THE SHACKLES OF LOVE
Victor Hugo never succeeded in making Juliette adopt his conception of
love. He craved something calm, placid, regular as a time-table in its
manifestations; but she was wont to object: "Such a love would soon
cease to exist. A fire that no longer blazes is quickly smothered in
ashes. Only a love that scorches and dazzles is worthy of the name. Mine
is like that."
And indeed it would not be easy to name an object that this woman did
not cast into the crucible of her passion between the years 1834 and
1851. Everything was sacrificed--comfort, vanity, renown, talent,
liberty. Then she turned to her poet. She adopted his tastes, his
ambitions, his dreams for the future; she shared his joys and sorrows;
she exaggerated his qualities, and sometimes even his faults. She lived
only in him and for him.
We are about to witness a completeness of self-abnegation that raises
Juliette Drouet almost to the level of the mystics of old; afterwards we
shall scrutinise one by one the details of the cult she rendered to
Victor Hugo.
I
After selling the bulk of her furniture and quitting the luxurious
apartment she occupied at 35, Rue de l'Échiquier, Juliette, it will be
remembered, had settled down in a tiny lodging costing 400 frs. a year,
at 4, Rue de Paradis au Marais. She and Victor Hugo determined to live
there together, poor in purse, but rich in love and poetry.[24] The said
love and poetry must indeed have filled their horizon, for they have
left no account whatsoever of that first nesting-place.
On March 8th, 1836, Juliette removed again to a somewhat more commodious
apartment: 14, Rue St. Anastase, at 800 frs. a year. It comprised a
drawing-room, dining-room, one bedroom, a kitchen, and an attic in which
her servant slept. This district has fallen into decay, and is now dull
and dreary. In those days it was chiefly occupied by the convent of the
Hospitaliers St. Anastase, whence the street took its name, and a few
houses more or less enclosed by gardens. The convent and gardens endowed
it with a provincial tranquillity and an impenetrable silence which
occasionally weighed upon Juliette's spirits.
Her mode of life was not calculated to enliven her. A degree of poverty
bordering on squalor simplified its details. Little or no fire: Juliette
sometimes even lacks the logs she is by way of providing for herself.
Then she spends the morning in bed, reading, planning, day-dreaming. She
keeps careful accounts of her receipts and expenditure--accounts which
Victor Hugo afterwards audits most minutely. When she rises, the cold
does not prevent her from writing cheerfully, "If you seek warmth in
this room you will have to seek it at the bottom of my heart."
All luxuries in the way of food were reserved, as in duty bound, for
the suppers the master honoured with his presence after the theatre. The
rest of the time Juliette ate frugally, breakfasting on eggs and milk,
dining on bread and cheese and an apple. When her daughter visited her
she treated her to an orange cut into slices and sprinkled with a
pennyworth of sugar and a pennyworth of brandy. The same simplicity
reigned on high-days and holidays.
Juliette also denied herself useless fripperies and reduced to the
strictest limits the expenses of her wardrobe. Everything she was able
to make or mend, she made and mended, and it gratified her to compute
the money she saved thus in dressmakers. The rest she bought very
cheaply or did without. In the month of August 1838, when she was about
to start on a journey with Victor Hugo, she found herself in need of
shoes, a dress, and a country hat. She bought the shoes, manufactured
the dress, and had intended to borrow the hat from Madame Kraft; but
this lady, who held some minor post at the Comédie Française, only wore
feathered hats, so Juliette curses the extravagance that places her in
an awkward predicament. A little later, on May 7th, 1839, she wanted to
furbish up her mantle with ribbon velvet at 5_d._ a yard; but she found
that she could not do with less than eight yards and a half. She bemoans
her extravagance, saying, "Why, oh, why have I let myself in for this!"
In studying Juliette's financial position one wonders that so much
privation should be necessary, for, from the very beginning, Victor Hugo
allowed her 600 or 700 frs. a month. He afterwards increased this sum to
800, and finally to 1,000 frs. in 1838, when he began to get better
terms from publishers and theatre-managers. Surely such a sum should
provide ordinary comforts--there should be no suggestion of squalid
poverty?
