On two scrolls, representing rolled parchment, are inscribed the names of those whom Victor Hugo looks upon as the principal poets of humanity—Job, Isaiah, Homer, Æschylus, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespeare, Molière. On the opposite side are the names of Moses, Socrates, Christ, Columbus, Luther, Washington. Two oaken statues lean from the double entablature of the chimney-piece. One represents St. Paul reading, with an inscription on the pedestal—'The Book;' the other shows a monk in ecstasy, with his eyes uplifted, and on the pedestal is written 'Heaven.' The working-room contains another fine monumental piece of work, bearing a motto taken from the fourth act of Hernani, 'Ad augusta per angusta.' The dining-room walls are covered with splendid Dutch delf of the seventeenth century, and the room has also a magnificent mirror and a piece of Gobelin tapestry representing the riches of Summer. Vases and statuettes are to be met with everywhere; and on panels are carved various legends—'Man,' 'God,' 'My country,' 'Life is exile.' An armchair of carved oak, which was regarded by the poet as the ancestral seat at his table, is closed by a chain, and bears the inscription, 'The absent are here.' The galleries and rooms of the first story are likewise rich in Renaissance work, and in Chinese and Japanese treasures. The Oak Gallery, which is a kind of guest-chamber, has six windows looking out upon Fort St. George, which distribute the light through a perfect forest of carved oak. The mantelpiece—a marvellous piece of work, represents the sacrifice of Isaac. A state bed and a massive candelabrum in oak, surmounted by a figure carved by Victor Hugo, are also noticeable objects; but they are almost eclipsed by the splendid door of entrance, which, as seen from the interior, is as brilliant as a church window. Two spiral columns sustain a pediment of oak with Renaissance grotesques, surrounded by arabesques and monsters; it advances with two folds, which are resplendent with paintings, among which are eight large figures of the martyrs, attired in gold and purple, the principal being St. Peter. There is inscribed on the lintel, 'Surge, perge,' and close by the words of Lucan, 'The conquerors have the gods, with the conquered Cato remains.' There are also numerous maxims, poetic and otherwise. Hugo's own room was the look-out—a little belvedere open in all directions, but very small in extent. It contains the poet's writing-table and an iron bed. Whether regarded from the point of view of its noble situation, or from that of the artistic treasures which find a lodgment in its interior, Hauteville House is a place to inspire a poet of a far less expansive imagination than Victor Hugo.
While the author of Notre-Dame pursued his studies and compositions in the belvedere, the other inmates of Hauteville House were generally engaged in a variety of pursuits beneath. The elder son, Charles, devoted himself to the writing of dramas and romances, while the second son, Victor François, undertook with much spirit and success a translation of Shakespeare. Adèle, the one daughter now remaining, composed music; Auguste Vacquerie plunged into a series of curious literary studies, which resulted in the production of Les Mielles de l'Histoire and Profils et Grimaces; and Madame Victor Hugo busied herself in collecting notes for her husband's Life. Unfortunately, owing to her death, her task was never completed, a portion only of her labour of love seeing the light in 1863. The whole family ever cordially welcomed any Frenchmen who sought a refuge at Hauteville House, and Gérard de Nerval, Balzac, and many others occupied in turns a room specially set apart for the use of such visitors.
Two or three years after Hugo established himself in Guernsey, an amnesty was announced by the Emperor of the French. The proclamation was dated the 15th of August, 1859. The poet refused to avail himself of the act of grace, and in conjunction with Louis Blanc, Edgar Quinet, and others, replied to the Imperial pardon by a counter manifesto. He was blamed by some for this step, it being urged that it was his duty to return to France during the days of the Second Empire, and to use every effort to procure that amelioration of the condition of the people, and the fruition of their hopes, which he and other patriots desired. But Victor Hugo was very depressed at this time, and saw little prospect of the realization of his own aspirations and of those who felt and acted with him. But an idea of the vast personal influence attributed to the poet may be gathered from such language as the following which was used concerning him at this time: 'Had Victor Hugo stood forward, as he was morally bound to do, the fatal day of Sadowa might never have happened, the disastrous Ministry of M. Émile Ollivier would have been impossible, and France could have been spared the overwhelming ruin which fell upon her when absolutely abandoned to the counsels and government of the feeblest mediocrity.' It is impossible, of course, to say that these sanguine expectations would have been justified; but they will at least serve to show the high esteem in which the poet was held, and the weight attached to his individual will and example.
Another epoch in the literary career of Victor Hugo was reached in 1862 by the publication of the celebrated romance, Les Misérables. This work had been begun many years before, and was to have been published in 1848. Its original conception was vastly extended in course of time, until what was at first meant to occupy only two octavo volumes ultimately spread over ten. The work appeared simultaneously in Paris, London, Brussels, New York, Madrid, Berlin, Turin, St. Petersburg, Leipzig, Milan, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Pesth, and Rio de Janeiro. The first Paris edition amounted to 15,000 copies, the first Brussels edition to 12,000, and the first Leipzig edition to 3,000. No fewer than 150,000 copies were sold in one year, and altogether, in various forms and editions, more than three times this immense number of copies were disposed of. The book was found everywhere, from the Steppes of Russia to the battlefields of the United States, where it solaced many a soldier during the Civil War.
