learnt the time that they were likely to meet the queen, and found they

could still count on nearly an hour, he sent the courier on his way.

Then he went to the door of Madame Hugo's coach, where, we know, he was

accustomed to hold converse.

"Madame," he said, "I venture to ask you to lower your blinds, first

on account of the sun, and next because of the sights you would

see going on among the escort. The queen is going to pass by in an

hour's time, and I desire to show her due deference by making my men

dress themselves in parade attire; and, to do this, they will have

to change everything, from their collars to their leggings. During

this transformation, which will be even more extensive than I have

described, there will be evolutions which may be all right for a

general or a colonel to see, but which are more unseemly for a lady to

look upon. I have warned you, madame, and I am now going to warn the

Duchesse de Villa-Hermosa and the other ladies."

And, with his usual politeness, the Duc de Cotadilla took leave of

Madame Hugo and issued his commands. Madame Hugo drew down her blinds.

The orders of the Duc de Cotadilla were that the men should at once

put on parade dress to line the route for the queen. The men quickly

formed single line along the whole of the roadside, piled arms, opened

knapsacks and began their toilet. They had just reached the most

delicate part of their toilet, on account of which the Duc de Cotadilla

had cautioned the ladies to lower their carriage blinds, when a huge

cloud of dust appeared on the top of a mountain five hundred feet off,

and cries of "The queen! The queen!" rang through the air. The queen

had come half an hour sooner than the courier had announced. A stronger

head than that of the Duc de Cotadilla might have been upset by such

an accident as this; moreover, in no book on the art of warfare had

provision been made for such a contingency. So he kept silence, and,

left to their own inspiration, the drums beat the call to arms, the

soldiers shouldered their weapons and the non-commissioned officers

yelled, "Fall in!"

Thus it fell ont that the Queen of Spain held a review such as no other

queen or empress, were she even Marguerite of Burgundy or Catherine

II., had ever held; and, as she learnt later that M. de Cotadilla had

been forewarned of her arrival, nothing removed the idea from her mind

that the nakedness of those three thousand men was a joke which the

illustrious duke had prepared for her.

The queen went by, and, as the parade dress was of no further use,

they resumed their everyday uniform, restored their fine clothes to

their knapsacks, the signal for starting was given and the journey was

resumed.

[Footnote 1: Translator's note.--Spanish leader of a mule-team.]

[Footnote 2: Young shepherds.]

CHAPTER VIII

Segovia--M. de Tilly--The Alcazar--The doubloons--The castle

of M. de la Calprenède and that of a Spanish grandee--The

_bourdaloue_--Otero--The Dutchmen again--The Guadarrama--Arrival

at Madrid--The palace of Masserano--The comet--The College--Don

Manoël and Don Bazilio--Tacitus and Plautus--Lillo--The winter of

1812 to 1813--The Empecinado--The glass of _eau sucrée_--The army of

merinoes--Return to Paris

At length they reached Valladolid; then, after a few days' stay there,

they proceeded from Valladolid to Segovia across steep mountains,

sometimes sharp peaked, sometimes leading by gentler slopes to high

summits from which they could see vast plains basking in the June

sunshine.

The Count of Tilly was governor of Segovia. He belonged to the old

court, was page to Louis XVI. and left Memoirs which are not wanting in

a certain picturesqueness of their own--a much rarer quality at that

epoch than the quality of arousing interest. He came to the door of

Madame Hugo's carriage to welcome her, installed her in a palace and

looked after her and her children during their stoppage at Segovia.

The event that struck the young poet most and remained most vividly

in his memory during his sojourn in this town was his visit to the

Alcazar--that splendid fairy palace, less famous but as beautiful as

those of Granada and Seville, with its gallery containing portraits of

all the Moorish kings painted in the trefoils and on backgrounds of

gold. We need not explain to our readers that these pictures are later

than Arabian times, the religion of the Arabs forbidding them to paint

images. The Alcazar at that time was also used as the Mint. M. de Tilly

took Madame Hugo and her children into the coining-room, where he had

a doubloon struck specially for each child to keep. One of the greatest

of Hugo's youthful troubles was the losing of his coin in Madrid by

letting it fall through the crack of a carriage door.

They waited eight days for reinforcements; for they dared not risk

setting ont for Madrid without a fresh escort; when this new escort

arrived, they resumed their journey to rejoin the convoy party on the

Madrid road. At Segovia, Madame Hugo, as we know, had, through the

intervention of Count Tilly, been lodged in the palace of a Spanish

grandee. As in M. de la Calprenède's palace, everything was of silver,

chandeliers, plates, basins, washing-bowls, everything, even to the

chamber articles. One of the pieces of furniture that especially

charmed Madame Hugo with its beauty and originality of shape was a

delightful little _bourdaloue._

Here I shall be pulled up and asked why a night commode should have

been associated with the name of the celebrated pupil of the Jesuits

and why a chamber utensil should have been named after a preacher. I

will explain, after I have done with Madame Hugo's fascination for this

little article of furniture and the consequences that ensued.

Well, Madame Hugo was so delighted with the form of the charming

_bourdaloue_ that she asked the master of the house in which she was

staying if she might buy it of him. But, like a true Spaniard, the

old Castillian was an implacable enemy to our nation, so he replied

that Madame Hugo could have the coveted object if she wished, but that

he never sold anything to the French. As, in this case, to take it

was equivalent to stealing it, Madame Hugo refrained, supposing the

_bourdaloue_ to form part of a collection which it would be a pity to

spoil. Now let us explain why those little elongated vessels are called

_bourdaloues._ The famous preacher gave such interminably long sermons

that ladies were compelled to take certain precautions against their

length which we think we need not explain more fully. More happy than

Christopher Columbus, who gave his name to a new continent, the pillar

of Christian eloquence gave his name to a new article of furniture,

made especially because of his doings--an article which from its long

and narrow shape was easily carried about.

Now that we think we have cleared up this historical question to the

satisfaction of our readers, we will rejoin the convoy on its journey

to Madrid. It had reached within a league of Otero, where they were

to pass the night and whose towers they could already discern, when,

because one of the spokes of a back wheel of Madame Hugo's gigantic

coach snapped in two, they had to make an enforced halt on the

high-road, which was paved with enormous pieces of rock. Faithful

to his courteous habits, the Duc de Cotadilla had ordered a general

halt, causing an outburst of objections. A general halt at seven in

the evening! a halt which might last a couple of hours and allow the

convoy to be overtaken by nightfall! The duke could hardly have done

more even if the accident had happened to one of the waggons containing

the treasure, and he was exceeding his duties altogether when it was

only for the wife of a French general, a lady who had been a member

of the Spanish aristocracy for barely three years! So there was a

great clamour throughout the convoy. There had been precedents in

similar cases, and the unfortunate carriage had been left behind bag

and baggage to the mercy of Providence! The Duc de Cotadilla wished to

keep his word, but he had to give way before the chorus of complaints.

The convoy meant to continue its way to Otero; but help on which she

had not counted was to be given to Madame Hugo and her poor abandoned

coach. The forty Dutch grenadiers asked to be allowed the favour of

remaining by her coach as escort until the wheel could be mended and it

was possible to continue the journey. This favour was granted them. The

convoy moved off and gradually, like a receding tide, left the coach

stranded on the highway. But never did shipwrecked people alone on a

desert island set themselves to work with greater energy to construct a

raft than did the forty Dutch grenadiers to the mending of the wheel.

It was completed in an hour or so. When they set off again, the rear

of the convoy had long been lost to sight and darkness had begun to

fall. However, in spite of all these adverse circumstances, the coach,

with Madame Hugo, her three children, the servant, the chambermaid, the

forty Dutch grenadiers, entered Otero by ten that night, without having

had to pay toll to the guerilleros--a most unusual stroke of good luck.

During the night, owing to the efforts of a local wheelwright, whom

they compelled by force to undertake the job, with two army blacksmiths

superintending his labours, the coach was mended; and next day it was

ready to take its place at the head of the file of carriages.

They reached the chain of the Guadarrama Mountains and began to climb

them; ascending the highest summit, they made a halt at the foot of the

gigantic lion which turns its back on Old Castile, and, with one paw on

the scutcheon of the Spains, looks to New Castile; then they descended

towards the campagna round Madrid. The campagna of Rome is bare and

gloomy, but flecked with glorious sunshine, and looks alive, if one

may so put it, in spite of its loneliness. The campagna of Madrid is

bare, arid and grey, and like a cemetery. And the Escurial rises up at

the end of the plain like a tomb. This, indeed, was the impression it

left on me, and also the impression it left on Hugo, who visited it

thirty-five years before I did.

"L'Espagne m'accueillit livrée à la conquête;

Je franchis le Burgare où mugit la tempête;

_De loin y pour un tombeau, je pris l'Escurial_,

Et le triple aqueduc vit s'incliner ma tête

Devant son front impérial.

Là, je voyais les feux des haltes militaires

Noircir les murs croulants des villes solitaires;

La tente de l'église envahissait le seuil;

Les rires des soldats, dans les saints monastères,

Par l'écho répétés, semblaient des cris de deuil!"

The convoy wound over the plain from the Escurial to Madrid like a long

snake; they only slept once on the road, at Galapagar. Next day, by

six in the evening, they had reached Madrid. They had scarcely entered

its streets before everybody disbanded, overjoyed at being no longer

under the restraint of military discipline. Madame Hugo bade farewell

to the Duc de Cotadilla, of Colonel Montfort and her forty Dutchmen;

then Colonel du Saillant took her to the palace of the princes of

Masserano, which was prepared for her reception. The general was at his

governorship in Guadalajara: we shall see later what he was doing there.

