"ON AN ISLAND"
I
Juliette relates that when she had occasion to admonish her maid, or
find fault with a tradesman during her residence in Jersey and Guernsey,
the answer she invariably received was: "It cannot be helped, Madame; we
are on an island...."
The phrase tickled her fancy, and she adopted it and made use of it on
many occasions.
The reader of the following chapters must likewise accept the axiom
that, "on an island," things are not quite the same as on the mainland;
for, only by so doing, will he be enabled to peruse without undue
astonishment the extraordinary narration of the life led in common by
Victor Hugo, his wife, sons, friends, and mistress, between 1851 and
1872.
Its beginning dates from the poet's sojourn in Belgium without Madame
Victor Hugo, at the beginning of his exile[44]; that is to say, in the
last weeks of the year 1851 and the first half of 1852. Not that his
precarious circumstances and prudent, somewhat middle-class habits,
permitted him to house Juliette under his own roof: indeed, their
_liaison_ was never more secret. But, at Brussels, the problem of the
relations henceforth to exist between the sons of Victor Hugo and she
whom they already called "our friend, Madame Drouet," first came up for
solution. It was at Brussels also, that Juliette set herself to simplify
it, if not settle it, by her devotion, unselfishness, and unremitting
attentions.
At his first arrival on December 14th the poet had taken rooms at the
Hôtel de la Porte Verte in the narrow street of the same name. He
remained there barely three weeks, and on January 5th, 1852, took a
small room on the first floor of No. 27, Grand' Place. It was "furnished
with a black horsehair couch, convertible into a bed, a round table,
which served indifferently for work and for relaxation, and an old
mirror, over the chimney which contained the pipe of the stove."[45]
Juliette never went there, but we learn from the poet's complaints to
her, that the couch was too short for a man, the mattresses hard, and
offensive to the olfactory nerve, and that sleep was difficult to
obtain, on account of the noises in the street. But with the first
streak of dawn outside the lofty window, the "great façade of the Hôtel
de Ville entered the tiny chamber and took superb possession of it"[46];
the atmosphere became impregnated with art and history. The poet's fine
imagination and ardour for work did the rest. Hence the tone of his
letters to his wife, who had remained behind in France, was almost
joyous. It was full of masculine courage. Hence, also, that air of
"simple dignity and calm resignation," which characterised his bearing
in exile, "adding to his inherent nobility and charm," and drawing from
Juliette the enthusiastic exclamation: "Would that I were you, that I
might praise you as you deserve!"[47]
Truth to tell, she merited a rich share of the praise herself. The
little comfort Victor Hugo was able to enjoy, and the moral support he
needed more than ever, came to him solely through her.
She lodged almost next door, at No. 10, Passage du Prince,[48] with
Madame Luthereau, a friend of her youth, married to a political pamphlet
writer. For the modest sum of 150 frs. a month, of which 25 were paid to
her servant, Juliette obtained food, shelter, and sincere affection. But
what she appreciated more than all these, was the liberty she enjoyed of
superintending from afar the poet's domestic arrangements, and preparing
under the shadow of the galleries the dishes and sweetmeats he partook
of in the publicity of the Grand' Place. Every morning at eight o'clock
her maid, Suzanne, conveyed to Victor Hugo a pot of chocolate made by
Juliette, linen freshly ironed and mended, and sometimes even the
modicum of coal the great man either forgot, or did not trouble, to
order.
When Suzanne had swept and cleaned the room which Charras, Hetzel,
Lamoricière, Émile Deschanel, Dr. Yvan, Schoelcher and sometimes Dumas
_père_ daily enlivened with their wit and littered with the ashes from
their pipes, she returned at about two o'clock. She found her mistress
busy preparing the master's luncheon--a cutlet generally, which Juliette
took the trouble to select herself, in order to make certain that the
butcher cut it near the loin! Suzanne started off again bearing the
cutlet, the bread, the plates and dishes, and even the cup of coffee!
Obedient to her mistress's injunction, she hurried through the street,
for, at any cost, the luncheon must not be allowed to get cold.
When Charles Hugo joined his father in February 1852, it might be
supposed that Juliette would relinquish her rôle of _cordon bleu_; but
nothing was further from her intention. She merely proceeded to
supplement the daily cutlet with a dish of scrambled eggs, in honour of
the young man. Hugo having opened the necessary credit, she continued
the task she had undertaken, and prepared two luncheons instead of one.