The fact is that, in 1834, Victor Hugo had only paid off the most
pressing of Juliette's debts; but the result of his doing so was to
rouse the energies of the rest of the creditors, and Juliette was
overwhelmed by them. Sometimes she managed to pacify them by quaint
expedients. For instance, to Zoé, her former maid, she offered, in place
of wages, a box for _Angélo_; to Monsieur Manière, her legal adviser,
she promised that, if he would extend her credit, "Monsieur Victor Hugo
should read with interest" a certain plan of political organisation of
which the said Manière was the author, but which alas, does not yet
figure in the archives of the French constitution! But more often she
was forced to pay, and she had to save off food or dress. Then it was
that money was skimped from the butcher and grocer to satisfy the former
milliner or livery-stable keeper. In the month of May 1835, out of 700
frs. received, the creditors obtained 316; in June they got another 347;
in July 278. Another cause for pecuniary embarrassment was the
irregularity of Pradier's contribution to the maintenance of his and
Juliette's child. Very often, but for Victor Hugo's assistance, this
item would have been added to the sum-total of her debts. But Juliette
bore everything with the blitheness of a bird. She, who had hated
accounts and arithmetic, now devoted her attention to them every day,
sometimes more than once a day; she, who loathed poverty, encountered
the most sordid privations with a smile; she, who once throve upon debts
and promises to pay, now exclaimed: "I would do anything rather than
fall into debt. How hideous and degrading such a thing is, and how
splendid and noble of you, my adored one, to love me in spite of my
past!"[25]
[Illustration: VICTOR HUGO ABOUT 1836.
From a picture by Louis Boulanger (Victor Hugo Museum).]
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that she began to seek in
work, especially theatrical work, an addition to her private resources.
She took her career as an artist very seriously, and it was a great
disappointment to her that her lover failed to desire her as an
interpreter of his parts. He certainly did not. He allowed his jealousy
full play, and wished to keep Juliette for himself alone. His tactics
seem to have been to dangle promises ever before her, but to give her
nothing; to procure dramatic engagements for her, and prevent her from
fulfilling them.
In February 1834 he introduced Juliette to the Comédie Française, but a
year later he declined to give her the smallest part in _Angélo_, which
was produced there. In the course of 1836, 1837, 1838, he allowed Marie
Dorval to monopolise all the important _rôles_ in his former plays, and
never once attempted to put Juliette's name at the head, or even in the
middle, of the bill. Yet he gave her fine promises in plenty, encouraged
her to learn long passages from _Marion_ and _Dona Sol_, and vowed he
would some day write a play for her alone.
Thus kept in the background, Juliette passed through exhausting
alternations of despair and confidence, gratitude and jealousy. For, as
may easily be imagined, she was terribly jealous, and her suspicious
mind exercised itself chiefly concerning actresses, whose lively manners
and easy morals she knew, by professional experience. There was Mlle.
Georges, already growing stout, no doubt, but ever ready to raise her
banner and exercise her accustomed sovereignty. There was Mlle. Mars,
who, though her looks were a thing of the past, still endeavoured to
attract attention. Above all, there was Marie Dorval.
Ah, how Juliette envied Dorval! How she studied her in order to arm
herself against her fancied rivalry! How often she took her moral
measure! She knew that she was of the people, that she tingled with
vitality from head to foot, that, though her primary impulses were
virtuous, nature was yet strong within her.... She was well acquainted
with "the voice that quivered with tears and made its insinuating appeal
to the heart."[26]
Could Juliette fail to dread such a woman, one so versed by the practice
of her profession in the wiles that attract men? Could she refrain from
warning her lover against her, day after day, like one draws attention
to a danger, a scourge, or a tempest? Far from it--she threatened to
return to the theatre, to act in her lover's plays, to be present at
every rehearsal, to vie with her rival in beauty and talent and ardour.
She learnt parts, and whole scenes, and filled her solitude with the
pleasing phantoms her lover had once created, and that she dreamed of
restoring to life on the stage.
Months passed; delicate circumstances obliged her to relinquish her plan
of appearing at the Théâtre Français.[27] She was on the verge of
despair when, one evening in the spring of 1838, her lover brought her a
new play he wished to read to her, according to his invariable custom.