The palace of Masserano was in the _Calle de la Reyna._ It was a

vast building of the seventeenth century, in all the splendour and

severity of that period; it had no garden but a multitude of little

square courtyards paved with marble, each with a fountain in the

centre. These courtyards could only be entered through a kind of

postern gateway; the sun never reached down into them, for the walls

enclosing them were some forty to fifty feet high; and they were only

just large enough for a wolf to walk round the fountain; in fact, they

were simply store-places of shade and coolness. So far as Victor's

memory carried him, the interior of the palace was of incredible

magnificence; especially the dining-room, which had large glass windows

on each of its four sides, the light through which showed up in all

their glory splendid paintings by Fra Bartolommeo, Velasquez, Murillo,

Sébastian del Piombo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michael Angelo.

This dining-room led into a large salon, upholstered in red damask,

which led into another salon upholstered in blue damask, which in its

turn led to what was called the princess's room, an immense chamber,

upholstered and furnished in blue figured silk and silver. On the

other side of the dining-room, through an anteroom, ornamented solely

with oak chests which were meant to serve as seats for attendants, you

entered a large gallery which contained a collection of full-length

portraits of the Counts of Masserano, in court dress, also of princes

of the same name; the principality, by the way, only dated back as

far as the middle of the seventeenth century. It was in these great

galleries that the children played hide-and-seek with the sons of

General Lucotte, in rooms a hundred and fifty feet long, and among

Chinese vases and porcelain ornaments six feet in height! Their

evenings were spent on a large balcony, from whence they could see the

comet, in which they could distinguish the Virgin giving her hand to

Ferdinand VII.,--so said the Spanish priests.

One morning an escort of Westphalian cavalry arrived, accompanying a

messenger bearing a letter from General Hugo. The general was unable

to come to Madrid, being busily engaged in warfare on the banks of the

Tagus. The main purpose of the letter was to recommend the best college

for the education of the three children. They were to be placed in the

Séminaire des Nobles, where they would be prepared as pages of the

king. It was not usual to take boys under thirteen, but, although Abel

was only twelve, Eugène but ten and Victor only eight, an exception

was made in their favour and a license from the king provided for

their immediate admission. They had to leave the splendid Masserano

palace, with its beautiful paintings by old masters, its splendid

tapestries, its interminable galleries decorated with Chinese vases

and the walls whereon three generations of counts and princes seemed

to come to life again in their state costumes or in their trappings of

war, for the gloomy seminary in the _Calle San-Isidro._ The Séminaire

des Nobles was, indeed, a formidable and severe-looking edifice, with

its great treeless courts, and one might almost go so far as to say its

vast schoolrooms without scholars. There were twenty-five pupils, not

including the three new-comers in this seminary, which had contained

three hundred before the French invasion. This was, approximately, the

proportion of the aristocracy of Spain that had rallied round Joseph

Bonaparte. And besides the twenty-five scholars there was, as we have

said, the three sons of General Hugo and a Spanish prisoner. The

seminary looked indeed a gloomy place to the poor children when they

entered it. Imagine those schoolrooms and dormitories and lavatories

and refectories intended to meet the needs of three hundred pupils, now

containing but twenty-five unhappy scholars, who looked lost therein.

Virgil's phrase, _rari nantes_, seemed entirely to meet the case. The

establishment was kept by two Jesuits who controlled the college

with apparently equal strictness; these two Jesuits each represented

opposite types of their order: one was named Don Manoël and the other

Don Bazilio. Don Bazilio was tall and nearly fifty-five years of age;

his forehead was bare and bald, and his nose was like a vulture's beak;

his mouth was large and firm, and his chin protruded. He was hard and

severe in character and never forgave. But, at the same time, he was

just, and never punished unless punishment was deserved. The other,

Don Manoël, was plump and very broad. His figure was thick-set; he had

a smiling, almost a gay, face; and his manner towards new-comers was

gentle and gracious and caressing; judging from his appearance, he was

always ready to excuse, or at any rate to make allowance for faults;

he was extremely false, very deceitful and utterly mischievous; he

directed the college alone, in spite of the pretended collaboration

of Don Bazilio, doubtless by order of his superiors. When the first

edge of his appearance of sympathy had worn off, Don Manoël became

unbearable. Lads began by detesting Don Bazilio; but, as he was just,

in spite of his severity, this hatred gradually passed away; whilst,

on the other hand, people began by liking Don Manoël, and ended by

detesting him. But when the latter feeling was aroused it went on

increasing _crescendo._

The studies which these two Jesuits set their pupils were ridiculous.

They were so feeble that, in a college composed of young people of

eighteen to twenty years of age, a special class had to be started

for the new arrivals of whom the oldest was but twelve. They actually

judged of the children's capacities by their size when they began to

examine them, and gave Abel a Quintus Curtius, and Eugène _De Viris_,

and little Victor an _Epitome._ But at sight of this book, with which

he had finished a long time before, the child rebelled and boldly asked

for Tacitus. The fathers looked at one another in stupefaction and,

refraining from punishing the audacious boy who had delivered himself

of this ill-timed jest, they brought him the book. Victor opened it and

immediately translated the paragraph about Cocceius Nerva on which

he had alighted at haphazard. The two other brothers took up Tacitus

in their turn, and gave an equal, if a not superior, proof of skill.

They brought them Perseus and Juvenal; the children were familiar with

both these satirists, and could not merely interpret them, but even

offered to recite whole satires by heart. Thus the children fresh

from France made light of these three authors, who were looked upon

at the Séminaire des Nobles as beyond the reach of rhetoricians of

twenty! The two Jesuits put their heads together, decided that they

must make a special class for the three new-comers and settled that

they would expound Plautus to them. Don Manoël it was, a true Jesuit,

who chose an author full of ellipses, bristling with idioms, crammed

with Roman patois, like that which Molière puts into the mouths of his

peasant-folk, and for ever alluding to customs that had disappeared

even in Cicero's time. But Don Manoël's end was accomplished: the

children's brains grew dull over Plautus; and this was exactly what

he wished, to break their pride. The twenty-two other pupils were

Spaniards, sons of Spanish grandees who had thrown in their lot with

Joseph. Among them were two sons of high birth to whom Victor dedicated

different Souvenirs in his works: one, the Count of Belverana, whom

he put in his _Lucrèce Borgia_, and Raymond de Benavente, to whom he

addressed, in 1823, the Ode that begins with this stanza:--

"Hélas! j'ai compris ton sourire,

Semblable au ris du condamné

Quand le mot qui doit le proscrire

A son oreille a résonné!

En pressant ta main convulsive,

J'ai compris ta douleur pensive,

Et ton regard morne et profond,

Qui, pareil à l'éclair des nues,

Brille sur des mers inconnues,

Mais ne peut en montrer le fond."

The young poet noticed one custom peculiar to Spanish manners, namely,

these children, whose ages varied from thirteen and every year up to

twenty, all used the familiar form of address among themselves, as

became sons of Spanish grandees, and never addressed one another by

their baptismal or family names, but only by their titles of prince,

duke, marquis, count or baron. They called Victor "Baron," which filled

him with pride.

Among these young folk--and to be exact in our figures we ought to

reduce the number of these juvenile nobilities to twenty-one--was one

who was neither knight, baron, count, marquis, duke nor prince, and who

nevertheless was not the least remarkable inmate of the college. This

was a young Spanish officer named Lillo, aged fifteen, who had been

taken prisoner at the siege of Badajoz. He had fought like a demon, had

killed a French grenadier with his own hand and had been taken only

after a heroic defence. They were about to shoot him when Marshal Soult

happened to pass by, and, having inquired and been informed what was

being done, had him despatched to Madrid, with orders that he should be

placed in the college. The order was carried out, and Lillo was sent

to the college, but in the twofold capacity of pupil and prisoner.

The lad, who had borne the rank of second lieutenant, had commanded

grown men, had faced battle in open field, equipped as a soldier, took

badly to the college discipline full of Jesuitical chicaneries, to

which he had to submit like all the others, save in the matter of the

common dormitory, where, however, each pupil had his own cubicle. He

therefore, as far as he was permitted, kept to himself in solitude,

rage burning at his heart's core, and in his relations with the other

young lads he was cold, melancholy and haughty. Of course, the three

French boys were the object of his particular aversion, and he was

constantly picking quarrels with one and sometimes with all three of

the sons of the general attached to Joseph, he a soldier of Ferdinand

VII. Once he called Napoleon _Napoladron_ before Eugène--true, nearly

every Spaniard called the conqueror of Austerlitz by that nickname, but

Eugène was none the less sensitive? to the insult on that account, and

he retorted that Lillo had been taken prisoner between the legs of a

French grenadier. Lillo had a pair of compasses in his hand; he did not

wait for any other weapon, but threw himself on Eugène and stabbed him

brutally with it on the cheek. The wound, or rather the tear, was an

inch and a half in length. Eugène wished to fight a duel, and Lillo was

willing enough; but the professors intervened and separated the youth

and the lad. Lillo disappeared the next day; and neither Victor nor his

brother ever heard what became of him. I can still hear Victor's grave

voice when he told me the anecdote, saying--

"And the young fellow was right: he was standing up for his country ...

but children do not understand that."

The living at the Séminaire des Nobles was cloistral; probably no

monastery throughout Spain kept severer rules. Once a fortnight they

went for a walk, but even this was restricted, and they might not even

go to the Délices (corresponding to our Champs-Élysées), for fear of

guerilla bands. These twenty or twenty-five lads would have been a

great prize, and worth a good ransom, belonging, as they did, not only

to the first families in Madrid, but also to the families which had

thrown in their lot with the brother of _Napoladron_, as Lillo had

called him.