Again, when on May 24th Madame Victor Hugo came for the second time to
visit her husband in Brussels, it was Juliette who undertook to cook a
little feast for her. In the agitation caused by such a high honour, she
forgot to add an extra fork. She worried for the rest of the day over
the omission, and apologised in successive letters to the poet, in the
terms a _dévote_ might employ to confess a mortal sin.[49]
But these occupations did not prevent the afternoons from hanging heavy
on her hands. Victor Hugo spent them in writing _Napoléon le Petit_; or
he organised expeditions to Malines, Louvain, Anvers, with friends; or
he yielded to the material pleasures of Flemish life, and accepted
invitations to dine at some of those culinary institutes on which
Brussels so prides herself.
But none of these resources were open to Juliette. Confined within the
four walls of her narrow chamber, her only view was of roofs, and a dull
wall, pierced by a single dirty window; she spent whole hours watching a
canary in its cage, through the thick panes. She likened her condition
to that of the tiny captive. At other times, she allowed her thoughts to
roam among past events, and brooded over the packet of letters so
cruelly sent to her the year before[50]; she dwelt upon the grief she
had endured for many months, the choice the poet had finally made in her
favour, and their joint excursion to Fontainebleau to celebrate the
reconciliation. Under the depressing influence of the grey Belgian sky,
always partially obscured by thick smoke, she realised that her splendid
vitality and her love for novelty had departed for ever. Then she
allowed jealousy to resume its sway over her, more powerfully than ever.
In this mood, she once more resolved to set Victor Hugo free: "If you
tell me to go," she wrote on January 25th, 1852, "I will do so without
even turning my head to look at you." But again he bade her stay.
Gravely, then, without showing any symptom of her former coyness, she
proposed to discontinue her letters.
[Illustration: JULIETTE DROUET IN JERSEY.]
Fortunately, at this very juncture, the unwelcome attentions of the
Belgian police, who were nervous about the forthcoming publication of
_Napoléon le Petit_, had decided Victor Hugo to leave Brussels and go to
Jersey. Juliette was to go also, either in the steamer with him, or in
one starting a few hours later. Naturally he urged her to go on writing,
if only to bridge over the short separation. She admits that when she
landed at St. Helier, on August 6th, 1852, hope had once more gained the
ascendant within her breast. For the first time in her life, she was
about to enjoy the society of her "dear little exile," her "sublime
outlaw," all by herself, far from the madding crowd.
II
Victor Hugo resided at first in an hotel at St. Helier, called La Pomme
d'Or. Later he settled on the sea-front at Marine Terrace, Georgetown,
in an enormous house which, owing to its square shape and skylights,
resembled a prison.
Juliette had intended to put up at the Auberge du Commerce, but for
twenty years she had never sat at a table d'hôte without the protection
of the poet. The proximity of tradespeople and farmers proved
insupportable to her. On August 11th she began a search for a suitable
boarding-house, and presently concluded a bargain with the proprietress
of Nelson Hall, Hâvres-des-Pas, for lodging at eight shillings a week,
and board at two shillings a day. This made a monthly expenditure of
about a hundred and fifteen francs, to which was added twenty-five
francs, the wages of Suzanne, her maid.
Like Marine Terrace, Nelson Hall's chief claim to maritime advantages
was its name. At Victor Hugo's house there were no large windows
overlooking the sea, and in Juliette's ground-floor rooms, a high paling
screened the topmost crest of the highest wave.
Our heroine tried to console herself by listening to the surge of the
ocean, and copying the nearly completed manuscript of _L'Histoire d'un
crime_, or the poems the poet intended to add to the volume of _Les
Châtiments_. At the end of September she moved upstairs to a large room
on the first floor of the house, whence a wide view could be had of the
barren scenery of Hâvres-des-Pas, from the battery of Fort Regent on the
right, to the rocks of St. Clément on the left; but Juliette's peaceful
contemplation was constantly disturbed by the violence of the
proprietress, a drunkard, who was renowned all over the island for the
vigour with which she beat her husband when in her cups.
A further removal was therefore decided upon in January 1853, and
carried out on February 6th. Juliette went to live in furnished
apartments next door, consisting, as in Paris, of a bedroom,
drawing-room, dining-room, and kitchen, on the first floor. They
overlooked a vast stretch of sand and shingle, rocks and seaweed.
