"LA TRISTESSE D'OLYMPIO"
In the neighbourhood of Paris, about four miles from Versailles, nestles
a valley which the modern devotees of romance should deem worthy of a
visit. Not because it boasts of any special features, such as mighty
torrents thundering from giddy heights into abysmal precipices below--on
the contrary, its character is harmonious and serene, more like a French
park decked with flowers by nature, and watered by chance--but because
in these classic surroundings, about the year 1830, circumstances led
the great men of the new school to seek temporary repose for their
fretted souls. To us, these peaceful meadows, flanked by pensive willows
weeping on the borders of the silent Bièvres, must evermore be peopled
by those troubled shades: by Lammenais, the priestly keeper of
consciences, Montalembert, the angelic doctor, Sainte-Beuve, the
purveyor of ideas, Berlioz, the musician, and, lastly, by the poet,
Victor Hugo, who followed meekly in the rear, while awaiting the glory
of conducting the procession.
They used to arrive in the summer, some for a couple of days, others for
weeks together, to stay with Monsieur Bertin, editor of the _Journal des
Débâts_ and owner of Les Roches,[15] a property situated midway between
the villages of Bièvres and Jouy-en-Josas. Genial and lively, as Ingres
represents him in his celebrated portrait, Monsieur Bertin loved to
divine, promote, and, where needful, encourage their vocations and
plans. His housekeeping was on a modest scale, but his hospitality
delightful--a mixture of go-as-you-please and kindly despotism; perfect
freedom outwardly, but, in reality, careful ministrations skilfully
disguised. Louise Bertin, the eldest daughter of the old man, and one of
the muses of the period, willingly divided her time between the kitchen
and the drawing-room, cookery-books and poems. As an ardent musician,
tolerably familiar with the best literature, her mind was full of
quaintness, while her heart was instinct with kindliness. When,
perchance, she had surfeited her guests with sonatas and song, she would
be seized with fear lest she should be interfering with their habits or
inclinations, and would hastily substitute anarchy, by commanding each
one to choose his own occupation, and pursue his meditation, walk, or
game unhindered.
Of them all, Victor Hugo seems to have been the girl's favourite, and
the one who made the largest use of this generous welcome and charming
liberty. As soon as the periwinkles blossomed, he settled his wife and
children at Les Roches, while he himself came and went between Paris and
Bièvres. Gradually he grew to associate the valley with his joys and
sorrows; it became one of those familiar haunts to which one
instinctively turns, with the comforting assurance of finding there the
outward conditions suitable to one's moods. As a young father, he made
it the fitting frame for family joys; when his love was flung back in
his face and his friendship betrayed, he returned to seek, if not
consolation, at least faith and hope for the future. A year later, again
under the shelter of Les Roches, he thought he had found solace. The
valley meant something more than an invitation to dawdle: it filled him
with sensuous suggestion; he longed to place his ideal of an
unquenchable love at the feet of a woman, and to pronounce the word
"Forever."
With the connivance of Madame Victor Hugo, who shut her eyes, and that
of Mademoiselle Louise Bertin, who smiled her toleration,[16] this
happiness came to him at length; not indeed in the first year of his
passion for Juliette, but in the early part of the second. He brought
his mistress to Bièvres and to Jouy on July 4th, 1834, a little before
the tragic crisis that so nearly separated the lovers, as we have
related in the foregoing chapter.
Juliette immediately fell in love with the scenes the poet had so often
and so eloquently described to her. Of their joint visit to the Écu de
France, the little inn at Jouy-en-Josas,[17] she drew up, in fun, one of
those mock official reports in which she excelled. They decided to
return and lunch, no matter where, or how, provided it was neither too
near nor too far from Les Roches. Then they set out in quest of rooms,
which they eventually found in the hamlet of Metz, on the summit of the
hill above Jouy on the northern side. They returned to Paris after
paying over to the proprietor, Sieur Labussière, the sum of 92 frs. for
a year's rent. Thither they came in September for a sojourn of six
weeks, after the troubled interval described above.