It was _Ruy Blas_. She at once claimed the part of Marie de Neubourg,
and fell in love with the melancholy little queen who was hampered and
hemmed in by the trammels of étiquette, as she herself was imprisoned
within the limits of her icy apartment in the Rue St. Anastase. Victor
Hugo asked for nothing better. He intended _Ruy Blas_ for the Théâtre de
la Renaissance, which was under the management of his friend, Anténor
Joly. He requested the worthy fellow to engage Juliette, and the
agreement was signed early in May.
We can picture the delight with which Juliette set about copying the
play; nevertheless, she was assailed by melancholy fears: "I shall never
play the queen," she wrote; "I am too unlucky. The thing I desire most
on earth is not destined to be realised." And it is a fact that the part
was taken from her almost as soon as it was given.
After 1839 her longing to go back to the stage calmed down gradually. At
the end of that year it had completely faded. Her love's tranquillity
was greatly increased thereby, while she was driven to immerse herself
still more completely in her amorous solitude and the disadvantages
pertaining thereto.
For, in the same degree that he deprecated her being seen on the stage,
Victor Hugo detested the thought of her going out alone, and he had
managed to extract a promise from her that she would never make one step
outside the house without him. She was, therefore, practically as much a
prisoner as any châtelaine of the Middle Ages, or heroine of some of the
sombre dramas she had formerly played. She had not even permission to go
and see her daughter at school at St. Mandé, and, rather than trust her
by herself, the poet would escort her to the dressmaker and milliner,
or on her visits to the uncle whose name she bore, and who lay dying at
the Invalides, to the money-lender's, and curiosity-shop, and even the
ironmonger's!
When Victor Hugo thus lent himself to her needs, all went well, and
Juliette, proud and happy, arm in arm with her "dear little man,"
chattered away blithely. But a time came when the lover, monopolised by
other cares, perhaps by other intrigues, was no longer so assiduous.
Then the mistress protested and rebelled, with the fierce rage of a
prisoned beast of the forest, bruising itself against the bars of its
cage, in its agony for freedom.
Victor Hugo met her remonstrances with gentle reasoning and persuasive
exhortations. However far Juliette went in her transports of anger, he
was always able to pacify her. On September 27th, 1836, at the end of a
long period during which the poet had not been able to give his friend
even what she called the "joies du préau"--that is to say, a walk round
the Boulevards--Juliette threatens to break out. For several weeks she
has been attributing the sickness and headaches she constantly suffers
from, to her sedentary life. Losing all patience, she addresses an
ultimatum to him, proposing an assignation in a cab on the Boulevard du
Temple. He does not appear. For three hours she waits inside the
vehicle, then, in the certainty that he has failed her, she writes a
letter in pencil, dated from the cab, No. 556, stating her intention to
fetch her daughter and go off somewhere, anywhere, alone with her.
"Thus," she writes, "I shall free myself for ever from a slavery which
satisfies neither my heart nor my mind, and does not secure the repose
of either of us."
However, the next day she did not start. She did not go out at all. She
had resumed her chains and her prison garb. Her anger always evaporated
thus, and turned to melancholy and resigned gentleness. In the end she
came to feel that nothing existed for her, save a lover who sometimes
came and sometimes stayed away. If he was present, she was alive; if
absent, her mainspring was broken.
But Victor Hugo continued to lead an ordinary life, while his mistress
spent her days in the confinement of a cloister. It was probably about
this time that Juliette resolved to set up in that cloister an altar for
the cult of her lover. Finding herself impotent to attract and keep him
by the sole charm of passion, she endeavoured to win him over by
devotion, minute attentions, tender interest in everything he undertook,
and by unbridled adoration of his person and work.
II
According to Juliette, who secured several stolen meetings in the poet's
own house,[28] Victor Hugo suffered from a complete absence of the most
ordinary comfort at home. His lamps smoked, as did his chimney on the
rare occasions when a fire was lighted; he worked in a "horrible little
ice-house," with insufficient light and a half-empty inkstand; his bed
was wretched, the mattress stuffed with what he termed nail-heads; when
he dressed he found his shirts button-less and his coats unbrushed--as
for his shoes, Juliette was ashamed of their condition. We learn from
Théophile Gautier that the author of _Hernani_ was a hearty eater, but
that his meals were served up in confusion: cutlets with beans in oil,
beef and tomato sauce with an omelette, ham with coffee, vinegar,
mustard, and a piece of cheese. He made short work of this extraordinary
mixture, and no doubt was often reminded of a line his mistress had once
written to him on the subject: "When I think of what you are and what
you do, and of the discomfort in which you live, I am filled with
admiring pity."