At first Victor Hugo seldom went to his friend's house, but met her each
day at the outset of his walk and took her with him along roads where
the magic of summer glorified every blade of grass. From end to end of
the island, Dame Nature had transformed herself into a garden, where all
was perfumed, gay, and smiling. Juliette, walking arm in arm with her
lover, could feel the glad beating of his heart; her upraised eyes noted
that his dear face seemed less worried. With the ingenuity of a
twenty-year-old sweetheart, she entertained him of his own country, and
invoked memories of the journeys they had made together in former days
to the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees. The exile remembered, not the
rain, nor the omnibuses, nor the thousand trifles recalled by Juliette,
but France ... his own beautiful France.... Under the influence of that
voice which had once made him free of the realm of love, his country was
restored to him for a fleeting moment.
The lovers were unpleasantly surprised by the week of tempests which
ushered in the equinox, and was followed without a pause by the setting
in of winter. "Everything became sombre, grey, violent, terrible,
stormy, severe." Day and night rain fell, and "the drops chased each
other down the window-panes like silver hairs."[51] Amidst the uproar to
which frenzied Nature suddenly delivered herself, the daily tramps were
perforce discontinued. Fortunately for Juliette, Victor Hugo found
Nelson House warmer than his house at Marine Terrace. His wife had
recently joined him, but had brought with her neither comfort nor the
serene atmosphere propitious for an author's labours. As in the old days
of the Rue St. Anastase, therefore, he set up a writing-table near the
fire in Juliette's sitting-room, with a few volumes of Michelet and
Quinet, and a novel or two by Georges Sand; and every day, after
lunching with his own family, the poet came to work in his friend's
room. Juliette determined to "find the way back to his heart through his
appetite,"[52] as she wrote to him, so she insisted upon his dining
with her. She appealed to his greediness as well as to his hospitable
instincts, assuring him that nowhere else could he so successfully
entertain his new companions, the exiles, as at her abode. Soon she gave
two "exiles' dinners" a week, then three, then four; finally, she had
one every day.
With the assistance of his two sons, whom he had at length presented to
Juliette, Victor Hugo presided at these feasts with an affability born
in part of a desire for popularity. Juliette showed herself more
reserved, more severe. Accustomed to treat the poet as a divinity, she
could not tolerate the familiarity of these petty folk. "A brotherly
cobbler is not to my taste," she said harshly. "I cannot resign myself
to this consorting of vulgar mediocrity with your genius."
Her sweetness to the two sons of the poet was as marked as the
haughtiness of her manner towards the victims of the _Coup d'État_. For
twenty years she had longed to be friends with them. As far back as
1839, on the occasion of a distribution of prizes at which Charles and
François Victor were to cover themselves with honours, she wrote: "What
a pity I cannot witness their triumph! I love them with all my heart,
and would give my life for them; but that is not enough. I will avenge
myself by praying that they may remain always as they are at present:
charming and good."
Later we find her treasuring their portraits, anxious about their little
childish ailments, pleading for them when they incurred punishment, and
overwhelming them with little presents manufactured by her pen or
needle, whenever she received the master's sanction to do so.
What joy it must have given her to receive officially at her table these
children grown to manhood! As soon as she became acquainted with them,
she raised the young men to the level of Victor Hugo in the order of her
preoccupations, and resolved to do nothing for the father, in the way of
spoiling and cherishing, that she did not do also for the sons. If she
copied _Les Contemplations_, she protested that she must also write out
François Victor's translation of Shakespeare. If she sent Suzanne to
Marine Terrace with a herb soup for the master, she bade her carry six
lilac shirts for Charles.
Even young Adèle and Madame Victor Hugo accepted her good offices
without demur. For Adèle, Juliette picked the earliest strawberries and
the first roses of the Nelson Hall garden; she embroidered handkerchiefs
on which Charles had designed the monogram, and bound together the
serial stories of Madame Sand, cut from magazines. For Madame Victor
Hugo she prepared a certain soup made of goose, which, she said, was
most succulent. She lent her Suzanne, her own servant, for the whole
time Marine Terrace was without a cook, and meanwhile went without a
servant herself, and did her own cooking. She spoilt her skin and wore
down her nails, but she took a pride in her devotion and
self-abnegation, and resolved to carry them even further. She dreamt of
entering Victor Hugo's household for good, to assume in all humility the
position of an ex-mistress become housekeeper.
However numerous may have been the wrongs Victor Hugo inflicted upon
this woman, whose jealousy he never ceased to excite, one must admit
that he felt and appreciated the greatness of her love. Like a great
many men, the artist in him recognised a moral worth that no longer
satisfied his needs as a lover; he experienced generous revulsions,
under the influence of which he paid her carefully studied attentions,
which bore a semblance of impulse and spontaneity gratifying to her
feelings.