From time to time, the boys would look up at the sound of an opening

door and they would see a vision out of the seventeenth century appear

in the beginning of the nineteenth. One day, when in the refectory,

eating their meal in silence, while a junior master, seated on a raised

chair in the midst of an immense hall, was reading to them in Spanish

out of a pious book, suddenly, the door opened, after a couple of

knocks, as though a prince, cardinal or Spanish grandee were outside.

The four little Benavente boys had not seen their mother for over a

year, and it was the Princess of Benavente. She advanced a few steps

into the room and waited. Then her four sons rose, ranged themselves

according to their age, eldest first, second next, and so on, and,

without taking one step faster than another, advanced ceremoniously and

kissed their mother's hand in turn from the tallest to the smallest.

The three young French lads were greatly astonished at the proceeding

and at a loss to understand such etiquette as this, for they were

accustomed to rush to their mother and fling themselves on her neck,

when they caught sight of her.

At the end of six months' sojourn at the Séminaire des Nobles, Abel

attained his twelfth year and was allowed by special privilege to enter

as a page at that age.

Then came the winter and famine. It was cold everywhere during the

fatal winter of 1812-1813, although it was nothing compared with the

severity experienced in Russia.

It was the fate of Napoleon to attract and concentrate the attention of

the world upon him during his reverses as during his victories.

The twenty-five pupils buried in that vast Séminaire des Nobles, in the

dormitories, schoolrooms and refectories intended for three hundred

inmates, were perished with cold. Nothing could warm those great rooms

wherein there was not a single fireplace; braziers placed in the middle

of the rooms only served to emphasise winter's triumph. Besides this,

the children were not only perishing of cold, but, worse still, were

dying of starvation. The wealthiest in Madrid could not get bread in

1812. And King Joseph himself--probably to set a good example--ordered

that nothing but soldiers' bread should be served at his table. People

were constantly found in the streets who had not even as much warmth as

the braziers at the Séminaire des Nobles, or King Joseph's army bread,

lying down on the thresholds of the great in tattered cloaks and dying

of hunger and cold. If they were still alive, every effort was made to

feed and warm them; if they were dead, they were removed and buried.

Bread was as scarce at the Séminaire des Nobles as elsewhere, and the

lads complained bitterly of hunger; to the less patient, father Manoël

would say--

"Make the sign of the Cross on your stomachs, and that will feed you."

The boys made many crosses, and, although the action warmed them a

little, it certainly did not nourish them. But they suspected Don

Manoël, who kept fat amongst all the sad and emaciated faces, to have

an illicit intimacy with the kitchen, which he hid even from Don

Bazilio.

All this while, General Hugo was waging war along the banks of the

Tagus against the famous Juan Martin, nicknamed the _Empecinado_, as he

had against Charette in the Vendée and against Fra Diavolo in Calabria.

He has himself given a modest and learned account of the strategic

movements of that fine campaign, which concluded with the capture and

execution of the captain of the guerilla hordes which he combatted.

We will select a few only of the picturesque accounts of dangers

incurred--those fragments which History drops from her robe and which

chroniclers carefully collect for their Memoirs.

One day, General Hugo and a hundred men came to a village situated on

one of the many little streams that run into the Tagus. In order to

avoid rousing needless alarm, he entered the village with only his

two aides-de-camp, to obtain from the inhabitants some information of

which he stood in need. He came from his camp, which included some

five to six thousand men, who were a league lower down the river. To

obtain the desired information, he applied to the proprietor of a

large sugar-refining factory, who, seeing him accompanied by only two

aides-de-camp, said never a word. General Hugo was thirsty. Unable

to get his information, he thought he might at any rate get some

refreshment and asked for a glass of water.

"Water?" said the proprietor of the sugar refinery. "There is plenty in

the river."

And he shut the door in the general's face. The general waited a moment

to see if the door would be reopened. Instead of the door, it was a

window that was opened, the muzzle of a gun slyly protruded, fired,

and a bullet whizzed past. At the sound of the gunshot, the detachment

which had remained outside the town rushed in; and when the soldiers

learnt what had just happened they wanted to demolish the sugar factory

and burn the village. General Hugo stopped them and said to his

orderly, "Go back to the camp, and invite the whole of the six thousand

men who form it, in my name, to come and drink some _eau sucrée_; it

will be a treat for them--it is a long time since the poor devils

tasted any!" It was one of the special virtues of the Imperial epoch to

be quick to understand when one wished to understand: the aide-de-camp

understood and set off at a gallop. The soldiers also understood. They

burst open the doors of the sugar factory, threw two or three thousand

sugar-loaves into the river; and for the rest of that day General

Hugo's six thousand men had as much _eau sucrée_ to drink as they

wanted! This was the only revenge he took on the refusal of a glass of

water and the gun fired at him. The deed has remained in the annals of

the army of Spain as one of the most toothsome jokes a general ever

cracked with his men.

On another occasion, also when they were marching by the banks of

the Tagus, in the place where I myself--I will tell the story in due

course--sojourned thirty years later, one wretched night, on the

great plains of Old Castile, between Toledo and Aranjuez, and it was

just such a burning sun as made Sancho bitterly regret he had not an

excellent curd cheese at hand, suddenly, the scouts fell back at full

gallop on the advance-guard to warn General Hugo that what appeared to

be an army corps of the enemy, of considerable number, was marching to

encounter the French army. And, indeed, so great a cloud of dust was to

be seen on the horizon as only a great body of men or the simoom could

produce. This dust shone like those clouds of crimson and gold which

appear in the atmosphere during the hottest of the dog-days. General

Hugo gave orders for a halt. He then rode on in advance with a hundred

men to examine the enemy's position himself, and if possible to divine

its intentions. There was no doubt about it--it was an immense troop

to judge by the space it occupied and the dust it raised, and it was

marching towards him with one of its wings on the right bank of the

Tagus. The infantry instantly received orders to prepare for battle,

the artillery to plant their batteries on a small hillock, and the

cavalry to take up a position on the right wing. Then they despatched a

few men on horseback in front under the command of an orderly officer.

But both officer and men returned at a gallop a few moments later.

General Hugo thought his men must have been _driven back_, and as not a

single shot had been fired he was just preparing to give the fugitives

a good wigging when on nearer approach he detected unequivocal signs of

hilarity on the countenances of both officer and men.

"Well, what is it?" asked the general. "Who is our enemy?"

"General," replied the aide-de-camp, "our enemy is a flock of three

hundred thousand merino sheep being driven by two hundred dogs,

conducted by a dozen shepherds, and belonging to M. _Quatrecentberger._"

"What tomfoolery is this, monsieur?" said the general, frowning.

"I am not joking, general," said the officer, "and in ten minutes you

will see that I have had the honour to tell you the precise truth."

A flock of 300,000 sheep! It made the mouths of the soldiers water!

What a suitable aftermath to the barrels of _eau sucrée_ which the

general had provided for them!

The army corps consisted of 4000 men; each soldier could have at least

a sheep to himself, and each began considering what kind of sauce he

would serve to his own dish.

At the announcement of this strange news, M. Hugo advanced to the

front. And there he saw through the dust first a dozen men on

horseback, armed with long sticks studded with nails, like lances;

behind these came the impenetrable front of 300,000 sheep; and upon

the heels of these 300,000 sheep two hundred barking, biting dogs

darting hither and thither. It looked like the migration of a great

Arab tribe, in the time of Abraham. The story was quite correct, except

the name of the owner, which the officer had taken the liberty of

mispronouncing slightly to suit the occasion. The proprietor's name was

not _Quatrecentberger_ (four hundred shepherds), but _Katzenberger._

It will be seen that the difference in pronunciation was so slight

that the officer may be forgiven his appropriate pun. M. Katzenberger

was a wealthy Alsatian speculator who had risked almost the whole

of his fortune in a speculation in merino sheep. A great melancholy

spread throughout the troops when it became known that the flock

belonged to a compatriot. It was utterly unlikely that M. Hugo would

allow M. Katzenberger's flock to be impounded, whether of 300,000 or

even of 400,000 beasts. And, as a matter of fact, the chief shepherd,

who had trembled for a moment at the prospective ruin of his master,

received from General Hugo a promise that not only should every single

hair of his merinoes go scot free, but that he should have a passport

requesting all the French army corps to treat M. Katzenberger's

shepherds, dogs and sheep with the utmost respect.

It was an odd incident! The flock reached France without any serious

accident, and by this almost unexpected good fortune M. Katzenberger

doubled, trebled and quadrupled his fortune. His first action was to

offer General Hugo a sum of money proportionate to the service he had

rendered him. General Hugo's first and final decision was to decline

the offered sum. I believe it was 300,000 francs--a franc per sheep.

And here let us state that General Hugo, who held a high position

for four years during the wars in Spain, who was given the charge of

conducting the retreat from Madrid to Bayonne, a position which always

allowed a general great facilities for enriching himself, died without

any picture gallery, or a single Murillo or Velasquez or Zurbaran,

possessing no other fortune but his retiring pension. It seems

incredible, does it not? And yet so it was. But, the directors of the

Musée will ask me, or those millionaire collectors who bought pictures

for 600,000, 200,000, 50,000 and even 25,000 francs, at the sale after

the decease of the late Marshal Soult, what benefit did he derive from

his disinterested conduct towards M. Katzenberger? He was the gainer

by an annual dinner which M. Katzenberger came from Strasbourg on

purpose to give him and all the members of his family in Paris, on the

anniversary of the great event that made his fortune. And this dinner

was on a splendid scale: it must have cost the grateful Strasbourgian

at least fifty louis.