With the instinct of a loving woman and the resource of a clever one,
Juliette was quick to take advantage of the human side of her god, and
to supply him with the personal care he needed. She trained herself to
be a _cordon bleu_ and a sick nurse, a tailor and a cobbler. If Victor
Hugo went to the theatre he found on his return to the Rue St. Anastase,
a dainty repast of chicken, salad, and the milky puddings he liked, and
all the year round a dessert of grapes, a fruit he had always been fond
of. Juliette served him "kneeling"--so at least she affirms. She took
umbrage if he did not allow her to select for him the biggest asparagus
and the thickest cream. He was happy, so was she. If he had an attack of
that "cursed internal inflammation which sometimes affected his head and
sometimes his eyes," his mistress would prepare liniments, tisanes, herb
soups, which the romanticist meekly swallowed. She assumed a maternal
manner, kissed him, coaxed him with soft words, tried to feed him with
her own hands, and regretted that she could not give him her own health
and take his indisposition upon herself. If he complained of the paucity
and untidiness of his wardrobe, Juliette mended his socks and linen,
ironed his white waistcoats, removed grease-stains from his coat, made
him a smoking-jacket out of an old theatre-cloak, and manufactured "a
capital greatcoat lined with velvet, with collar and cuffs of the best
silk velvet, out of another." Thus she managed by degrees to collect
nearly all the poet's clothes in her own room; his ordinary suits, as
well as those he wore on great occasions, such as a reception at the
Académie, or a sitting of the House. On one occasion she writes, in
gentle self-mockery: "I was sorry, after you went, that I had not made
you put on your cashmere waistcoat to-night; it was mended and quite
ready for you. This morning I have been tidying all your things. Your
coat occupies the place of honour in my wardrobe; your waistcoat and tie
hang above my mantle, your little shoes and silk socks below. In default
of yourself I cling to your duds, look after them, and clean them with
delight."
But Juliette's great achievement, her triumph, was to create in her tiny
apartment the right atmosphere for her poet to work in. His custom was
to collect his thoughts during the day, and work them out at night.
Juliette made him a cosy corner in her bedroom, close to her bed. She
fitted it up with a table, an arm-chair, a lamp, and an ink-pot. Above
the chair she hung portraits of his children, to make him feel at home.
On the table, sheets of paper and freshly cut pens attested the presence
and care of a devotee of genius. Whenever he came in the evening the
poet settled down in what he himself called his work-room. His
methodical habits and strong will enabled him to abstract himself from
his environment and devote himself strictly to his labours as an author.
Besides, he was under the impression that Juliette was fast asleep; but
in that he did her less than justice. Sleep while he worked! Juliette
could never have brought herself to do so. She watched him, and admired
him. Sometimes she seized a pencil to scribble on any scrap of paper the
expression of her veneration, and when the poet had finished he would
find little notes such as the following: "I love to watch even your
shadow on the page while you write."[29]
That a poet should allow his person to be thus worshipped is nothing
new; that he should desire to be admired in his works is still more
natural. Juliette guessed this, and acquired the habit of applauding the
slightest achievement of the master with loving enthusiasm. Part of the
day she spent in copying his manuscripts, classifying them, making them
as like as possible to printers' proofs; and it may easily be imagined
that she occupied much time reading them over and over again. Everything
he wrote was equally sublime in her eyes. If she permitted herself to
show preference for this or that work, it was only on condition that she
should not be supposed to be depreciating some other. In 1846, Victor
Hugo having arranged to make a speech in the House on the "consolidation
and defence of the frontier," Juliette read it no less than three times:
once in _La Presse_, again in _Le Messager_, and a third time in _La
Presse_ again. She made extracts from it and put it away among his
archives; she then wrote gravely to the author, that he had never been
more pathetic or more eloquent. In the same manner she hoarded all his
most trivial sketches and poorest caricatures, and pasted them into
albums which she carefully hid. She was envious of Léopoldine, the
poet's daughter, who was doing the same thing, and naturally had more
opportunities than herself of adding to the collection.