III
The young queen, Victoria, having paid France, in the person of Napoleon
III, the gracious compliment of a visit in August 1855, the exiles of
Jersey dared address an insolent letter to her, which was published by
their quaintly-named journal, _L'Homme_. True to his native chivalry,
Victor Hugo declined to sign this manifesto[53]; but he was indignant
when the authorities of Jersey marked their disapproval by expelling its
three authors. He protested vigorously against their punishment, and was
in his turn driven from the island on August 31st.
He went to Guernsey, a neighbouring island, bleaker and less temperate
in climate. He settled at first at No. 20, Rue Hauteville, St. Pierre
Port. On May 16th, 1856, he bought a roomy, substantial house built on
the shore at some former period by an English pirate. It only required
restoration, to make it a suitable residence. It was called Hauteville
House.
Here again, Juliette lived successively at the inn, and at a
boarding-house kept by a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Leboutellier. But
when she found that Victor Hugo could no longer content himself with a
temporary house, and intended to send for the furniture and
art-collection he had stored at the rooms in Paris,[54] she begged him
to include her in his plans, and let her have her own things also. She
was tired of so-called English comfort, with its hard beds, narrow
sheets, straight-backed chairs, and tiny wardrobes.
Victor Hugo gave a generous assent to her request. He took a little
house for her, called La Pallue, close to, and overlooking, Hauteville
House. The faithful Suzanne was despatched to France to pack and send to
Guernsey all the Hugo family's and Juliette's possessions. She returned
on August 9th. The furniture and art-collection arrived on the 20th of
the same month.
A busy time followed, for the lovers. They threw themselves feverishly
into the excitements of removal, decoration, and treasure-hunting.
Victor Hugo dropped spiritualism and photography, which had been his
recreations in Jersey, to become architect, cabinet-maker, and joiner.
He undertook the supervision of Juliette's arrangements as well as his
own, bought antique Norman furniture, which he turned to various uses,
manufactured carpets and curtains out of Juliette's old theatre frocks,
designed panels and mantelpieces, and the many incongruous articles
which now decorate the Musée Victor Hugo, and which his friend aptly
called "a poetical pot-pourri of art."
In this wise, the fitting up of the two houses lasted over a
considerable period. We learn from Juliette that the poet was still busy
with his dining-room on April 2nd, 1857, and on May 28th, 1858, he
wrote to Georges Sand: "My house is still only a shell. The worthy
Guernseyites have taken possession of it, and, assuming that I am a rich
man, are making the most of the French gentleman, and spinning out the
work."
Juliette, whose dwelling was more modest, had the enjoyment of it
sooner. She settled into La Pallue at the beginning of November 1856,
and had the happiness henceforth of seeing her friend many times a day.
He had constructed on the roof of Hauteville House a room that he
somewhat pretentiously named his "crystal drawing-room," and that we
should call a belvedere; it was roofed and covered in with glass on all
sides. His bedroom opened out of it.
Every morning he sat and worked there, at a flap-table affixed to the
wall, when the cold did not drive him to some warmer part of the house.
Beneath his gaze spread the low town, the port, the group of
Anglo-Norman islands, and, in clear weather, the coast of Cotentin. At
his back, and slightly higher up, Juliette, from her little house, kept
watch and ward over him. From that moment it may be said that, though
Juliette's body was at La Pallue, her heart and mind inhabited
Hauteville House.
Unfortunately, as winter progressed, the storms grew worse, and a
darkness reigned that made reading and copying difficult. "Like a great
lake turned upside down," the sky hung lowering above the gloomy houses,
and only allowed the pale rays of a leaden sun to pierce through it, at
infrequent intervals. The rest of the time the atmosphere remained
charged with rheumatic-dealing clamminess.
[Illustration: VICTOR HUGO IN JERSEY.]
Juliette, just entering her fiftieth year, bore the rigours of the
climate with difficulty. She would have died of it, she declared, had
she not been upheld by the influence of love. She was a martyr to gout,
and greatly dreaded being crippled by it. She brooded long and often
upon death and the dead. Whether under the influence of a priest, or in
response to some inward prompting we cannot tell, but she reverted for a
time to her former religious practices.
IV
In April 1863, when Juliette was slowly recovering from another attack
of gout, Victor Hugo realised the extreme humidity of La Pallue. On the
advice of his sons, who seem to have been of one mind with him on the
subject, he decided that Juju, as he called her, should move as quickly
as possible, and that he should for the second time assume the functions
of architect, upholsterer, and decorator of her new dwelling.