This stupendous work is divided into five parts, entitled respectively 'Fantine,' 'Cosette,' 'Marius,' 'L'Idylle Rue Plumet et l'Épopée Rue St. Denis,' and 'Jean Valjean.' Each of these parts consists of eight or more books, which are again divided into chapters. It was complained that the book was partly the offspring of a poet, and partly the offspring of a social philosopher, and that while the poetry was noble the philosophy was detestable. At the same time it was admitted that the writer had stamped upon every page the hall-mark of genius, and the loving patience and conscientious labour of a true artist. The romance opens with a finely-sketched portrait of a worthy bishop, called by the people Monseigneur Bienvenu, a noble creation, which surprised those who looked upon Hugo merely as a curser of the Church and all its works. A scene of strong dramatic power occurs in Chapter X., which deals with an interview between the bishop and a dying conventionnel, who had all but voted for the death of the King. Victor Hugo's unequalled command of language and his terse and vigorous emphasis come here into full play. 'All French writers of mark,' says a writer in the Quarterly Review, 'are divisible into two schools; the one is characterized by the polish and smoothness to which the romance element is carried in a Racine, or, in more modern times, a Lamartine; the other is full of a viel esprit Gaulois, a Molière or a La Fontaine. For this rugged force of speech, all knots, the bark still on, M. Hugo is very remarkable. The terseness with which he throws into a word the compressed power which a feebler but more elegant writer would draw out into a whole sentence, indicates an amount of genius which belongs only to the kinglier spirits of an age, and which in French literature has only been matched by Rabelais, in Italian by Dante.'
The real hero of the story is Jean Valjean, the son of a woodcutter of Faverolles. Losing his father and mother when a child, he grew up to carry on the former's craft, supporting thereby an elder sister (left a widow) and her seven children. One night, in that terrible year of famine, 1795, Jean Valjean broke into a baker's shop to steal a loaf for the starving children at home. He was arrested for the theft, and condemned to five years at the galleys. Frequent attempts to escape added fourteen years more to his punishment. At length, after nineteen years, he was liberated; but, while now free, his lot was as hard as though he were still in confinement. No one will recognise or aid this pariah of civilization, and he enters the episcopal town of D—— in despair. The good bishop alone will receive the outcast, and he entertains him, and has a bed provided for him. In the middle of the night Valjean is overcome by wild impulses. He steals the spoons from the cupboard over the bed of the sleeping bishop, and escapes through the garden. In the morning he is caught and brought back, but the bishop only heaps coals of fire upon his head in return for his perfidy. Valjean is allowed to go out into the world, but there is a terrible struggle between the good and the evil nature within him. The psychological power of this part of the novel is marvellous. The conflict between right and wrong is renewed periodically in Valjean's breast all through the romance, and it is the influence of the Christian bishop which prevents the miserable man from becoming dead to all his better instincts. The third book of the first part is devoted to the episode of Fantine, an unhappy being who is more sinned against than sinning, and whose sorrows are vividly and painfully described, with some few delicate lights thrown in upon child-life. A striking portrait of Javert, a severe French agent de police, testifies once more to Victor Hugo's power of human analysis; but the most thrilling scenes still centre round Valjean. The ex-convict becomes a respectable provincial mayor under an assumed name, and when a man is arrested in his old name of Valjean, after a tremendous struggle, in which he sees the dead bishop calling upon him to be true to his conscience, he resolves to deliver himself up and save the innocent man. I cannot follow all the ramifications of this extraordinary work, which absolutely teems with exciting incidents, all graphically told, and having for their central and cardinal motive the trials of Valjean and the revolt against society. In the last volume we have the marriage of Cosette, daughter of Fantine, with one Marius, both of whom owed their lives to Valjean. Marius and Cosette shrink from Valjean when they hear his confession that he is a liberated convict. But when Marius learns further that Valjean had saved his life and conveyed him from the barricades to his grandfather's house, and that he had also secured for him his wife's dowry of 600,000 francs, remorse overcomes him for his ingratitude. He and Cosette seek out Valjean at his lodgings, but only arrive in time to witness the death of the suffering, sinning, struggling convict, and to receive his last blessing.
This romance contains passages which, for grandeur of conception and skill in execution, have never been equalled by any other French writer. At the same time the work is not without its defects, chief of which is the frequent recurrence of prolix digressions. For example, at a very critical point in the story, when Jean Valjean has effected his escape with Marius in his arms from the pursuit of the soldiery, the reader is treated to some hundred pages of speculation on the valuable uses to which the sewage of large towns may be put. Other eccentricities might be pointed out, but high and above them all burns the light of the original genius of the author, which transforms the book for us into a veritable wizard's spell. Hugo, even with his perversities and his literary contradictions, can move us as no other man can. Writing to Lamartine, who had been considerably exercised by the social views promulgated in this book, the author said: 'A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society, and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming—a society without kings, a humanity without barriers. I want to universalize property, not to abolish it; I would suppress parasitism; I want to see every man a proprietor, and no man a master. This is my idea of true social economy. The goal may be far distant, but is that a reason for not striving to advance towards it? Yes, as much as a man can long for anything I long to destroy human fatality. I condemn slavery; I chase away misery; I instruct ignorance; I illumine darkness; I discard malice. Hence it is that I have written Les Misérables.' So much for one side of the work; but if its social and political philosophy be condemned to the exclusion of its manifold excellences and beauties, then I can only pity the mole-like blindness of those who, in their haste to be critical, have lost that key-note of human sympathy which alone can unlock the treasures of Les Misérables.