She was more greedy still of his theatrical output, for there her
jealousy came into play. It is safe to affirm that for more than fifteen
years, namely from 1834 to 1851, she interested herself in every single
representation of the dramas of Victor Hugo. She was present at the
Théâtre Français on the first night of _Angélo_ on April 28th, 1835, and
wished to go again on all the following nights, in spite of the bitter
disappointment the play had caused her, through the frustration of her
ambition to take part in it. She was there on February 20th, 1838, for
the revival of _Hernani_; and on March 8th following, it was she who
applauded Marie Dorval loudest, at the revival of _Marion Delorme_.
While _Les Burgraves_ was being written she demanded to know all about
it from its earliest conception, and achieved her wish. When Victor Hugo
read the play to her, she was very much moved and said: "I hardly know
how to descend to earth again from the sublime altitude of your
conception." She took part in the distribution of the _rôles_, and
intrigued against Mlle. Maxime and Madame FitzJames, whom she did not
want for Guanhumara.[30] She championed Madame Melingue, who, in
consequence, obtained the part. At last the first night arrived. There
was a cabal, a violent, aggressive cabal, a sign of the reaction of the
new practical school against the romantic school. Who sat in a
prominent box and opposed the firmest front to the hissing crowd?
Juliette! Who ventured to accuse Beauvallet of murdering the part of the
Duke Job? Juliette again! "To applaud thus your beautiful verses," she
wrote on March 13th, "and hurl myself into the fray in their defence is
only another way of making love. Ah, I wish I could be a man on the
nights the play is given![31] I promise you the subscribers of the
_Nationale_ and the _Constitutionel_ would see strange things!"
The afternoons hung heavy in the lonely apartment of the Rue St.
Anastase. Sometimes the poet looked in for a moment to bathe his eyes,
or claim some other domestic attention; but, as a rule, his visits were
made in the evening, after the parties and the theatre. His mistress,
therefore, begged, and obtained, permission to receive a few of her
friends. They were insignificant, but warm-hearted folk: Madame Lanvin,
the wife of one of Pradier's employés, who acted as intermediary, partly
honorary and partly paid, between the sculptor and the mother of Claire
Pradier; Madame Kraft, an employée of the Comédie Française who affected
literary culture; Madame Pierceau, a worthy matron, and, lastly, Madame
Bezancenot, a tried ally.
As a rule, Victor Hugo tolerated the presence of this little company;
but, democratic though he might be in principle, it palled upon him
before long, and he made some remonstrance. Then Juliette revealed to
him that her need to talk about him had driven her to institute a
regular course of "Hugolatry" among the good ladies. They made a
practice of reading his poems, declaiming his plays, and showering
praise on the independence of his character and the dignity of his life.
In the face of such delicate proofs of the affection she bore him, it is
not surprising that the poet should have entrusted to Juliette his most
sacred hopes and ambitions. She was one of those in whom a lover may
always confide, in the certainty of being ever sustained, encouraged,
and approved. Thus it came about that she was cognisant of every effort
Victor Hugo made, every step he took, and even of the intrigues by which
he climbed gradually to the Académie Française, then to the Tuileries
and the little court of Neuilly, and finally to the Chambre des Pairs.
III
Not that Juliette herself ever cherished special veneration for kings,
princes, peers, or Academicians. Democratic and republican by the
accident of birth, as she herself wrote, she likewise detested, on
principle, everything that seemed likely to attract or keep Victor Hugo
away from the Rue St. Anastase. Her first inclination, therefore, was to
criticise with acerbity Academies, drawing-rooms, politics, and Courts;
but the poet's determination was not of the quality that is easily
weakened by remonstrances. Juliette knew this. As soon as she realised
that the _habit vert_ was really the object of her idol's desire, and
that he had set his whole heart upon obtaining it, she abandoned her
opposition and only indulged in gentle mockery calculated to cover the
retreat of the unsuccessful candidate, and deprive it as much as
possible of bitterness.
For Victor Hugo was, above all, an unfortunate candidate, at any rate
of the Académie. In February 1836 he was refused Lainé's _fauteuil_, and
it was given to a vaudevilliste of the period, called Dupaty. At the end
of November of the same year, Mignet was preferred before him, for
Raynouard's vacancy. In December 1839, rather than select Hugo, nobody
was appointed in the place of Michaud. In February 1840, precedence over
him was given to the permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences,
Monsieur Flourens. It was not until January 7th, 1841, that he was
elected to Lemercier's _fauteuil_ by seventeen votes, against fifteen
given to a dramatist called Ancelot, whose name an ungrateful posterity
no longer remembers.