During the winter of 1812 and the early months of 1813, in consequence

of our misfortunes in Russia, matters began to assume such a

threatening aspect in Spain that General Hugo felt it was dangerous to

keep his wife and children at Madrid. Therefore Madame Hugo and her

two youngest sons were put under the protection of quite as strong an

escort as the one we have described, and they made the return journey

from Madrid to Bayonne on their way to Paris, as successfully as they

had travelled between Bayonne and Madrid. Madame Hugo had thought it

best to keep the convent of the Feuillantines, so the two children

returned to their old nest with its light and shade, its recollections

of work and of play, and, furthermore, the abbé Larivière and his

_Tacitus_. Abel Hugo, a soldier boy of thirteen, remained with his

father.

CHAPTER IX

The college and the garden of the Feuillantines--Grenadier or

general--Victor Hugo's first appearance in public--He obtains

honourable mention at the Academy examination--He carries off three

prizes in the Jeux Floraux--_Han d'Islande_--The poet and the

bodyguard--Hugo's marriage--The _Odes et Ballades_--Proposition made by

cousin Cornet

That wretched year 1813 was a strange period of introspection. _Un

jour_ ... But we will let the poet himself describe matters, in the

verses below:--

"J'eus, dans ma blonde enfance, hélas, trop éphémère,

Trois maîtres: un jardin, un vieux prêtre et ma mère.

Le jardin était grand, profond, mystérieux,

Fermé par de hauts murs aux regards curieux,

Semé de fleurs s'ouvrant ainsi que des paupières,

Et d'insectes vermeils qui couraient sur les pierres;

Plein de bourdonnements et de confuses voix;

Au milieu presqu'un champ, dans le fond presqu'un bois.

Le prêtre, tout nourri de Tacite et d'Homère,

Était un doux vieillard; ma mère était ma mère.

Ainsi, je grandissait sous un triple rayon!

_Un jour_ ... Oh! si Gauthier me prêtait son crayon,

Je vous dessinerais d'un trait une figure

Qui, chez ma mère, un soir entra, fâcheux augure!

Un docteur au front pauvre, au maintien solennel;

Et je verrais éclore a vos bouches sans fiel,

Portes de votre cœur qu'aucun souci ne mine,

Ce rire éblouissant qui parfois m'illumine.

Lorsque cet homme entra je jouais au jardin,

Et rien qu'en le voyant je m'arrêtai soudain.

C'était le principal d'un collège quelconque;

Les tritons que Coypel groupe autour d'une conque,

Les faunes que Watteau dans les bois fourvoya,

Les sorciers de Rembrandt, les gnomes de Goya,

Les diables variés, vrais cauchemars de moine,

Dont Callot, en riant, taquine saint Antoine,

Sont laids mais sont charmant; difformes, mais remplis

D'un feu qui, de leur face, anime tous les plis,

Et parfois, dans leurs yeux, jette un eclair rapide!

Notre homme était fort laid, mais il était stupide!

Pardon, j'en parle encor comme un franc écolier;

C'est mal; ce que j'ai dit, tachez de l'oublier.

Car de votre âge heureux, qu'un pedant embarrasse,

J'ai gardait la colère et j'ai perdu la grâce.

Cet homme chauve et noir, très effrayant pour moi,

Et dont ma mère aussi d'abord eut quelque effroi,

Tout en multipliant les humbles attitudes,

Apportait des avis et des sollicitudes:

Que l'enfant n'était pas dirigé; que, parfois,

Il emportait son livre en rêvant dans les bois;

Qu'il croissait au hasard dans cette solitude;

Qu'on devait y songer, que la sévère étude

Était fille de l'ombre et des cloîtres profonds;

Qu'une lampe pendue à de sombres plafonds,

Qui de cent écoliers guide la plume agile,

Éclairait mieux Horace et Catulle et Virgile,

Et versait à l'esprit des rayons bien meilleurs

Que le soleil qui joue à travers l'arbre en fleurs;

Et qu'enfin, il fallait aux enfants, loin des mères,

Le joug, le dur travail, et les larmes amères.

Là dessus le collège, aimable et triomphant,

Avec un doux sourire, offrait au jeune enfant,

Ivre de liberté, d'air, de joie et de roses,

Ses bancs de chêne noir, ses longs dortoirs moroses,

Les salles qu'on verrouille et qu'à tous leurs pilliers

Sculpte avec un vieux clou l'ennui des écoliers;

Les magisters qui font, parmi les paperasses,

Manger l'heure du jeu par les pensums voraces,

Et, sans eau, sans gazon, sans arbres, sans fruits mûrs,

Sa grande cour pavée, entre quatre grands murs!"

Here I would fain break off the quotation and continue in prose; but,

to tell the truth, I have not the courage to do so. Oh! what fine lines

yours are, my friend, and what a joy it is to me, not simply to cause

them to be read--all the world has read them--but to cause them to be

re-read by the hundred thousand readers whose eyes will travel over

this chapter and who will sigh, with looks turned towards England--

"Soupir qui va vers toi sur la brise du soir,

Fait d'un quart de tristesse et de trois quarts d'espoir."

Let us pick up the thread of Hugo's lines, into the middle of which I

had the temerity to venture to put a couple of my own:--

"L'homme congédié, de ses discours frappée,

Ma mère demeura triste et préoccupée.

--Que faire? que vouloir? qui donc avait raison,

Ou le morne collège ou l'heureuse maison?

Qui sait mieux de la vie accomplir l'œuvre austère,

L'écolier turbulant ou l'enfant solitaire?--

Problèmes! questions! Elle hésitait beaucoup.

L'affaire était bien grave. Humble femme après tout,

Ame par le destin non pas les livres faite,

De quel front repousser ce tragique prophète

Au ton si magistral, aux gestes si certains,

Qui lui parlait au noms des Grecs et des Latins?

Le prêtre était savant, sans doute; mais, que sais-je,

Apprend-on par le maître ou bien par le collège?

Et puis enfin,--souvent ainsi nous triomphons,--

L'homme le plus vulgaire a de grands mots profonds;

_II est indispensable! il convient! il importe!_

Qui trouble quelquefois la femme la plus forte ...

Pauvre mère, lequel choisir des deux chemins?

Tout le sort de son fils se pesait dans ses mains.

Tremblante, elle tenait cette lourde balance,

Et croyait bien la voir, par moment, en silence,

Pencher vers le collège, hélas! en opposant

Mon bonheur à venir à mon bonheur présent.

Elle songeait ainsi, sans sommeil et sans trêve;

C'était l'été vers l'heure ou la lune se lève,

Par un de ces beaux soirs qui ressemblent au jour,

Avec moins de clarté, mais avec plus d'amour.

Dans son parc, où jouaient le rayon et la brise,

Elle errait toujours triste et toujours indécise,

Questionnant tout has l'eau, le ciel, la forêt,

Écoutant au hasard les voix qu'elle entendrait.

C'est dans ces moments là que le jardin paisible,

La broussaille où remue un insecte invisible,

Le scarabée, ami des feuilles, le lézard

Courant au clair de lune au fond du vieux puisard,

La faïence à fleur bleue où vit la plante grasse,

Le dôme oriental du sombre Val-de-Grâce,

Le cloître du couvent, brisé mais doux encore,

Les marroniers, la verte allée aux boutons d'or,

La statue où sans bruit se meut l'ombre des branches,

Les pâles liserons, les pâquerettes blanches,

Les cent fleurs du buisson, de l'arbre, du roseau,

Qui rendent en parfums les chansons à l'oiseau,

Se mirent dans la mare ou se cache sous l'herbe,

Ou qui, de l'ébénier chargeant le front superbe,

Au bord des clairs étangs, se mêlant au bouleau,

Tremblent en grappes d'or dans les moires de l'eau,

Et le ciel scintillant derrière les ramées,

Et les toits répandant de charmantes fumées;

C'est dans ces moments-là, comme je vous le dis,

Que tout ce beau jardin, radieux paradis,

Tous ces vieux murs croulants, toutes ces jeunes roses,

Tous ces objets pensifs, toutes ces douces choses

Parlèrent à ma mère avec l'onde et le vent,

Et lui dirent tout has: 'Laisse-nous cet enfant!'

Laisse-nous cet enfant, pauvre mère troublée;

Cette prunelle ardente, ingénue, étoilée,

Cette tête au front pur qu'aucun deuil ne voilà,

Cette âme neuve encor, mère, laisse-nous la,

Ne va pas la jetter au hasard dans la foule:

La foule est un torrent qui brise ce qu'il roule.

Ainsi que les oiseaux, les enfants ont leurs peurs.

Laisse à notre air limpide, à nos moites vapeurs,

A nos soupirs légers comme l'aile d'un songe,

Cette bouche où jamais n'a passé le mensonge,

Ce sourire naïf que sa candeur défend.

O mère au cœur profond, laisse-nous cet enfant!

Nous ne lui donnerons que de bonnes pensées;

Nous changerons en jours les lunes commencées;

Dieu deviendra visible à see yeux enchantés;

Car nous sommes les fleurs, les rameaux, les clartés;

Nous sommes la nature, et la source éternelle

Où toute soif s'étanche, où se lave toute aile;

Et les bois et les champs, du sage seul compris,

Font l'éducation de tous les grands esprits;

Laisse croître l'enfant parmi nos bruits sublimes,

Nous le pénétrerons de ces parfums intimes

Nés du souffle céleste épars dans tout beau lieu,

Qui font sortir de l'homme et monter jusqu'à Dieu,

Comme le chant d'un luth, comme l'encens d'un vase,

L'espérance, l'amour, la prière et l'extase!

Nous pencherons ses yeux vers l'ombre d'ici bas,

Vers le secret de tout entr'ouvert sous ses pas.