Juliette offered a prolonged and strenuous resistance to the plan, for
the house chosen for her possessed the grave inconvenience of being at
some distance from Hauteville House. The idea that she would no longer
be able to watch every movement of her lover, drew from our heroine
lamentations and loving reproaches. But Victor Hugo was adamant, and on
February 2nd, 1864, the anniversary of the first performance of _Lucrèce
Borgia_, "Princesse Négroni" took up her abode in the new house, which
she named Hauteville Féerie.
There again the poet had arranged everything himself. Remembering
Juliette's attachment for her rooms in Rue St. Anastase, he had
endeavoured to reconstitute faithfully its curtain of crimson and gold,
its peacocks embroidered on panels, its china, the porcelain dragons
which adorned the dresser, and especially the numerous mirrors that
reflected and multiplied the furniture, knick-knacks, and embroideries.
When Juliette was shown this "marvel," she said she had no words to
express her admiration and gratitude. Then, knowing how often Madame
Victor Hugo was away on the Continent, and how uncomfortable the poet
was at home, she offered to act in turn as hostess and housekeeper to
him.
In 1863 we find her assuming Madame Victor Hugo's duties during the
short absence of the latter, and at the end of 1864, during a further
one which lasted until February 1867, she divided her time equally
between Hauteville House and Hauteville Féerie.
But there is a difference in her methods of ruling the two
establishments. At Hauteville House she governs without obtruding
herself, wisely, discreetly, somewhat mysteriously. She directs the
servants, reproves them if necessary, superintends the accounts, and
keeps down expenses. But she carries out her task from her place in the
background. Officially, the poet lives alone with his sons and his
sister-in-law, Madame Julie Chenay; when he entertains friends from
Paris, Juliette's name is not mentioned.
At Hauteville Féerie, on the contrary, our heroine is at home. It
behoves her to comport herself as the mistress of the house, and expend
her gifts of mind, as well as her talents as a manager. As she says,
"she must be both lady and housekeeper."
In this double rôle it might be supposed that she would be reluctant to
receive the exiles presented to her by Victor Hugo, whose society is so
distasteful to her. Not so. Once more Juliette accepts, through duty and
devotion, that which she never would have tolerated on her own account.
The poet was bored, alas! Though he was composing splendid poetry, his
long dialogue with Mother Nature was beginning to pall upon him. His
somewhat theatrical genius demanded more than a fine stage; it required
a public. Without it, the author of _Les Châtiments_ was but the shadow
of the poet of _Ruy Blas_. No doubt the bronzing of his skin by the salt
breath of the sea, and the virulence of his spite against Napoleon III,
lent him a fictitious appearance of spring and vigour; but there were
times when he flagged sadly, and when despondency and fatigue expressed
themselves in the droop of his lips, the sagging of his ill-shaved
cheeks, the wrinkles on his brow, and, especially, the heavy pockets
beneath his eyes. His attire betrayed his complete neglect of himself.
When he walked through the Place de Hauteville in his Girondin hat all
battered by the wind, his cashmere neckcloth carelessly knotted under an
untidy collar, his open coat revealing a buttonless shirt in summer, and
in winter, a faded scarlet waistcoat which Robespierre himself would
have despised, the little children he so loved ran from him as if he
were accursed.[55]
Juliette grasped these mute warnings, and, as soon as she was
established in the vast frame of Hauteville Féerie, she attempted to
reconstitute the society she had once presided over at Jersey. She even
endeavoured to enlarge the circle and admit a few new-comers.
Juliette was able to maintain the simple dignity to which she attached
so much importance, and from which she departed only in favour of her
poet, in the most delicate circumstance of her life, namely, when Madame
Victor Hugo offered her her friendship. She did not decline it, but,
where many might have erred by an excess of satisfaction and
familiarity, she showed a discreet reserve highly creditable to her.
Since their exile, the relations of the two women had undergone a great
change. On the one hand, Madame Victor Hugo's perpetual pursuit of
pleasure, her constant fatigue, her laziness, and her incapacity to
manage a house, had gradually involved her in the network of attentions,
civilities, and petting, Juliette lavished upon her and hers. The
reports brought to her by her sons and servants of the doings at
Hauteville Féerie, had given her a good opinion of our heroine; her
natural kindliness did the rest, and she showed herself disposed to
treat in neighbourly, and even friendly, fashion one whom she might
justly have hated as a rival.