In all the peregrinations required by these five successive
candidatures, Victor Hugo was invariably accompanied by Juliette. On
December 24th, 1835, she writes to him: "One point on which I will
tolerate no nonsense, is your visits. I insist upon accompanying you, so
that I may know how much time you spend with the wives and daughters of
the Academicians. I shall, by the same means, be able to gather up a few
crumbs of your society for myself, which is no small consideration."
The visits were begun between Christmas and the New Year, in cold, dry,
sunny weather. Clad in black according to prescribed custom, Victor Hugo
fetched his friend every day from the Rue St. Anastase, got into a cab
with her, and showed her the plan for the afternoon: at such and such a
time they must lay siege to Monsieur de Lacretelle; after that, to
Monsieur Royer-Collard; then to Monsieur Campenon. Monsieur de
Lacretelle was too diplomatic not to give plenty of promises and
assurances; Monsieur Royer-Collard too good a Jansenist to fail in a
blunt refusal to the author of _Hernani_. As for Monsieur Campenon, he
had the reputation of being an honest man and an excellent amateur
gardener. His conversation bristled with graftings and buddings. How
should he humour him about his favourite pursuit, Victor Hugo asked his
friend. Should he select roses or pears, myrtle or cypress? As the good
creature was getting on in years, and counted more summers than literary
successes, Victor Hugo unkindly inclined towards the last.
Juliette laughed merrily, and the poet would climb up numerous stairs,
and return with a stock of entertaining anecdotes, which filled the cab
with fun and colour and life. Then followed calculations of his chances;
if they seemed promising, Juliette congratulated her "immortal," as she
called him in anticipation; if not, she made fun of the Académie once
more.
At the end of the year the whole performance began over again. As in
1835, Juliette pretended not to attach much importance to the election
of her lover, but this did not prevent her from hotly abusing the
Académie when, a month later, the society again closed its portals to
the leader of the romantic school.
It is the privilege of the Académie Française to be most courted by
those who have oftenest sneered at it. No institution has ever been the
cause of so much recantation. Juliette herself was to eat her words. On
Thursday, January 7th, 1841, when Victor Hugo had at last triumphed over
his brother candidate, it was no longer a mistress who wrote to him, but
a general addressing a panegyric of victory to a hero: "With your
seventeen friendly votes, and in spite of the fifteen groans of your
adversaries, you are an Academician! What happiness! You ought to bring
your beautiful face to me to be kissed."
Victor Hugo yielded to her gallant desire, as may be imagined, and
forthwith began to prepare for his reception. The poet aimed at a
magniloquent and comprehensive speech which should embrace all the great
names and ideas of the past, present, and future; something as vast as
the empire of Charlemagne, and as noble as the genius of Napoleon.
Juliette, on her side, dreamed of a dress of white tarlatan mounted in
broad pleats and decorated with a rose-coloured scarf, like the one she
had once admired on the shoulders of Madame Volnys, a hated rival at the
Comédie Française.
Although the speech was only to be delivered in June, Victor Hugo had it
ready by April 10th; he read it to his admiring friend the same night.
The white tarlatan dress, alas, was longer on the way. Several reasons
conspired against its completion. First of all, Juliette declared that
she would concede to nobody the honour of presenting the new member with
his lace ruffles: this involved an expenditure of about 23 frs., a heavy
toll on the exchequer of the lovers. Secondly, Victor Hugo's reception
was to fall upon nearly the same date as the first communion of
Juliette's daughter, Claire Pradier, which was yet another cause of
expense. The young woman bravely sacrificed her frock, and, having
consoled herself by making a fair copy of the master's splendid speech,
she awaited the great day. But at the very moment she hoped to see it
dawn without further disappointment, malicious fate brought her, and
consequently Victor Hugo and the Académie, face to face with a fresh
dilemma of the gravest importance, namely, the question of the pulpit
for the momentous occasion.