The little house does not seem to have been altered at all.[18] It was
originally built for the game-keeper of the neighbouring château, which
belonged to Cambacérès. It still spreads its white frontage, pierced
with green-shuttered windows, against the background of woods. It
consists only of a ground-floor and an attic; a rambling vine covers its
walls; around it are scattered a barn, some outhouses, and an orchard,
whose steep sides slope downwards to a gate opening on to the Jouy road.
With the assistance of the landlady, Mère Labussière, as she calls her,
Juliette undertook to perform the lighter tasks of housekeeping in the
mornings, and it was understood that Victor Hugo should visit her every
afternoon unless some grave impediment prevented him.
But the walk from Les Roches to Les Metz was long: not much under two
miles, by rough roads. The lovers agreed therefore to meet half-way, by
a path settled beforehand, and to abandon the Labussière roof-tree for
some leafy bower. Thus began, as Juliette writes, their "bird-life in
the woods."
Victor Hugo had a choice of three ways when he went to meet his lady.
One led across the valley of Bièvres; another, along the pavement,[19]
as the high road from Bièvres to Versailles was called; and lastly there
was the woodland path, which they both preferred. Victor Hugo started by
the Vauboyau road, plunged into the woods skirting the boundary of the
Château of Les Roches, then, turning to the left, walked straight on as
far as the four cross-roads at l'Homme Mort, and bore to the right
towards the Cour Roland. There, in the hollow of a hundred-year-old
chestnut-tree, all bent and twisted, his lady-love would be awaiting
him.
Clad in a dress of white jaconet striped with pink, such as she usually
affected, her head covered with an Italian straw hat, left over from the
days of her former affluence, with swelling bosom, rosy cheeks, and
smiling mouth, she resembled a flower springing from the rude calyx
formed by the aged tree. A wide-awake flower, indeed, for, from the
first sign of the approach of Victor Hugo, she would fly to him, and
afford him one more opportunity of admiring the far-famed aerial gait,
that fairy footstep, so light that it had been compared to the sound of
a lyre.
Then followed kisses, caresses, a flood of soft words, more kisses, and
a rapid rush into the cool green depths whither the twitter of birds
invited them. When they issued forth again, silent now, Juliette walked
first, making it a point of honour to push aside the branches and thorns
before her poet; and he was content, gazing upon the tiny traces left
upon the moss or sand by the feet that looked almost absurd by reason
of their minuteness.
At the far end of a clearing a fountain burbled. Juliette made a hollow
of her little hands and collected a delicious draught for their burning
lips. Drops dribbled from between her fingers, and, seeing them, her
lover knew that here was a fairy able to "transmute water into
diamonds."[20]
We must not imagine, however, that the treasure of their love expended
itself entirely in this sportive fashion. If it be true that passion is
the stronger for an admixture of intellect, it follows that only persons
of distinguished parts are capable of extracting the full measure of
delight from sentimental intercourse. Victor Hugo was far too wise to
neglect the training of the sensibilities of his young mistress. Like
some block of rare marble, she submitted herself to this able sculptor
in the charming simplicity of a nature somewhat uncultivated and rugged,
as she herself owns, and he perceived in the formless material the
growing suggestion of the finished statue he was soon to evolve. The
forest was the studio whither he came every afternoon to cultivate,
through novel sensations and delights, his own poetry and eloquence. The
forest gave him colour for colour, music for music....
At other times Victor Hugo encouraged in Juliette an inclination for
prayer and tearful repentance. He retained, and she had always
possessed, strong Catholic sensibilities. The mere satisfaction of
sensuality without the hallowing influence of absorbing love spelt
defilement, from their point of view. Hence followed painful remorse for
a past which the lover liked to hear his mistress bewail, and which she
despaired of ever redeeming. Her _rôle_ was the abasement of Magdalen;
his, the somewhat strained attitude of an apostle or saviour.
Nothing could be more peaceful or uneventful than Juliette's evenings.