Utopian as some of Victor Hugo's social theories might be, his aspirations after the perfection of the race were unquestionably noble. What is more, he furnished practical evidence of the sincerity of his desire to bridge over the gulf which separates humanity into classes. At his house in Guernsey he entertained periodically the children of the poor, frequently to the number of forty, at his own table. They would be accompanied by their mothers, and would sit down to an excellent repast, the hospitable board being presided over by the poet himself. In this fraternal spirit he endeavoured to carry out his democratic ideas. At one of his Christmas feasts at Hauteville House, Hugo remarked: 'My idea of providing a substantial dinner for the destitute has been well received almost everywhere; as an institution of fraternity it is accepted with a cordial welcome—accepted by Christians as being in conformity with the Gospel, and by democrats as being agreeable to the principles of the Revolution.' He also advocated the education of children, as well in the principles of justice and real happiness as in the various branches of knowledge; for by elevating the child they would elevate the people of the future.
The good work thus initiated in Guernsey was imitated by humanitarians in London, who provided acceptable meals for the poor in the Ragged Schools, and for the neglected and the outcast. Hugo's example was therefore not barren of results, though systematic care for the poor was still a dream of the future.
A strangely interesting scene took place at Brussels, when Victor Hugo's publishers in that city, Messrs. Lacroix and Verboeckhoven, gave a grand banquet to the author in celebration of the success of Les Misérables. Distinguished representatives of the English, French, Italian, Spanish and Belgian press attended, and amongst the chief guests were the Burgomaster of Brussels, the President of the Chamber of Representatives, MM. Eugène Pelletan, De Banville, Champfleury, and Louis Blanc. The illustrious exile was much moved as he listened to speeches breathing sympathy and affection for himself as a man, and admiration for him as a writer. 'Eleven years ago, my friends,' he said in reply, 'you saw me departing from among you comparatively young. You see me now grown old. But though my hair has changed, my heart remains the same. I thank you for coming here to-day, and beg you to accept my best and warmest acknowledgments. In the midst of you I seem to be breathing my native air again; every Frenchman seems to bring me a fragment of France; and while thus I find myself in contact with your spirits, a beautiful glamour appears to encircle my soul, and to charm me like the smile of my mother-country.' The Empire had made this gathering impossible in Paris, the city where it should naturally have been held.
A pleasant act of reparation for past injustice was performed when, on the 18th of May, 1860, the inhabitants of Jersey once more welcomed Hugo to their island. He went over upon the requisition of five hundred sympathizers with liberty, who invited him to speak on behalf of the subscription which was being raised to assist Garibaldi in the liberation of Italy. The occasion was pre-eminently one to unseal the fount of eloquence in the exile and the poet. His own deep love for France led him to feel profoundly with the noble patriot who was struggling for a united Italy. Hugo spoke with great energy, first depicting Italy in her bondage, then pleading for her freedom and independence, and prophesying the near approach of the time when, with the sword of Garibaldi, aided by the support of France and England, Italy would rise victorious in the struggle for liberty.
A few years later, and we have some glimpses of the domestic relations of the poet. His son Charles was married in 1866, at Brussels, to the ward of M. Jules Simon. In April, 1867, Victor Hugo became a grandfather, and amongst the many evidences of his affection for children this little letter, written upon his grandson's birth, is well worthy of preservation: 'Georges,—Be born to duty, grow up for liberty, live for progress, die in light! Bear in thy veins the gentleness of thy mother, the nobleness of thy father. Be good, be brave, be just, be honourable! With thy grandmother's kiss, receive thy father's blessing.' The child had scarcely come, however, to gladden the household before he was taken away again. He lived a twelvemonth only; but in his place there soon came another Georges, and he was followed by a sister Jeanne—offshoots of humanity which twined themselves round the heart of the grandfather, and on more than one occasion inspired his pen.
In the summer of 1866, the poet and his two sons, with a party of friends, went upon a tour of pleasure through Zealand. But the journey, which was intended to be pursued strictly incognito, became in reality a kind of progress. The principal traveller was recognised at Antwerp, and Charles Hugo, who afterwards published a work entitled Victor Hugo en Zélande, remarked that though his father had come to discover Zealand, Zealand had discovered him instead. Many pleasant incidents marked the journey, not the least gratifying being a reception at Ziericsee, when, in addition to being welcomed by the municipal authorities, two little girls, dressed in white, came forward and presented Hugo with magnificent bouquets. On leaving Dordrecht, the farewell was one that might have been tendered to a sovereign.
Shortly before making this tour Hugo had issued Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois. In these songs of the streets and the woods will be discovered the amusing recreations of a great spirit and the representations of its lighter moods. Applying to the volume a standpoint quite out of keeping with its scope and motive, some of the reviewers saw in it a decadence of genius. They had no ear for its music or for its more delicate undertones. It was so different from the work they expected from such a writer that it must be bad. Charles Monselet thought there were some passages in this book which, in pure musical quality, were worthy of Rossini or Hérold.