The time-honoured affair was a wooden erection of mean appearance,
stained to represent mahogany. On ordinary days it was contemned and
relegated to the lumber-room of the Bibliothèque de l'Institut; but, on
the occasion of the reception of a new member, custom prescribed that it
should be placed under the cupola, in front of the agitated neophyte.
Étiquette demanded that the latter should place upon it his gloves and
the notes of his address; but the rickety thing had already borne so
much eloquence in the past, that it tottered under the weight of its
responsibilities. It stood weakly upon a crooked pedestal, in imminent
danger of subsidence. Instead of being a haughty pulpit, equal to any
occasion, it seemed to offer humble apology for its absurd existence.
Such was the farcical object Victor Hugo had to interpose between
himself and Juliette, on the day of the great ceremonial. She lost her
sleep over it; for a time, even the lace ruffles, and the speech, and
the white tarlatan dress and rose-coloured scarf, retired into the
background: "I am in a state of inexpressible agitation and worry over
this wretched pulpit," she wrote. "I shall be just at the back of it. I
am in perfect despair! Truly, since this apprehension has taken
possession of me, I have become the most wretched of women. I think if I
cannot see your handsome, radiant face that day, nothing will keep me
from bursting into sobs of rage and misery. The very thought fills my
eyes with tears."[32]
In spite of himself, Victor Hugo shared one characteristic with Jean
Racine: he could not bear to see a pretty woman cry. He therefore took
decisive measures, and managed to assuage his friend's grief. Juliette
was assured that, whatever happened, she should contemplate her "dear
little orator" at her ease--that is to say, from head to foot.
Unfortunately, it was ordained that calmness should not inhabit this
passionate soul for long together. The night preceding the reception,
Juliette felt frightfully nervous, and, while Victor Hugo sat up
correcting the proofs of his discourse at the Imprimerie Royale, she
retired, saying irritably: "I am like the savages who take to their beds
when their wives give birth to children." At 4.30 a.m. she was already
up, wrote several letters to her lover, dressed, and hurried to the
Palais Nazarin, where she took up a position in the front row, before
even the platoon of infantry detailed for guard had arrived.
According to the testimony of Victor Hugo's enemies as well as of his
friends, the reception surpassed in dignity and brilliancy anything the
cupola had previously witnessed. The Court was represented by the Duc
and Duchesse d'Orléans, the Duchesse de Nemours, and the Princesse
Clémentine, in a tribune. Fashionable society and the world of letters
jostled each other on the benches. There were women everywhere, even
beside the most ancient and prim of Academicians. Old Monsieur Jay was
partially concealed under billows of laces, gauzes, silks, and satins,
worn by his neighbours, Madame Louise Colet and Mlle. Doze. Monsieur
Étienne waggled his head between two monstrous hats so beflowered that,
with one movement, he disturbed the _fleurs du Pérou_ of Madame Thiers,
and with the next, he ruffled the bunches of roses on Madame Anais
Segalas' head.
[Illustration: "LE CITOYEN VICTOR HUGO JOUANT AU CONGRÈS DE LA PAIX."
Political caricature, 1849.]
Juliette saw nothing of all this; neither did she heed the irrelevant
babble of her neighbour on the right, Monsieur Desmousseaux of the
Comédie Française, or of her guest on the left, Madame Pierceau. She was
in a state of painful, yet delicious turmoil, and when Victor Hugo made
his entry, she nearly fainted. Fortunately, the poet gave her a smiling
look before beginning his speech, which restored her to life; and she
settled down to listen to his eloquent words, as if she had not already
written them out until she knew them by heart. To-day they seemed
invested with fresh beauties, and she gave herself up to the enjoyment
of the moment. The magnificent imagery which decked Victor Hugo's first
address at the Académie, concealed calculation of the most worldly wise
description. Victor Hugo aspired to the Chambre des Pairs as a
stepping-stone to a power which would assist him to develop the moral
and social mission he deemed to be the true function of a poet. To
achieve this aim it was necessary that he should first belong to one of
the societies from among which alone the King could legally select the
members of that Assembly. The Académie was one of these, hence the
successive candidatures of the poet, and the special tone of his
discourse, in which all the political parties were blandished and
caressed alike; hence, finally, the visits to Court, which increased in
frequency after 1841.