She devoured with the appetite of an ogress the frugal supper put before
her by Madame Labussière, repaired the damage done to her clothes by the
afternoon's ramble, or studied some of the parts in which she hoped to
appear sooner or later at the Théâtre Français. At ten o'clock she went
to bed. This was the much-prized moment of her solitude, when she
retired, as she says, into the happy background of her heart to rehearse
in spirit the simple events and delights of the day, to recall the face
of her lover, see him, speak to him, and hang upon his answers; then, as
drowsiness gradually gained the upper hand and clouds dimmed the dear
outline, to surrender to slumber. It was at Les Metz that she coined the
happy phrase: "I fall asleep in the thought of you." Sometimes the wind
moaning in the heights awoke her, and she resumed her sweet musing. The
poet was in the habit of working at night; she would picture him in his
room at Les Roches, bending over his writing-table. Then she "blessed
the gale that made her the companion of the dear little workman's vigil
across the intervening space."
As soon as dawn broke she was up again. She jumped out of bed, ran to
the window, opened the shutters, and interrogated the heavens--not that
she feared rain, any more than she minded "blisters on her feet or
scratches on her hands"--but she had only two dresses, a woollen and a
linen, and the condition of the weather controlled her choice of the
two. Her toilet was rapid, her breakfast simple. She spent the remaining
time copying the manuscripts confided to her by Victor Hugo. Then,
lightly running, as she says, like a hare across the plain, she started
for the rendezvous. As becomes a loving woman, she was always first at
the trysting-tree. She scrutinised the intertwined initials she herself
had carved upon its bark, or conned again from memory the verses she had
found the day before in its hollow trunk. She "sings them in her heart,"
presses them to her bosom, and kisses the letters she has brought in
answer.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF BIÈVRES, SEINE-ET-OISE.]
For the chestnut-tree served them as a letter-box as well as a shelter.
According to an arrangement between them, the first thing they did on
arrival was to deposit within its friendly shade everything they had
written in the course of the preceding day for, or about, one another.
On Juliette's part, especially, the letters became more and more
numerous: two, four, sometimes six per day. She no longer wrote, as at
first, to expatiate upon her passion or assure the poet that she loved
him with real love, or to relieve boredom and make the hours of her
solitude pass more quickly. She wrote because Victor Hugo, who had
formerly been indifferent to her "scribbles," now exacted them as a
daily tribute, and reproached her if they were too brief or not numerous
enough. This jealous lover had discovered the advantages of a pretty
woman's mania for writing. When thus occupied, he reflected, she is
contented. He also found that her letters were full of enthusiasm,
humour, feeling, fun, and poetry, and he therefore desired that they
should be preserved; one day, when Juliette had thrown a packet of
them into the fire in a fit of temper, he made her write them all over
again. Juliette might protest prettily, entrench herself behind her
ignorance, and allege her want of intelligence; but the more she pleaded
that she knew not how to write, the more her lover insisted upon her
doing so. No one has ever carried to greater lengths that form of
affectation which consists in vilifying oneself in order to gain praise.
Having thus placed herself, as far as her style is concerned, in the
kneeling position she prefers, Juliette remains there. It is at Les Metz
that her letters commenced to be a hymn of praise in honour of her
divinity. Adoration and excessive adulation are their basis; for form
and imagery, Juliette does not hesitate to borrow from the sacred
writings she had studied at the Convent of Petit-Picpus. Sooth to say,
this mixture of religiosity and passion presents an aspect both
disproportionate and pathetic. When love raises itself--or degrades
itself--to this almost mystical adoration, one cannot be surprised if it
ends by believing in its own virtue. Having adopted the forms of
religion, it insensibly acquires its importance and dignity; it ennobles
itself.
We do not possess Victor Hugo's answers, but partly from the note-books
in which his lady-love punctiliously copied and dated the poems
addressed to her, and partly from the dates inscribed at the bottom of
each page in the collected works of the poet, we know which of his
verses were composed during his sojourn at Les Metz. It is not too much
to say that the author of _Feuilles d'Automne_ was never more happily
inspired. Nowhere did he more closely approach the classical model he
had chosen at that time, the gentle Virgil.