But those who complained of the poems had no reason to complain of the work which followed it in 1866, Les Travailleurs de la Mer. This was another of the great romances by which the name of Victor Hugo will live. In announcing the completion of the work the author wrote, 'In these volumes I have desired to glorify work, will, devotion, and whatever makes man great. I have made it a point to demonstrate how the most insatiable abyss is the human heart, and that what escapes the sea, does not escape a woman.' In the work itself was the inscription, 'I dedicate this book to the rock of hospitality and liberty, to that portion of old Norman ground inhabited by the noble little people of the sea: to the island of Guernsey, severe yet kind, my present refuge, and probably my grave.' This powerful story dealt with the last of three great forces which Victor Hugo had now illumined by his genius—religion, society, and Nature. In these forces were to be seen the three struggles of man. They constitute at the same time, said the writer, his three needs. Man has need of a faith; hence the temple. He must create; hence the city. He must live; hence the plough and the ship. But these three solutions comprise three perpetual conflicts. The mysterious difficulty of life results from all three. Man strives with obstacles under the form of superstition, under the form of prejudice, and under the form of the elements. He is weighed down by a triple kind of fatality or necessity. First, there is the fatality of dogmas, then the oppression of human laws, and finally the inexorability of nature. The author had denounced the first of these fatalities in Notre-Dame de Paris; the second was fully exemplified in Les Misérables; and the third was indicated in Les Travailleurs de la Mer. But with all these fatalities there also mingled that inward fatality, the supreme agonizing power, the human heart.
This book on the toilers of the sea has been compared with the Prometheus of Æschylus. The story or plot is very subordinate, the author having devoted himself to the great contest between his hero and the powers of Nature. In the whole range of literature there is probably nothing more graphic than the account of Gilliatt's battle with the devil-fish. 'This is St. George and the Dragon over again,' remarked a critic in the British Quarterly Review; 'and you might as well blame Ariosto or Dante, or great mediæval painters and sculptors, for their innumerable elaborate creations of such monstrous objects, as blame the modern who has, by his study of modern science, seen and restored much that our ancestors conceived. The Pieuvre, moreover, is an ugly symbol of the evil spiritual powers with which man contends. For the rest, Hugo may revel in his strength of creation in this region, as Ariosto and Dante revelled before him, as the builders, too, of our great Gothic cathedrals revelled in their gargoyles and hobgoblins. But before we quit this romance, observe the perfect unity of it as a work of art.'
The career of Gilliatt, the hero of this romance, is important from certain social and philosophical aspects, as well as from the individual point of view. The work is a dissertation upon the dignity, duty, and power of labour, the French writer thus endorsing the dictum of Carlyle on this great question. Gilliatt, hand to hand with the elements, grapples with the last form of external force that is brought against him. It has been well observed that the artistic and moral lesson are worked out together, and are, indeed, one. Gilliatt, alone upon the reef at his herculean task, offers a type of human industry in the midst of the vague 'diffusion of forces into the illimitable' and the visionary development of 'wasted labour' in the sea, and the winds, and the clouds. It is man harassed and disappointed, and yet unconquered.
In 1869 appeared a fourth important romance by Victor Hugo, the strange and grotesque L'Homme qui Rit. In this book there is a good deal to make the reader restive, for in some parts it is unquestionably repulsive. But when this has been borne with, there is still much invested with that peculiar interest which only the author can weave round his creations. The movement of life plays a subordinate part in the story, and the real purpose of the work is seen to be a description of the battle waged in the individual breast, first with Fate, and then with those ancient enemies of man, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. Criticizing this book, Mr. Swinburne remarked: 'Has it not been steeped in the tears and the fire of live emotion? If the style be overcharged and overshining with bright sharp strokes and points, these are no fireworks of any mechanic's fashion; these are the phosphoric flashes of the sea-fire moving in the depths of the limitless and living sea. Enough that the book is great and heroic, tender and strong, full from end to end of divine and passionate love, of holy and ardent pity for men that suffer wrong at the hands of men; full, not less, of lyric loveliness and lyric force; and I, for one, am content to be simply glad and grateful: content in that simplicity of spirit to accept it as one more benefit at the hands of the Supreme singer now living among us the beautiful and lofty life of one loving the race of men he serves, and of them in all time to be beloved.' Yet, notwithstanding its evidences of power, L'Homme qui Rit failed to obtain that deep hold upon the public mind which was secured by its predecessors.