D'enfant nous ferons homme, et d'homme poëte;

Pour former de ses sens la corolle inquiète,

C'est nous qu'il faut choisir, et nous lui montrerons

Comment, de l'aube au soir, du chêne aux moucherons;

Emplissant tout, reflets, couleurs, brumes, haleines,

La vie aux mille aspects rit dans les vertes plaines;

Nous te le rendrons simple et des cieux ébloui,

Et nous ferons germer de toute part en lui,

Pour l'homme, triste d'effet, perdu sous tant de causes

Cette pitié qui naît du spectacle des choses.

Laisse-nous cet enfant, nous lui ferons un cœur

Qui comprendra la femme; un esprit non moqueur,

Où naîtront aisément le songe et la chimère;

Qui prendra Dieu pour livre et les champs pour grammaire;

Une âme pour foyer de secrètes faveurs,

Qui luira doucement sur tous les fronts rêveurs,

Et, comme le soleil dans les fleurs fécondées,

Jettera des rayons sur toutes les idées.'

Ainsi parlaient, à l'heure où la ville se tait,

L'astre, la plante et l'arbre,--et ma mère écoutait.

Enfant! ont-ils tenu leur promesse sacrée?

Je ne sais, mais je sais que ma mère adorée

Les crut, et m'épargnant d'ennuyeuses prisons,

Confia ma jeune âme à leur douces leçons!"

We see from what the poet tells us himself, what a struggle his

mother had to keep up (having for ally the beautiful garden of the

Feuillantines) against a master of the college, sent by M. de Fontanes,

who was uneasy, after the fashion of Napoleon, that a child should

grow up wild in the depths of an old cloister, thus escaping the

university training which, in all ages and in every reign, has had for

its object the breaking in of high-stepping colts. Thus, at fifteen,

the old convent of the Feuillantines had fulfilled its promises, and

made the child a poet. We shall see more of this presently, but for the

moment let us go back to General Hugo, who, at the very time when the

mother and son conflict was proceeding was assisting at the retreat

from Spain, after the two great battles of Salamanca and Vittoria, the

Leipzig and Waterloo of the South. He had with him, as aide-de-camp,

his son Abel, who, when only fourteen, had already been present at and

taken part in three pitched battles and seventeen skirmishes. He had no

need to envy his old schoolfellow Lillo, of the Séminaire des Nobles,

who was an officer at fifteen years of age.

When the remnant of the army of Spain returned to France they found

a French _corps d'observation_ awaiting them with Imperial orders to

incorporate the Spanish army with the French army. But those four years

of service in Spain, that arduous campaign during which they had had

to struggle not only against two armies, but also against the entire

population; those dreadful sieges rivalled only in ancient warfare,

when women and children defended every corner of the ramparts, every

home and every stone, with musket and poignard in hand; those sierras,

recalling the wars of the Titans, when fires were lit on every high

peak; those jagged mountains taken by charges of cavalry; those rock

fortresses defended and carried one after another; those scores of

passes each like another Thermopylæ; that butchery in which torture

and death awaited anyone taken prisoner, all went for nothing, was

forgotten, had ceased to exist, had never existed directly Spain was

evacuated. It might have been asked of Napoleon why he evacuated

Russia. But it had taken a very god to bend the invincible one beneath

him; like Thor, son of Odin, he had struggled with Death itself; he had

not been vanquished like Xerxes, he had been crushed like Cambyses.

The distinction is subtle, but one no more dreamt of disputing with

the conqueror of Austerlitz than with the hero vanquished at Beresina.

So the services of the French in Spain were regarded as of naught,

and--except the 200,000 men left upon the battlefields of Talavera,

Saragossa, Bayleu, Salamanca and Vittoria--all was as though nothing

had occurred.

Consequently, General Hugo found this order addressed to himself at

Bayonne:--

"_Major_ Hugo will at once put himself under the command of General

Belliard."

On the following day, General Hugo presented himself at the house of

General Belliard in the uniform of an ordinary grenadier with woollen

epaulettes. Belliard did not recognise him. General Hugo gave his name.

"What does this private soldier's uniform mean?" Belliard inquired.

"Grenadier or general," was Hugo's response.

And Belliard flung his arms round him. That very day he sent back the

order to the emperor. It was returned with this correction in the

margin in Napoleon's handwriting:--

"_General_ Hugo will immediately take up the command at Thionville."

History has related the details of that siege in which General Hugo

defended the citadel and governed the town. The citadel of Thionville

was one of the latest to float the tricoloured flag. But it had to

yield, though to the Bourbons, not to the enemy. General Hugo could not

stop in Paris: there were too many heart-breaking scenes for the old

soldier in the capital, where women strewed flowers in front of the

Cossacks, where the people shouted "_Vivent les allies!_" and where the

statue of the emperor was dragged through the gutters.

He bought the château of Saint-Lazare at Blois and retired there. Means

did not allow of the beautiful convent of the Feuillantines being kept

any longer. Madame Hugo remained at Paris in modest apartments, to

look after her children, Eugène and Victor being placed in the abbé

Cordier's boarding school, rue Sainte-Marguerite No. 41. Abel, an

officer exempt from these things, was left free. Eugène and Victor were

destined for the École polytechnique.

We have already pointed out that the convent of the Feuillantines had

kept its word and turned Victor into a poet. Now let us hear about the

boy's first attempts.

How grateful would I have been to-day to any contemporary of Dante,

Shakespeare or Corneille who would give me similar details of their

lives, that twenty years of friendship with Victor Hugo enables me to

give here!

It was just at the height of the Restoration. The Académie had

announced as the subject for its annual prize, to be awarded on 25

August, Saint Louis's Day, "The happiness that study brings in all

situations of life."

Victor went in for the competition without saying a word to anyone

about it. He put his name down, according to the rules of the

competition, in a sealed paper together with his piece of verse; but,

after his name, he added his age, fourteen and a half. Besides giving

his age thus, there were these lines in the course of the poem:--

"Moi qui, toujours fuyant les cités et les cours,

De trois lustres à peine ai vu finir le cours."

Think of this future philosopher, who, at fourteen, had _fled from

cities and courts!_ What delicious childish naïveté! But, strange to

relate, it was this admission of fourteen years of age that condemned

the poet, and prevented him from winning the prize. M. Raynouard, the

_rapporteur_, declared that the competitor, by allowing himself _trois

lustres à peine_--this was the method of counting in 1817 and is still

used by the Académie--had intended to make game of the Académie. And,

as though it were not a customary thing for the Académie to be made

fun of, the prize was divided between Saintine and Lebrun. However,

they read the whole piece composed by the impudent person who made

fun of the Académie by speaking of his fourteen years and a half. The

assembly, which enjoyed the Académie being thus made game of, highly

applauded the lines of the young poet, who at the very moment he was

being praised at the Académie was playing prisoners'-base in the

college courtyard.

The following stanza was specially applauded, and would have been

encored if encores were allowed at the Académie:--

"Mon Virgile à la main, bocages verts et sombres,

Que j'aime à m'égarer sous vos paisibles ombres!

Que j'aime, en parcourant vos gracieux détours,

A pleurer sur Didon, à plaindre ses amours!

Là, mon âme, tranquille et sans inquiétude,

S'ouvre avec plus de verve aux charmes de l'étude;

Là, mon cœur est plus tendre et sait mieux compatir

A des maux que peut-être il doit un jour sentir."

It had been a remarkable contest; for, among the competitors, besides

those we have named who won the prize--Saintine and Lebrun--were

Casimir Delavigne, Loyson, Who has since acquired a certain popularity

which has been interrupted by death, and Victor Hugo. Loyson obtained

the _accessit_, and Victor Hugo, in spite of M. Raynouard's contention

that he had made game of the Académie, was the first to have honourable

mention.

Casimir Delavigne, who had really committed the crime of poking fun at

the Académie by treating the subject in exactly the opposite way, had a

separate honourable mention apart from the competition.

Victor was playing at prisoners'-base, as we have said, whilst he

was being applauded at the Académie. The first news he heard of his

success was brought him by Abel and by Malitourne, who came rushing

in, leapt on him and told him what had just happened and that he would

in all probability have obtained the prize if the Académie had been

ready to admit that a poet of fourteen could have written the lines.

The supposition--not that he had wished to mock the Académie, but

that he could lie--hurt the child exceedingly, and he procured his

birth-certificate and sent it the Académie.

_Vide pedes! vide latus!_

They then had to believe it. And the indignation of that worthy

grandmother changed to admiration.

M. Raynouard, the perpetual secretary, sent the honoured poet a

characteristic letter. There was a deliciously fine mistake in spelling

in the letter sent by the perpetual secretary: he told Victor Hugo that

he should be pleased to make (_fairait_) his acquaintance. Two other

members of the Académie wrote to the young poet without suggestion

from outside. These were François de Neufchâteau and Campenon.

"Tendre ami des neuf sœurs, mes bras vous sont ouverts,

Venez, j'aimie toujours les vers!"

wrote François de Neufchâteau.

"L'esprit et le bon goût nous ont rassasiés;

J'ai rencontré des cœurs de glace

Pour des vers pleins de charme et de verve et de grâce

Que Malfilâtre eut enviés!"

wrote Campenon.

And Chateaubriand called Hugo "_l'Enfant sublime._" The appellation

stuck to him.

From that moment the youth was no longer his own master, but was given

over to that consuming tyrant we call Poetry.

In those days, people still went in for the _Jeux Floraux_, and Hugo

competed in two successive years, 1818 and 1819. He won three prizes.

The successful pieces were _Moïse sur le Nil_, the _Vierges de Verdun_

and the _Statue de Henri IV._ Besides these, he published two satires

and an ode. The satires were the _Télégraphe_ and the _Racoleur

politique_; the ode was the _Ode sur la Vendée._ He published these

three things at his own expense and, strange to relate, they brought

him in 800 francs.