On the other hand, Juliette no longer felt that jealousy of the mistress
against the legitimate wife, that she had experienced at the beginning
of her love-story. But actual friendship between Madame Victor Hugo and
Juliette was hindered for a long time, by the fear of English criticism,
and of those Guernseyites of whom Victor Hugo wrote, that they made even
the scenery of the island look prim. Juliette dreaded the unkind
tittle-tattle the exiles would not fail to retail to her, if she
accepted the advances from Hauteville House. Therefore, during the first
ten years at Guernsey, she only set foot in her friend's house once, in
1858, to inspect the treasures the master had collected in it. Madame
Victor Hugo was absent that day.
At the end of 1864, the wife of the poet became more urgent in her
invitations. She was about to depart to the Continent, to undergo
treatment for her eyes; her absence might be, and indeed was,
indefinitely prolonged. However careless she might be in housekeeping
matters, she was probably loath to commit her husband to the tender
mercies of her sister, Madame Julie Chenay, who boasted of possessing
neither aptitude for business nor a head for figures. She saw the use
that might be made of the poet's friend, and opened negotiations by
inviting her to dinner. But Juliette declined. This policy of
self-effacement was continued by her even during the long absence of
Madame Victor Hugo in 1865 and 1866. When Victor Hugo pressed her to
dine with him, in secret if necessary, she wrote: "Permit me to refuse
the honour you offer me, for the sake of the thirty years of discretion
and respect I have observed towards your house."
In the end, however, Madame Victor Hugo gained the day, and overcame
this dignified reticence. On her return to Guernsey on January 15th,
1867, she declared her intention of paying Juliette a visit. The
diplomatic abilities of the poet were taxed to the uttermost in the
regulation of the details of this important event. The visit took place
on January 22nd. It was impossible to avoid returning it. Juliette did
so on the 24th, and thenceforth, no longer hesitated to cross the
threshold of Hauteville House. She went there almost every day, to
revise the manuscript and the copies of _Les Misérables_ with the help
of Madame Chenay; in 1868, she spent the whole month of May under its
roof, while her faithful Suzanne was in France.
Similarly, she no longer minded being seen in public with Victor Hugo
and his sons, and even his wife, during the journeys they made together.
Whereas in 1861, for instance, on a journey to Waterloo and Mont St.
Jean, we still find her dining apart, and seeming to ignore Charles
Hugo, in 1867, she is constantly at the latter's house in Brussels,
attending the family dinners and enjoying the charm of what she calls "a
delicate and discreet rehabilitation" by Madame Hugo and her
daughter-in-law. She took her share in their joys as in their sorrows.
It was at Brussels that the three grandchildren of the poet were born,
and there also that he lost successively, in April and August 1868, his
eldest grandchild and his wife. He mourned the latter with the sorrow of
a man from whom the memory of his early love has not faded. As for
Juliette, her regret was thoroughly sincere. She did not venture to
attend the funeral, in deference to outside gossip; but when, a few days
later, she went to the house and saw the empty arm-chair Madame Victor
Hugo's indulgent personality had been wont to occupy, she could not
restrain her tears.
Victor Hugo and his friend returned to Guernsey on October 6th, 1868.
They continued to inhabit separate houses, but dined together at one or
the other. They also resumed their sea-side walks, and their long
talks, of which the chief topic was the second son of Charles Hugo, an
infant who had been left behind at Brussels.
The infirmities of increasing age occasionally prevented our heroine
from following her indefatigable companion. She would then remain at her
chimney corner, reading the _Lives of the Saints_ or some devotional
book. She was more than ever prone to reflect upon death. She had been
greatly shocked by the rapidity with which Madame Victor Hugo had
succumbed, and she felt that her turn, and that of the poet, must soon
come. She prayed ardently that she might be permitted to go first.
In August 1869 Victor Hugo took Juliette with him, first to Brussels,
where Charles Hugo and Paul Meurice joined them, and then to the Rhine,
which held so many sweet memories for both. On their return to Guernsey
on November 6th, he proceeded to plan a journey to Italy for the
following winter. He also made arrangements for the revival of _Lucrèce
Borgia_ at the Porte St. Martin. The journey to Italy was never carried
out, but on February 2nd, 1870, on the anniversary of its first
performance, _Lucrèce_ had a brilliant success.
The old poet was enchanted.
Foreseeing the fall of the Empire, and guessing that the French were
sick of a régime which, during the last eighteen years, had confused
government with spying, and politics with police, he redoubled the
activity of his propaganda, and indited letter after letter, manifesto
after manifesto. The more Juliette confessed to the lassitude of age,
the more he seemed to defy his years.