A writer in the Cornhill pointed out that it was Hugo's object in this romance to denounce the aristocratic principle as it is exhibited in England. Satire plays a conspicuous part, but the constructive ingenuity exhibited throughout is almost morbid. 'Nothing could be more happily imagined, as a reductio ad absurdum of the aristocratic principle, than the adventures of Gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, snatched suddenly out of his little way of life, and installed without preparation as one of the hereditary legislators of a great country. It is with a very bitter irony that the paper, on which all this depends, is left to float for years at the will of wind and tide.' There are also other striking contrasts. 'What can be finer in conception than that voice from the people heard suddenly in the House of Lords, in solemn arraignment of the pleasures and privileges of its splendid occupants? The horrible laughter, stamped for ever "by order of the King" upon the face of this strange spokesman of Democracy, adds yet another feature of justice to the scene; in all time, travesty has been the argument of oppression; and, in all time, the oppressed might have made this answer: "If I am vile, is it not your system that has made me so?" This ghastly laughter gives occasion, moreover, for the one strain of tenderness running through the web of this unpleasant story: the love of the blind girl Dea for the monster. It is a most benignant providence that thus harmoniously brings together these two misfortunes; it is one of these compensations, one of these after-thoughts of a relenting destiny, that reconcile us from time to time to the evil that is in the world; the atmosphere of the book is purified by the presence of this pathetic love; it seems to be above the story somehow, and not of it, as the full moon over the night of some foul and feverish city.' This last sentence exhibits a misapprehension of Victor Hugo's method. It is part of his plan to discover that which would be accounted as the most vile, the most contemptible, the most loathsome in human nature, and to show that it has some point of contact with the most educated, the most refined, the most beautiful. Critics may complain that he sacrifices art sometimes in doing so, but his reply would be that there can be no sacrifice of art where truth is concerned. Falsehood alone is destructive of art.
I must pause here to note some interesting dramatic reproductions which took place in Paris in connection with the Exhibition of 1867. Existing dramatic literature was at a very low ebb, when the Emperor felt that this important international occasion ought to be further distinguished by the production of some new dramas. The managers were nonplussed, for they had nothing worth producing, and the Minister of Fine Arts ventured to hint as much to his Majesty. Ultimately the name of Victor Hugo was brought forward, and it was decided to bring out Hernani at the Théâtre Français, and Ruy Blas at the Odéon. On the 20th of June, accordingly, Hernani was produced, and performed by a brilliant company, including Delaunay, Bressant, and Mademoiselle Favart. Twenty thousand applications had been made for tickets for the first performance. The audience was a very mixed one, and as it was feared that political disturbances might occur, the most rigid precautions were taken by the authorities. But there was no need for this—the piece was received with a favour that was practically unanimous; and although M. Francisque Sarcey (who was not then numbered amongst Hugo's admirers) hinted that the applause was not precisely genuine, his insinuations were soon rudely scattered to the winds. On the next night, and for eighty succeeding nights, this remarkable play drew forth the most genuine and vociferous applause.
A number of young authors, including François Coppée, Armand Silvestre, and Sully Prudhomme, were so delighted with the success of Hernani that they addressed the following letter to the poet: 'Master most dear and most illustrious, we hail with enthusiastic delight the reproduction of Hernani. The fresh triumph of the greatest of French poets fills us with transports. The night of the 20th of June is an era in our existence. Yet sorrow mingles with our joy. Your absence was felt by your associates of 1830; still more was it bewailed by us younger men, who never yet have shaken hands with the author of La Légende des Siècles. At least they cannot resist sending you this tribute of their regard and unbounded admiration.' Writing from Brussels, Hugo thus replied: 'Dear poets, the literary revolution of 1830 was the corollary of the Revolution of 1789; it is the speciality of our century. I am the humble soldier of the advance. I fight for revolution in every form, literary as well as social. Liberty is my principle, progress my law, the ideal my type. I ask you, my young brethren, to accept my acknowledgments. At my time of life, the end, that is to say the infinite, seems very near. The approaching hour of departure from this world leaves little time for other than serious meditations; but while I am thus preparing to depart, your eloquent letter is very precious to me; it makes me dream of being among you, and the illusion bears to the reality the sweet resemblance of the sunset to the sunrise. You bid me welcome whilst I am making ready for a long farewell. Thanks; I am absent because it is my duty; my resolution is not to be shaken; but my heart is with you. I am proud to have my name encircled by yours, which are to me a crown of stars.' The writer who thus contemplated an early departure from the stage of human life was to accomplish much more before that event, and to witness many startling changes in his beloved France.
The third Napoleon seems to have been inspired by a bitter jealousy of the genius of Victor Hugo, whose great influence he dreaded; and the poet answered this by an unconquerable distrust of the Emperor. After the representations to which I have drawn attention, Hugo declined to allow his play to be acted, and it was only at the close of Napoleon's reign that he could be prevailed upon to allow the production of Lucrèce Borgia at the Porte St. Martin. George Sand was present on this occasion, and thus wrote to the dramatist: 'I was present thirty-seven years ago at the first representation of Lucrèce, and I shed tears of grief; with a heart full of joy I leave the performance of this day. I still hear the acclamations of the crowd as they shout, "Vive Victor Hugo!" as though you were really coming to hear them.'
Hugo's sympathy with Garibaldi—for whom he had a profound admiration—found vent in 1867, in a poem entitled La Voix de Guernesey. It severely condemned the Mentana Expedition, and encouraged Garibaldi under the check he had sustained at the hands of the Pope and Napoleon III. Garibaldi replied with some verses styled 'Mentana,' and this interchange of friendship and goodwill between the two patriots stirred the worst blood of the French clerical party. The poems were circulated by some means throughout France in considerable numbers, the result being an Imperial order to stop the representations of Hernani, while the following letter was also despatched to the poet in Guernsey: 'The manager of the Imperial Théâtre de l'Odéon has the honour to inform M. Victor Hugo that the reproduction of Ruy Blas is forbidden.—Chilly.' From Guernsey came this pithy reply, addressed to the Tuileries: 'To M. Louis Bonaparte.—Sir, it is you that I hold responsible for the letter which I have just received signed Chilly.—Victor Hugo.'