Just as Juliette had practically burned in effigy almost all the
Academicians of her time before she had the opportunity of becoming
acquainted with them and finding them charming, so she began by
criticising and censuring Louis Philippe and his children with the
greatest severity. Were not these people going to wrest her poet from
her? And for what? For the sake of empty honours and useless
occupations! Therefore we find Juliette preaching to her lover the
contempt of earthly greatness. She was fiercely jealous of the
citizen-king.
In order to calm her apprehensions, Victor Hugo had only to reveal to
her his secret plans; from the first moment that he mentioned the Pairie
to her, she became complacent and Orléaniste. Whether the poet went to
harangue the widow of the soldier-prince in the name of the Académie,
after the accident of 1842, or whether he paid her a private visit,
Juliette always insisted upon accompanying him to Neuilly, and there she
would wait, sitting in a cab outside, whilst her lover coined honeyed
phrases inside the palace.
The Duchesse was German, simple, a good mother, and deeply religious. Of
Victor Hugo's works, the only one she was familiar with was No. XXXIII.
of the _Chants du Crépuscule, Dans L'Église de...._
"C'était une humble église au cintre surbaissé,
L'église où nous entrâmes,
Où depuis trois cents ans avaient déjà passé,
Et pleuré des âmes."
The good lady probably thought these verses had been composed in a
moment of deep fervour, in honour of a respected spouse. She
congratulated the poet, quoted some of the lines to him, questioned him
minutely about his children--and, while he enlarged on these domestic
topics, the real heroine of the beautiful poetry so dear to the
Duchesse, sat waiting below in the cab ... dreaming of the future peer
of France; she already saw him in imagination descending the great
staircase of the Luxembourg, with a demeanour full of dignity. For her
part, she was more than ever content to remain at the foot of the steps,
in a posture of humility, among the crowd of watchers.... When the poet
issued at last from the ducal apartments, she would tell him her dream,
and he would complacently acquiesce.
The appointment of Victor Hugo to the Pairie appeared in the _Moniteur_
of April 15th, 1845. It must be left to politicians to determine in what
degree the presence of "Olympio" could profit the councils of the
nation; but to Juliette's biographer the entry of her lover into the
Luxembourg seems a felicitous event. From that moment, in fact, the
young woman ceased to be cloistered. Busier than ever, and perhaps less
jealous, the poet permitted his mistress to accompany him to the
Luxembourg and to return alone to the Marais. At first Juliette hardly
knew how to take this unfamiliar freedom. With her lover absent, she had
grown accustomed to semi-obscurity. The blatant sunshine seemed to mock
her loneliness. She writes: "Nobody can feel sadder than I do, when I
trudge through the streets alone. I have not done such a thing for
twelve years, and I ask myself what it may portend. Is it a mark of your
confidence or of your indifference? Perhaps both. In any case, I am far
from content."
Gradually, however, she fell into the new ways. She used to walk back
from the Luxembourg by way of the Pont-Neuf and the Quais. She amused
herself by trying to trace the footsteps of Victor Hugo and fit her own
little shoes into them. When she reached home, she immersed herself
deeper than ever in the preoccupations of her lover.
Occasionally, fortunately, she had a reaction. She read little: the
letters of Madame de Sévigné, perhaps, or those of Mlle. de Lespinasse.
She tended her flowers; for Victor Hugo had made her remove from No. 14
to No. 12 Rue St. Anastase, where her ground-floor rooms opened on to a
garden.[33] There, in a space of sixty square feet, she had four bushes
of crimson roses, and a few dozen prolific strawberry-plants, destined
to furnish the poet's favourite dessert, throughout the summer. She
attended to all the most trivial details in person, making them all
subservient to her love.
In this wise--with the exception of a few bouts of jealousy of which we
shall have occasion to speak later, Juliette's days flowed almost
happily. She no longer brooded over her past; redemption through love
seemed to her an accomplished fact. When she turned to the future, it
was with ideas borrowed from Victor Hugo certainly, but none the less
consoling, since they authorised her to hope for the eternal reunion of
souls beyond the confines of this earth. On December 31st, 1842, the
poet had dedicated some delicate verses to her, which she learned by
heart. They were part of a creed by which Juliette hoped to fortify her
soul against the arrows of fortune--hopes fallacious in the event. First
death, then treachery, were about to rend her faithful heart as a
child's toy is smashed.