The lovers returned to Les Metz twice: once in October 1837 for a few
days, and again, for a day, on September 26th, 1845. In 1837 it was
Victor Hugo who directed the expedition and took the lead. He sought one
by one the traces of their _amours_; his eccentric genius admired
nature's grand indifference, which had failed to preserve them intact
for his honour and pleasure, and, deploring this ingratitude concerning
outward things, he composed that masterpiece, _La Tristesse d'Olympio_.
He laid it at the feet of Juliette, who accepted it, read and reread it,
and learnt it by heart, without criticising it.
In 1845, the pilgrimage was hers; she planned it and begged for it,
writing on August 19th: "I have an inexpressible longing to see Les Metz
again. We absolutely must go there."[21]
They did. Early in the month of September Juliette arranged the little
journey. Which dress should she wear? The striped organdy one, or the
blue tarlatan shot with white, she had worn a few months previously, at
the reception of St. Marc Girardin at the Académie Française? She chose
the former because her lover preferred it; the same reason determined
her to wear a straw hat "trimmed with geraniums above and below the
brim." Thus decked, with cheeks rosier than usual, and eyes glowing,
Juliette climbed with her poet into the omnibus from Paris to Sceaux.
Victor Hugo disliked omnibuses, and especially that one. He remembered
his many drives in it with his friend Sainte-Beuve, at the time the
latter was most assiduous in his visits to Les Roches, and in spite of
himself he seemed to see the ghost of Joseph Delorme in the back seat,
with his ecclesiastical appearance, and his mania for nestling cosily
between two fat people. Silently the poet dwelt upon these memories,
while Juliette volubly recalled others. She wondered whether they would
find the beggar at the foot of the Bièvres hill, into whose hands she
had often emptied her purse, in order that alms should bring them luck,
and whether the baker in the Square still made those little tarts her
lover used to be so fond of. At last the omnibus deposited them at
Bièvres in front of the Chariot d'Or. The striped organdy dress created
a great sensation among the village children. Juliette rushed off to the
little church; nothing was changed--the same simplicity, the same
silence, the same brooding peace as in the old days. The young woman
fell on her knees, then, together, the lovers returned to the Chariot
d'Or, breakfasted, and started to walk to Les Roches. There again, in
Juliette's opinion, everything was unchanged. To the left, behind tall
grasses, the river flowed unseen and unheard. In deference to the needs
of man and those of the valley, its course had been diverted, and it now
spread itself through meadows and orchards. Its presence could be
divined from the abundance of flowers and reeds born of its moisture.
When they reached Les Roches, Juliette insisted upon abandoning the
valley for the forest. They ascended through Vauboyau to the wood of
l'Homme Mort. She walked straight to a chestnut-tree which she said she
recognised; then she found a mountain-ash upon whose bark she had once
carved their interlaced initials; after that the spring, and the paths.
She wished to revisit what she called "the chapels of their love," to
pay at each one a tribute of devotion.[22]
At length they reached Les Metz and the house of the Labussière.
Delirious enchantment! Everything was just as she remembered it: the
gate, the bell, the kitchen-garden, the mile-stone upon which she used
to sit to watch for her lover when the _rendezvous_ was at the cottage;
the bed, with its curtains of printed cotton, the rustic wardrobe, the
oak table.... "Heaven," she cried, "has put a seal upon all the
treasures of love we buried here! It has preserved them for us," and she
longed to take possession of them all and carry them away with her.[23]
How charming Juliette is at this moment, and how superior to _Olympio_!
How preferable is her enthusiasm, with its power of bringing back to
life the dead past, to the melancholy which disparages and kills! One
sole interest animates her. Her instinct is creative, for where the poet
sees death she perceives life. The roses he thought faded and scattered,
she admires in full bloom; she can still breathe their perfume. From the
dust and ashes he has tasted and bewailed, she draws the savour of
honey. In this instance, surely, her love does not merely aspire to sit
on the heights with the poet's genius, as she claimed--it soars far
beyond it.