The Emperor would doubtless have given much could he have quenched the genius and subdued the patriotism of the exile. But though the former affected security in his power, and the latter looked for the triumph of the people, neither could anticipate the dawning of that day of humiliation and blood which in the course of a few years was to break over unhappy France.
Having vowed never again to visit the land that was 'the resting-place of his ancestors and the birthplace of his love' until she had been restored to liberty, it is not surprising that Victor Hugo rejected the renewed amnesty offered him by Napoleon in 1869. The past ten years had wrought in him no signs of relenting, and when he was urged by his friend M. Félix Pyat to accept this new offer of a truce, he replied, 'S'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-là' ('If there remain only one, I will be that one'). When the Republican journal Le Rappel was started, with Charles and François Hugo, Auguste Vacquerie, and Paul Meurice as its principal contributors (joined subsequently by M. Rochefort), he wrote for the opening number a congratulatory manifesto addressed to the editors. By every means in his power, indeed, he endeavoured to advance Republican principles.
Early in 1870 Napoleon was so impressed by the spread of Republican feeling that he resolved to test the stability of his power and the magic of his name by a plébiscite. This step was condemned by Hugo, who asked why the people should be invited to participate in another electoral crime. He thus gave vent to his burning indignation at the proposal: 'While the author of the Coup d'État wants to put a question to the people, we would ask him to put this question to himself, "Ought I, Napoleon, to quit the Tuileries for the Conciergerie, and to put myself at the disposal of justice?" "Yes!"' This bold and stinging retort led to the prosecution of the journal and the writer for inciting to hatred and contempt of the Imperial Government. But the poet went on his course unmoved, now engaged in writing his study of Shakespeare, and now in responding to the appeals made to him from various quarters, including those from the insurgents of Cuba, the Irish Fenians who had just been convicted, and the friends of peace at the Lausanne Congress. He had suffered another domestic grief in 1868 by the death of his wife, his unfailing sympathizer and consoler in his early struggles, and other sorrows were impending.
The war with Prussia in 1870 led to the disaster of Sedan, and the collapse of the Empire. Hugo at once hastened to France, where he was welcomed with heartfelt enthusiasm by his friends of the Revolutionary Government formed on the 4th of September. M. Jules Claretie, who accompanied the poet on the journey from Brussels to Paris, has written a graphic account of his return to the beloved city. At Landrecies Hugo saw evidences of the rout and the ruin which had overtaken France. 'In the presence of the great disaster, whereby the whole French army seemed vanquished and dispersed, tears rolled down his cheeks, and his whole frame quivered with sobs. He bought up all the bread that could be secured, and distributed it among the famished troops.' The scene in Paris on Hugo's arrival was a memorable one. 'Through the midst of the vast populace,' continues the narrator, 'I followed him with my gaze. I looked with admiration on that man, now advancing in years, but faithful still in vindicating right, and never now do I behold him greeted with the salutations of a grateful people without recalling the scene of that momentous night, when with weeping eyes he returned to see his country as she lay soiled and dishonoured and well-nigh dead.' Concerning this scene, M. Alphonse Daudet also wrote: 'He arrived just as the circle of investment was closing in around the city; he came by the last train, bringing with him the last breath of the air of freedom. He had come to be a guardian of Paris; and what an ovation was that which he received outside the station from those tumultuous throngs already revolutionized, who were prepared to do great things, and infinitely more rejoiced at the liberty they had regained than terrified by the cannon that were thundering against their ramparts! Never can we forget the spectacle as the carriage passed along the Rue Lafayette, Victor Hugo standing up, and being literally borne along by the teeming multitudes.' At one point, in acknowledging his enthusiastic reception, Hugo said: 'I thank you for your acclamations. But I attribute them all to your sense of the anguish that is rending all hearts, and to the peril that is threatening our land. I have but one thing to demand of you. I invite you to union. By union you will conquer. Subdue all ill-will; check all resentment. Be united, and you shall be invincible. Rally round the Republic. Hold fast, brother to brother. Victory is in our keeping. Fraternity is the saviour of liberty!' Addressing also the crowd assembled in the Avenue Frochot, the place of his destination, the poet assured them that that single hour had compensated him for all his nineteen years of exile.
Installed at the house of his friend Paul Meurice, Hugo remained in Paris all through the siege. The Empire having fallen, the cause of strife had ceased, and Hugo addressed a manifesto to the Germans, in which he said: 'This war does not proceed from us. It was the Empire that willed the war; it was the Empire that prosecuted it. But now the Empire is dead, and an excellent thing too. We have nothing to do with its corpse; it is all the past, we are the future. The Empire was hatred, we are sympathy; that was treason, we are loyalty. The Empire was Capua, nay, it was Gomorrha; we are France. Our motto is "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity;" on our banner we inscribe, "The United States of Europe." Whence, then, this onslaught? Pause a while before you present to the world the spectacle of Germans becoming Vandals, and of barbarism decapitating civilization.' But the victorious Germans did not share the peaceful sentiments of the writer, and it would have gone ill with him if, like his manifesto, he had fallen into the hands of the Prussian Generals.