Poetry sold in those days: society was greedy for novelties and, when

anything new was offered it, eagerly put its lips to the cup.

Meanwhile, two years of rhetoric in Latin, two years of philosophy and

four years of mathematics had prepared the student for entrance at the

École polytechnique.

He now began to face the future seriously, for the first time, and it

terrified him. The vocation for which he was being educated was not the

one for which he was fitted.

Just when he was about to take the leap and present himself for

examination, he wrote to his father that he had found a profession: he

was a poet and did not wish to enter the École; he would do without

his allowance of 1200 francs. General Hugo was a man of decision

himself and he realised that the boy had made up his mind; there was no

time to be lost: Victor had eighteen months yet to study. He suppressed

the allowance and abandoned the poet to his own resources. Victor

possessed within himself as inexhaustible a treasure as those in the

_Thousand and One Nights_, and he had the 800 francs from his satires

and the ode. On these 800 francs he lived for thirteen months, and

during these thirteen months he composed _Han d'Islande_. That curious

book was the work of a youth of nineteen.

While he was writing _Han d'Islande_ Victor's mother died--an event

that influenced the sombre tone of his work considerably. This was his

first sorrow and he never forgot it. From the day that that deep sorrow

settled on his life, Victor never wore anything but black clothes or

a black coat, and he never sealed his letters with aught but black

sealing-wax.

And, indeed, we who have seen him grow up, from his childish days at

the Feuillantines, at Avellino and at the Séminaire des Nobles, can

guess how much his mother was to him. One day, in one of those moments

of profound grief when the sorrowful heart seeks for surroundings in

harmony with its own mourning, the youth went to Versailles, that most

sorrowful and mournful of all places. He breakfasted at the café,

holding a paper in his hand which he was not reading, for he was

deep in thought. A life-guardsman, who was not given to thought and

wanted to read, took the paper out of his hands. Victor at nineteen

was fair and delicate of complexion and he looked only fifteen. The

life-guardsman thought he was dealing with a boy, but he had insulted

a man--a man who was in one of the dark crises of life, when danger

often comes as a blessing. So the young man accepted the quarrel that

was thrust upon him, coarse and foolish though it was. They fought with

swords, almost there and then, and Victor received a slash in the arm.

This _contretemps_ hindered the appearance of _Han d'Islande_ for a

fortnight. Happily, his grief-stricken heart had its star as every dark

night has, and its flower as has every precipice;--he was in love! He

was passionately in love with Mademoiselle Foucher, a maiden of fifteen

with whom he had been brought up. He married this young girl, and she

is to-day the devoted wife who followed the poet into exile. _Han

d'Islande_, sold for 1000 francs, was the dowry of the wedded pair, who

between them could only add up thirty-five years. The witnesses of the

marriage were Alexandre Soumet and Alfred de Vigny, both poets just

starting out in life and in art themselves. This thousand francs had to

be used for housekeeping.

The first volume of poetry Victor published at this time was printed

by Guiraudet, No. 335 rue Saint-Honoré and sold by Pélissier, place du

Palais-Royal; it brought him in 900 francs, which were to be spent on

luxuries. And out of these 900 francs the poet bought the first shawl

he gave his young wife. Other women, wives of bankers and princes, have

had more beautiful Cashmere shawls than yours, Madame Hugo, but none

were woven out of more precious and valuable tissue!

This first volume was an immense success. I remember hearing about it

when I was in the provinces.

Lamartine's first volume, _Méditations poétiques_, had appeared in

1820. It had an enormous and deserved success, and sooner or later

it was destined to be superseded by another successful rival. It

chanced this time that the rival proved equally successful, and the

two successes kept pace with one another, hand in hand supporting each

other. Nothing happened that could set the poets at variance, their

styles were so unlike; nor did politics, thirty years later, succeed in

severing the two men, no matter how different their opinions were.

The wedding took place at the house of M. Foucher, the father of the

bride, who lived at the War Office. The wedding feast took place in the

very hall where, by a strange coincidence to which we shall presently

return, General la Horie, Victor's godfather, was sentenced.

_Han d'Islande_, which we have most unfairly deserted, achieved, by

reason of its curious originality, quite as great a success as its

admired sisters the fair and fresh _Odes._ But it did not bear its

author's name and it was impossible to guess that that bunch of lilies

and lilacs and roses called _Odes et Ballades_ grew under the shade

of the rugged and dark oak tree called _Han d'Islande._ Nodier read

and marvelled at the latter production. Good and worthy Nodier! he was

always to be found feeding his mind on everything that could nourish it

and on everything that could expand his intellect. He announced that

Byron and Mathurin were surpassed and that the unknown author of _Han

d'Islande_ had attained the ideal of a nightmare. He, the man who was

to write _Smarra_! was, upon my word, very modest. Nodier was not the

sort of man from whom an author could long conceal his anonymity, no

matter in what disguise he masqueraded. The great bibliomaniac who had

made so many discoveries of this kind, quite as difficult to detect,

discovered that Victor Hugo was the author of _Han d'Islande._ But

who was Victor Hugo? Was he a misanthrope like Timon, a cynic like

Diogenes or a mourner like Democritus? He raised the veil and found,

as we are aware, a fair-complexioned youth who had only just reached

his twentieth year and looked but sixteen. He recoiled in amazement:

it was incredible. He expected to find the distorted countenance of an

aged pessimist; he found the youthful, open, hopeful smile of a budding

poet. The very first time they met each other the foundations of a

friendship were laid that nothing ever changed. Nodier always loved and

was loved in return after this fashion.

Meanwhile, a competence amounting almost to a fortune, had come to the

young housekeepers: the first edition of _Han d'Islande_, which was

sold for 1000 francs, had run out, and just when Thiers was making

his literary début, under cover of the name of Félix Bodin, with his

_Histoire de la Révolution_, Victor was selling his second edition

of _Han d'Islande_ for 10,000 francs. Lecointre and Durey were the

publishers who thus showered gold upon the nuptial bed of the young

people. Honours now knocked at their door. We have spoken before of

cousin Cornet, who had been made a senator and count under the Empire,

and a peer of France under the Restoration; Victor's growing fame

pleased the family pride of the old député of Nantes and member of the

_Cinq Cents._ He had no child of his own to whom to bequeath his coat

of arms of azure with its three cornets argent and his peer's robes;

so he proposed to throw the mantle over the young poet's shoulders on

one condition. True, the condition was a severe one: in order that

the giver's name should not be forgotten, the young poet was to call

himself Victor Hugo-Cornet. The proposition was transmitted by General

Hugo to the author of _Han d'Islande_ and of the _Odes et Ballades._

The author of _Han d'Islande_ and of the _Odes et Ballades_ replied

that he preferred to call himself simply Victor Hugo; and if he wanted

to become a peer of France at some future period he did not require

the assistance of another, but would become so through his own unaided

efforts. So Comte Cornet's offer was declined.

He had another cousin, Comte Volney, who nearly made him a similar

proposal to become his heir; but, unluckily, he discovered that _Han

d'Islande_ had been written by the same hand as the _Odes et Ballades_,

so he shook his head and buttoned his peer's robes over his own

shoulders more tightly than before.

CHAPTER X

Léopoldine--The opinions of the son of the Vendéenne--The Delon

conspiracy--Hugo offers Delon shelter--Louis XVIII. bestows a pension

of twelve hundred francs on the author of the _Odes et Ballades_--The

poet at the office of the director-general des postes--How he learns

the existence of the _cabinet noir_--He is made a chevalier of the

Légion d'honneur--Beauchesne--_Bug-Jargal_--The Ambassador of Austria's

soirée--_Ode à la Colonne_--_Cromwell_--How _Marion Delorme_ was written

In 1824, at the same time as the appearance of a fresh volume of Odes,

delightful little Léopoldine was born, whose death he witnessed later

under such sad circumstances in front of the château de Villequier,

drowned with her husband, on a fine day, by a sudden gust of wind. It

was a cruel stroke of destiny, perhaps intended to prove the temper of

the father's heart, which was to be severely tried during the days of

civil strife that were in preparation for him. All these Odes bore the

impress of Royalist opinions. The young man, scarcely past childhood,

was the son of his Vendéenne mother, that saintly woman who saved the

lives of nineteen priests in the civil war of 1793. General Hugo's

friends, who held what were called at that time "Liberal opinions,"

without openly belonging to the Opposition, were yet often concerned at

these ultra-monarchical tendencies; but the general shook his head and

answered them smilingly.

"Leave things to time," he said. "The boy holds his mother's opinions;

the man will hold his father's."

Here is a statement of the poet himself, which sets forth the promise

made by his father, not only to a friend, but to France, to the future

and to the whole world:--

"_December_ 1820

"The callow youths who succeed nowadays to political ideas

are in a strange predicament: our fathers are generally

Bonapartists and our mothers Royalists. Our fathers only

see in Napoleon the man who bestowed epaulettes upon them;

our mothers only see in Bonaparte the man who took their

sons away from them. Our fathers see in the Revolution the

grandest result that the genius of a National Assembly could

produce; the Empire, the greatest thing that the genius of a

man could devise.