The siege went on, and the poet laid the funds from his works at the feet of the Republic. Readings were given of Les Châtiments, and other poems, and the proceeds expended in ammunition. It was a brave struggle on the part of the Parisians. Gambetta called on Hugo to thank him for his services to the country, when the latter replied: 'Make use of me in any way you can for the public good. Distribute me as you would dispense water. My books are even as myself; they are all the property of France. With them, with me, do just as you think best.' The poet kept up a brave heart during the privations of hunger, and cheered many of the younger spirits at his table by his pleasantry and wit, which relieved the gloom that pressed so heavily over all. When the great and terrible time of peril and suffering was past, he left it on record: 'Never did city exhibit such fortitude. Not a soul gave way to despair, and courage increased in proportion as misery grew deeper. Not a crime was committed. Paris earned the admiration of the world. Her struggle was noble, and she would not give in. Her women were as brave as her men. Surrendered and betrayed she was; but she was not conquered.' One can scarcely wonder that men who loved Paris as a woman loves her child can never forget the humiliation she was called upon to pass through.
In the list of the Committee of Public Safety, which was responsible for the insurrectionary movement of the 31st of October, the name of Victor Hugo appeared; but he disavowed its use, and on the ensuing 5th of November he declined to become a candidate at the general election of the mayors of Paris. Nevertheless, 4,029 suffrages were accorded him in the 15th arrondissement. In the elections of February, 1871, he was returned second on the list with 214,000 votes, Louis Blanc coming first with 216,000, and Garibaldi third with 200,000 votes. Speaking on the 1st of March in the National Assembly—which met at Bordeaux—Hugo strongly denounced the preliminaries of peace. The treaty, however, was ratified. Interposing in the debate which subsequently took place on the election of Garibaldi, he said: 'France has met with nothing but cowardice from Europe. Not a Power, not a single King rose to assist us. One man alone intervened in our favour; that man had an idea and a sword. With his idea he delivered one people; with his sword he delivered another. Of all the Generals who fought for France, Garibaldi is the only one who was not beaten.' A strange scene of tumult arose upon this speech, many members of the Right gesticulating and threatening violently. Rising in the midst of an uproar that was indescribable, Hugo announced that he should send in his resignation. This he accordingly did, and remained firm, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties to withdraw it on the part of the President, M. Grévy. Next day, in consequence, there was nothing for the President to do but to announce the resignation, which was couched in these terms: 'Three weeks ago the Assembly refused to hear Garibaldi; now it refuses to hear me. I resign my seat.' Louis Blanc expressed his profound grief at the resignation; it was, he said, adding another drop of sorrow to a cup that seemed already over-full; and he grieved that a voice so powerful should be hushed just at an emergency when the country should be showing its gratitude to all its benefactors. Garibaldi thus wrote to Hugo: 'It needs no writing to show that we are of one accord; we understand each other; the deeds that you have done, and the affection that I have borne for you make a bond of union between us. What you have testified for me at Bordeaux is a pledge of a life devoted to humanity.'
It was at this juncture that the poet was called upon to mourn the loss of his son Charles, who died suddenly from congestion of the brain. There had been an unusually close bond between the two, and the shock came with great force upon the father. The body of the deceased was brought to Paris for interment, Hugo following the hearse on foot to the family vault at Père la Chaise. Funeral orations were delivered by Auguste Vacquerie and Louis Mie.
From Brussels, whither he had gone after his son's death, the poet protested against the horrors of the Commune. He also vainly tried to preserve the column in the Place Vendôme from destruction. He wrote his poem, Les deux Trophées, referring to the column and the Arc de Triomphe, with the object of staying the hands of the destroyers, but the mad work went forward. Nevertheless, it was characteristic of him that after the insurrection was at an end, he pleaded for mercy towards the offenders. In his house at Brussels many fugitives found shelter, until the Belgian Government banished them from the country. In reply to this edict Hugo published an article in L'Indépendance. He declared that although Belgium by law might refuse an asylum to the refugees, his own conscience could not approve that law. The Church of the Middle Ages had offered sanctuary even to parricides, and such sanctuary the fugitives should find at his home; it was his privilege to open his door if he would to his foe, and it ought to be Belgium's glory to be a place of refuge. England did not surrender the refugees, and why should Belgium be behindhand in magnanimity? But these arguments were of no avail with the exasperated Belgians. A few of the more ruffianly spirits of Brussels actually made an attack upon the poet's house, which they assaulted with stones, to the great danger of Madame Charles Hugo and her children. Defeated in their attempts to break in the door or to scale the house, the assailants at length made off. So far at first from any redress being granted to Hugo for this outrageous assault, or any punishment being meted out to the offenders, the poet himself was ordered to quit the kingdom immediately, and forbidden to return under penalties of the law of 1865. A debate took place in the Chamber, and as the result of this debate and various protests, the Government did not order the indiscriminate expulsion of all exiles, as they had contemplated. They also made some show of satisfaction to Hugo by ordering a judicial inquiry into the attack upon his residence. In the end a son of the Minister of the Interior was fined a nominal sum of 100 francs for being concerned in the outrage.