"To our mothers, the Revolution only meant the guillotine,

and the Empire a sword. We children who were born under

the Consulate have all been brought up at our mothers'

knees,--our fathers were in camp,--and since they were often

deprived of their husbands and brothers through the vagaries

of the conquering Man, they riveted their hopes on us, young

schoolboys of eight and ten years of age, and their gentle

motherly eyes would fill with tears at the thought that by

1820 we should be eighteen, and by 1825 be either colonels,

or else killed. The acclamation that greeted Louis XVIII. in

1814 was the delighted cry of our mothers. There are very

few adolescents of our generation but have sucked in, with

their mothers' milk, a hatred of the two periods of violent

upheaval which preceded the Restoration. Robespierre was the

bogey that frightened the children of 1803; and Bonaparte

the bogey that terrified the children of 1815. I was lately

strongly upholding my Vendéen opinions in my father's

presence. He listened to me in silence, then he turned

to General L----, who was with him, and remarked, 'Leave

things to time: the child holds his mother's opinions; the

man will follow his father's.' This prophecy set me to

thinking. Whatever the case may be, and even admitting that,

up to a certain point, experience modifies the impressions

that we receive during our early years, _the honest-minded

man is sure not to be led astray if he submits all these

modifications to the severe criticism of his conscience.

A good conscience kept ever awake saves him from all the

devious pitfalls wherein his honesty might go astray._ In

the Middle Ages people believed that any liquid in which

a sapphire had rested was a preservative against plague,

carbuncles, leprosy and every kind of disease. Jean-Baptiste

de Rocoles said, 'Conscience is a similar sapphire!'"

These few lines completely explain Victor's political conduct at

different periods of his life. Meantime, the Royalist opinions which he

revealed in his beautiful verses to those who looked upon such opinions

as heresy were absolved by good deeds.

Let us mention a fact that will also serve to show the poet's life from

an original aspect. In 1822 the Berton conspiracy burst forth, and

all eyes were turned towards Saumur. Among the conspirators,--besides

Berton, who died bravely, and Café, who opened his veins like a hero

of old with a scrap of broken glass,--was a young man called Delon.

I had caught occasional glimpses of this young man at the house of

M. Deviolaine, to whom he was related, either carrying little Victor

on his shoulder or jumping the future poet up and down on his knees.

He was the son of an old officer who had served under General Hugo's

orders. In the famous trial of the Chauffeurs this officer was the

captain _rapporteur_; in the equally famous trial of Malet he was major

_rapporteur_, and, in both trials, without making any distinction

between the accused, he had pronounced sentence of death on them. So

General la Horie, Victor's godfather, of whom mention has been already

made, was shot by Delon's orders. It was a strange coincidence that

the son of the man who had pronounced sentence of death on others for

conspiracy, should be doomed to death for the same cause! Since the

day on which Major Delon had delivered sentence on General la Horie,

instead of declining to adjudicate in the case, there had been a

complete rupture between the Hugo and Delon family.

But although intercourse between the fathers was broken off, there had

not been any rupture between the children. Victor lived then at No. 10

rue de Mézières. One morning he read in the papers the terrible story

of the conspiracy of Saumur. Nearly all those concerned were arrested,

with the exception of Delon, who had escaped. Very soon, childish

recollections, strong and indelible, rose to the poet's mind; he seized

his writing materials and, forgetting the family hatreds and the

difference of opinion, he wrote to Madame Delon, at Saint-Denis:--

"MADAME,--I learn that your son is proscribed and a

fugitive; we hold different opinions, but that is only

another reason why he would not be looked for at my house. I

shall expect him; at whatever hour of day or night he comes

he will be welcome. I am sure that no other place of refuge

can be safer for him than the share of my room which I offer

him. I live in a house without a porter's lodge, in the rue

de Mézières No. 10, on the fifth floor. I will take care

that the door shall be kept unlocked day and night.

"Accept my most respectful greetings, dear madame, and

believe me, yours, VICTOR HUGO"

When this letter was written, with the guilelessness of a child, the

poet entrusted it to the post. To the post! A letter addressed to the

mother of a man for whom the whole police force was in search! Well,

when it was posted, Victor crept out every night at twilight to explore

the neighbourhood, expecting to find Delon in each man who was leaning

against a wall. Delon never appeared. But something else appeared, to

the immense surprise of the poet, who had not made any move towards

it whatever, namely, a pension of 1200 francs which the author of

_Odes et Ballades_ received one morning in his small room in the rue

de Mézières, the grant being signed by Louis XVIII. It could not have

arrived at a more opportune time, for the poet had just married.

On 13 April 1825, Hugo went to the hôtel des Postes to engage three

places on the mail coach for himself, his wife and a servant. They

were going to Blois. He was anxious to secure these three seats in

advance, but, unfortunately, this was not an easy thing: the mail went

as far as Bordeaux, and to save places as far as Blois meant risking

the emptiness of the seats from Blois to Bordeaux. However, the favour

which Victor required could be granted by one man, and that man was M.

Roger, the Postmaster-general. M. Roger was by way of being a literary

man, he belonged to the Académie and might possibly grant Victor Hugo

his desire. So Victor decided to go to the Postmaster-general's house.

The usher announced the poet and, at Victor Hugo's name, which at that

time was already well known, especially by reason of the ode which had

appeared on the death of Louis XVIII. (the ode we have already partly

quoted), M. Roger rose and approached the poet with demonstrations of

the greatest friendliness. Needless to relate, the request for reserved

places on the mail coach to Blois was at once accorded. But M. Roger,

having the good fortune to have secured a visit from the poet, would

not let him go easily: he made him sit down, and they talked together.

"By the way," M. Roger suddenly burst out in the middle of the

conversation, "do you know to what you owe your pension of twelve

hundred francs, my dear poet?"

"Why, I probably owe it to my small efforts in literature," Victor

answered laughingly.

"Yes, of course," replied the Postmaster-general; "but would you like

me to tell you exactly how you got it?"

"Certainly, I should be glad to know, I must confess."

"Do you remember the conspiracy of Saumur?"

"Of course."

"Do you recollect a young man named Delon who compromised himself in

that conspiracy?"

"Perfectly well."

"You remember writing to him or, rather, to his mother, offering the

outlaw half your room at No. 10 rue de Mézières?"

Victor made no answer this time; he stared at the Postmaster-general

with startled eyes, not amazed at the magnificence of the worthy M.

Roger, but at his powers of penetration. He had written that letter

alone, between his own four walls: he had not told a single soul

about it. Not even his own nightcap--that confidant which Louis XI.

thought ought to be burned, since it had been the recipient of certain

secrets--knew anything about it, seeing he never wore a nightcap.

"Well," continued the Postmaster-general, "that letter was laid before

King Louis XVIII., who already knew you as a poet. 'Ah! ah!' said the

king, 'he possesses great talents and a good heart ... that young man

must be rewarded!' and he ordered a pension of twelve hundred francs to

be settled on you."

"But," Victor finally stammered out, "how did my letter get to the

notice of King Louis XVIII.?"

The Postmaster-general burst into shouts of Homeric laughter. And,

simple-minded though the poet was, at last he understood.

"But," he exclaimed, "what became of the letter?"

"Why, _naturally_, it was replaced in the post."

"And reached its destination?"

"Probably."

"But if Delon had accepted my offer and had come to me, what would have

happened?"

"He would have been arrested, tried and probably executed, my dear

poet."

"So that my letter would have been regarded as a deathtrap for him;

and if he had been arrested, tried and executed ... the pension I have

received would have been blood-money! Oh!..."

Victor uttered a cry of horror at what might have happened, clapped his

hands to his head and rushed out into the antechamber, where M. Roger

followed him, laughing greatly, telling him he had left his hat behind

him and saying--

"Remember that the mail coach is entirely at your service, for the day

after to-morrow, April 15."

His horror at what might have happened gradually subsided into

calmness, and Hugo breathed again when he realised that Delon was in

safety in England. But he began to believe in the existence of that

famous black cabinet that he had looked on as a fable, and he vowed

never again to offer an outlaw shelter through the medium of the

ordinary post.

When the day of departure for Blois arrived, he and Madame Hugo and

her lady's-maid went to the hôtel des Postes and, just as he was about

to enter the coach, an orderly officer, who was very nearly too late,

rode up at full gallop and placed a letter in his hand which bore the

king's seal. It contained a commission making him a chevalier of the

Légion d'honneur, signed by Charles X. Hugo was only twenty-three at

the time, and that is an age when such things cause immense delight,

especially if they are bestowed graciously. In the general promotion,

Hugo and Lamartine had at first been mixed up together in what is

popularly termed a _batch_, and King Charles X. had struck off both

their names. M. de la Rochefoucauld, who approved of the list and was

particularly glad of the inclusion of the two young poets, ventured to

inquire of His Majesty why he had cancelled two such celebrated names

as theirs?

"Precisely because they are so famous, monsieur," replied Charles X.,

"in order that they may not be confounded with other names. You must

present me with a separate report for MM. Lamartine and Hugo."

The warrant was accompanied by an official letter from M. le Comte

Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld and by a friendly letter from his

secretary, M. de Beauchesne.

M. de Beauchesne, or rather Beauchesne, was a true guide to M. de la

Rochefoucauld in every piece of good work he did, and it should be

mentioned that the Director of the Fine Arts, who was greatly taunted

by the Opposition papers at that time--I am not referring to political

matters--did excellent work in the way of encouraging literary efforts.

Let me repeat, however, that Beauchesne was his guide in these matters.

Beauchesne was then a charming fellow of twenty-four or twenty-five,

and has since developed into a charming poet. So loyal a heart was his

that he seemed to have taken for his motto, "_Video nec invideo_"; and,

indeed, what more could he have wanted? All who were great called him

_brother_, and all who were good called him _friend._ A free and loyal

Breton when the true monarchy fell, but Beauchesne remained faithful to

its ruins. I shall relate in its proper place how once we very nearly

had a duel over politics, and I shall maintain that we were never

better friends than then, when we faced each other sword in hand. Dear

Beauchesne! He disappeared quite suddenly: it was ten or fifteen years

before I saw him again, but one morning he came to see me as though he

had only left the previous day, and we embraced heartily. He brought

with him a charming tragedy or drama, I forget which now, a phantasy

taken from one of our ancient _fabliaux_--the _Épreuves de la belle

Griseldis_--which, in all probability, will be read, received, played

and applauded at the Théâtre-Français. He had a bewitching little

mansion in the bois de Boulogne which he sold. Ivy has no time to grow

over the homes of poets. I remember when he had just built his house he

sent me his album to write a few lines in, and I wrote these:--

"Beauchesne, vous avez une douce retraite;

Moi, je suis sans abri pour les jours de malheur!

Que votre beau castel, pour reposer sa tête,

Garde dans son grenier, une place au poëte,

Qui vous garde en échange une place en son cœur."

I lost sight of Beauchesne a second time. A catastrophe happened to me

which left me indifferent, but which most people look upon as a great

misfortune. I opened a letter full of tender sympathy. It was from

Beauchesne. I did not answer it then; I will answer it to-day. As this

is by no means the last time I shall mention dear Beauchesne I will not

bid him _adieu_ but _au revoir !_ ...

So Hugo received his brevet of chevalier, and M. de la Rochefoucauld's

official letter, with Beauchesne's friendly one, at the same time.

He buttoned them all three next to his heart, climbed upon the coach

and composed the whole of the ballad of the _Deux Archers_ during the

drive between Paris and Blois. When he arrived at Blois he joyfully

laid his brevet in his father's hands. The old soldier took off from

an ancient coat, that had received the dust of many lands, one of his

old decorations that had faced the fire of many battles, and tied it to

his son's buttonhole, wiping away a tear--I strongly suspect that every

father's eye is capable of that weakness. During this visit to Blois

the poet received a private letter from Charles X., inviting him to be

present at his coronation at Rheims, and Hugo set out in company with

Nodier.

At Rheims he found Lamartine, with whom he became acquainted. They each

acknowledged the king's hospitality, Lamartine by his _Chant du sacre_;

Hugo by his _Ode à Charles X._

In 1826 _Bug-Jargal_ appeared. Just as _Christine_ had been composed

before _Henri III._, so _Bug-Jargal_ had been finished before _Han

d'Islande._ I do not know why this chronological transposition was made

in the publication.

In 1827 the Austrian Ambassador gave a grand soirée, to which he

invited all the most illustrious persons in France, and all the most

illustrious persons in France, who are always eager to attend soirées,

went to that of the ambassador. The marshals were there among the

rest of the people, and a singular thing happened at this particular

soirée. At the door of the salon was the customary lackey to announce

the names of the visitors who had been deemed worthy of an invitation.

When Marshal Soult arrived, the lackey asked him, "What name shall I

announce?"

"_The Duc de Dalmatie_," replied the marshal.

"_M. le maréchal Soult_," announced the lackey, who had received his

orders.

This might very well have been thought to be a mistake, so

the _illustre épée_ (as he had been called since the time of

Louis-Philippe, who, probably, did not care to call him the Duc de

Dalmatie any more than did the Austrian Ambassador) paid no attention

to the matter.

Marshal Mortier came next.

"What name shall I give?" asked the lackey.

"_The Duc de Trévise._"

"_M. le maréchal Mortier_," called out the lackey.

The eyes of the two old comrades of the emperor flashed lightnings of

interrogation across at one another; but they did not know what to

reply, for it was not yet quite clear what would be the best course to

take.

Marshal Marmont came third.

"What name shall I announce?" asked the lackey.

"_The Duc de Raguse._"

"_M. le maréchal Marmont_," announced the lackey.

This time there could not be any mistake about it; so the two first

arrivals joined the third and told him of their difficulty. But they

all three decided to wait a while longer.

The Duc de Reggio, the Duc de Tarente and all the other dukes of the

Imperial creation came, one after another, and, although they all gave

their ducal titles, they were only announced by their family names.

The insult was open and patent, and offered publicly, and yet the

insulted men silently withdrew, to nurse the insult they had endured.

Not one of them thought of striking the insulter. But a poet was ready

to demand redress and to obtain it on their behalf! Three days after

this insult had been offered to the whole of the army, in the person of

its chiefs, the _Ode à la Colonne_ appeared.

ODE À LA COLONNE

"O monument vengeur, trophée indélébile!

Bronze qui, tournoyant sur ta base immobile,

Sembles porter au ciel ta gloire et ton néant,

Et de tout ce qu'a fait une main colossale,

Seul es resté debout! ruine triomphale

De l'édifice du géant!

Débris du grand empire et de la grande armée,

Colonne d'où si haut parle la renommée!

Je t'aime; l'étranger t'admire avec effroi,

J'aime tes vieux héros sculptés par la victoire,

Et tous ces fantômes de gloire

Qui se pressent autour de toi.

J'aime à voir sur tes flancs, colonne étincelante!

Revivre ces soldats qu'en leur onde sanglante

Ont roulés le Danube, et le Rhin, et le Pô;

Tu mets, comme un guerrier, le pied sur ta conquête,

J'aime ton piédestal d'armures et ta tête,

Dont le panache est un drapeau.

Au bronze de Henri, mon orgueil te marie.

J'aime à vous voir tous deux, honneur de la patrie,

Immortels, dominant nos troubles passagers,

Sortir, signes jumeaux d'amour et de colère,

Lui, de l'épargne populaire,

Toi, des arsenaux étrangers.

Que de fois, tu le sais, quand la nuit sous ses voiles

Fait fuir la blanche lune, ou trembler les étoiles,

Je viens, triste, évoquer tes fastes devant moi,

Et d'un œil enflammé, dévorant ton histoire,

Prendre, convive obscur, ma part de tant de gloire

Comme un pâtre au banquet d'un roi!

Que de fois j'ai cru voir, ô colonne française!

Ton airain ennemi rugir dans la fournaise;

Que de fois, ranimant des combattants épars,

Heurtant sur tes parois leurs armees dérouillées,

J'ai ressuscité ces mêlées

Qui s'assiègent de toutes parts!

Jamais, ô monument! même ivres de leur nombre,

Les étrangers sans peur, n'ont passé sur ton ombre;

Leurs pas n'ébranlent point ton bronze souverain,

Quand le sort une fois les poussa vers nos rives;

Ils n'osaient étaler leurs parades oisives

Devant tes batailles d'airain.

Mais, quoi! n'entend-je point, avec de sourds murmures,

De ta base à ton front bruire les armures?

Colonne! il m'a semblé qu'éblouissant mes yeux,

Tes bataillons cuivrés cherchaient à redescendre;

Que tes demi-dieux, noirs d'une héroïque cendre,

Interrompaient soudain leur marche vers les cieux.

Leurs voix mêlaient des noms à leur vieille devise:

TARENTE, REGGIO, DALMATIE ET TRÉVISE,

Et leurs aigles, sortant de leur puissant sommeil,

Suivaient d'un bec ardent cette aigle à double tête

Dont l'œil, ami de l'ombre où son essor s'arrête,

Se baisse à leur regard comme au feu de soleil.

Qu'est-ce donc, et pourquoi, bronze envie de Rome,

Vois-je tes légions frémir comme un seul homme?

Quel impossible outrage à ta hauteur atteint?

Qui donc a réveillé ces ombres immortelles,

Ces aigles qui, battant ta base de leurs ailes,

Dans leur ongle captif pressent leur foudre éteint?

Je comprends: l'étranger, qui nous croit sans mémoire,

Veut, feuillet par feuillet, déchirer notre histoire,

Écrite avec du sang, à la pointe du fer ...

Ose-t-il, imprudent, heurter tant de trophées?

De ce bronze, forgé de foudres étouffées,

Chaque étincelle est un éclair.

Est-ce Napoléon qu'il frappe en notre armée?

Veut-il, de cette gloire en tant lieux semée,

Disputer l'héritage à nos vieux généraux?

Pour un fardeau pareil il a la main débile:

L'empire d'Alexandre et les armes d'Achille

Ne se partagent qu'aux héros.

Mais non; l'Autrichien, dans sa fierté qu'il dompte,

Est content si leurs noms ne disent que sa honte;

Il fait de sa défaite un titre à nos guerriers,

Et, craignant des vainqueurs moins que des feudataires,

Ils pardonne aux fleurons de nos ducs militaires,

Si ne sont que des lauriers.

Bronze! il n'a donc jamais, fier pour une victoire,

Subi de tes splendeurs l'aspect expiatoire?

D'où vient tant de courage à cet audacieux?

Croit-il impunément toucher à nos annales?

Et comment donc lit-il ces pages triomphales

Que tu déroules dans les cieux?

Est-ce un langage obscur à ses regards timides?

Eh! qu'il s'en fasse instruire au pied des Pyramides,

A Vienne, au vieux Kremlin, au morne Escurial;

Qu'il en parle à ces rois, cour dorée et nombreuse,

Qui naguère peuplaient, d'une tente poudreuse,

Le vestibule impérial!

A quoi pense-t-il donc, l'étranger qui nous brave?

N'avions nous pas hier l'Europe pour esclave?

Nous, subir de son joug l'indigne talion!

Non, au champ du combat nous pouvons reparaître.

On nous a mutilés, mais le temps a peut-être

Fait croître l'ongle du lion....

De quel droit viennent-ils découronner nos gloires?

Les Bourbons ont toujours adopté des victoires;

Nos rois t'ont défendu d'un ennemi tremblant,

O trophée! A leur pieds tes palmes se déposent;

Et si tes quatre aigles reposent,

C'est à l'ombre du drapeau blanc.

Quoi! le globe est ému de volcans électriques,

Derrière l'Océan grondent les Amériques,

Stamboul rugit, Hellé remonte aux jours anciens;

Lisbonne se débat aux mains de l'Angleterre;

Seul, le vieux peuple franc s'indigne que la terre

Tremble a d'autres pas que les siens.