Hugo now made a tour through Luxemburg, and afterwards visited London, returning to Paris at the close of the year 1871. After the trial of the Communists he pleaded earnestly, but in vain, for the lives of Rossel, Lullier, Ferré, Crémieux, and Maroteau. In the elections of January, 1872, he got into a difficulty with the Radicals of Paris in consequence of his refusal to accept the mandat impératif. This, he explained, was contrary to his principles, for conscience might not take orders. He was willing to accept a mandat contractuel, by which there could be a more open discussion between the elector and the elected. Hugo was defeated, receiving only 95,900 votes, as against 122,435 given to his opponent, M. Vautrain, a result partly accounted for by Hugo's amnesty proposals. The poet published, in September, 1873, La Libération du Territoire, a poem which was sold for the benefit of the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine. In it the writer strongly condemned the adulation poured upon the Shah of Persia, then on a visit to France, and respecting whose cruelty and barbarism many anecdotes were current.
On the morning following Christmas Day, 1873, the poet was again called upon to bear a great loss by the death of his only remaining son, François Victor. At the funeral Louis Blanc delivered a short address, in which he extolled the literary ability, the integrity, and the virtues of the deceased. To the shouts of 'Vive Victor Hugo! Vive la République!' the weeping poet was led away from the grave-side.
During the siege of Paris, Hugo kept a diary of this lurid history, and upon this he constructed his poem L'Année Terrible—the events celebrated extending from August, 1870, to July, 1871. Speaking of this work, a writer whom I have already quoted remarked that 'the poems of the siege at once demand and defy commentary; they should be studied in their order as parts of one tragic symphony. From the overture, which tells of the old glory of Germany before turning to France with a cry of inarticulate love, to the sad majestic epilogue which seals up the sorrowful record of the days of capitulation, the various and continuous harmony flows forward through light and shadow, with bursts of thunder and tempest, and interludes of sunshine and sweet air.' The variety of note in these tragic poems has also been well insisted upon. 'There is an echo of all emotions in turn that the great spirit of a patriot and a poet could suffer and express by translation of suffering into song; the bitter cry of invective and satire, the clear trumpet-call to defence, the triumphal wail for those who fell for France, the passionate sob of a son on the stricken bosom of a mother, the deep note of thought that slowly opens into flower of speech; and through all and after all, the sweet unspeakable music of natural and simple love. After the voice which reproaches the priest-like soldier, we hear the voice which rebukes the militant priest; and a fire, as the fire of Juvenal, is outshone by a light as the light of Lucretius.' Mr. Dowden sees in these poems the work of a Frenchman throughout, not a man of the Commune, nor a man of Versailles. 'The most precious poems of the book are those which keep close to facts rather than concern themselves with ideas. The sunset seen from the ramparts; the floating bodies of the Prussians borne onward by the Seine, caressed and kissed and still swayed on by the eddying water; the bomb which fell near the old man's feet while he sat where had been the Convent of the Feuillantines, and where he had walked in under the trees in Aprils long ago, holding his mother's hand; the petroleuse, dragged like a chained beast through the scorching streets of Paris; the gallant boy who came to confront death by the side of his friends—memories of these it is which haunt us when we have closed the book—of these, and of the little limbs and transparent fingers, and baby-smile, and murmur like the murmur of bees, and the face changed from rosy health to a pathetic paleness of the one-year-old grandchild, too soon to become an orphan.' But other critics, while acknowledging the force of the writing and the noble aspirations of the author, place the work on a considerably lower level as a whole. Yet no one who knows the work can surely deny that the poet has thrown a halo of glory round the concrete facts of a disastrous and momentous period.
While the language of despair was held by many of his friends at this dark crisis in French history, Victor Hugo never once wavered in his hopes for the future of his country. So far from being annihilated, he predicted that France would rise to enjoy a greater height of prosperity, and a more durable peace, than she had ever enjoyed under the Empire.
In 1874 appeared the last of Victor Hugo's great romances, Quatre-Vingt-Treize. It was published on the same day in ten languages. This grand historical and political novel was a fitting close to a series of works unexampled in scope and breadth of conception. A great prose epic upon that terrible year in French history, 1793, it excited the liveliest interest throughout Europe, and critics of all shades of opinion hastened to do justice to its extraordinary merits. Even those warm admirers of the author's superb imaginative genius, who had looked forward with misgiving to this daring excursion into the historic field, admitted that his complete success had justified the effort. They extolled the work as 'a monument of its author's finest gifts; and while those who are, happily, endowed with the capacity of taking delight in nobility and beauty of imaginative work will find themselves in possession of a new treasure, the lover of historic truth, who hates to see abstractions passed off for actualities, and legend erected in the place of fact, escapes with his praiseworthy sensibilities unwounded.'
The work is on a colossal scale, exhibiting great breadth of touch, while the style has now the power of the lightning, and now the calm and the depth of the measureless sea. 'With La Vendée for background, and some savage incidents of the bloody Vendean war for external machinery, Victor Hugo has realized his conception of '93 in three types of character—Lantenac, the Royalist marquis; Cimourdain, the Puritan turned Jacobin; and Gauvain, for whom one can as yet find no short name, he belonging to the Millenarian times.' It was said that there is nothing more magnificent in literature than the last volume of this work, and while its author had no rival in the sombre, mysterious heights of imaginative effect, he was equally a master in strokes of tenderness and the most delicate human sympathy. Rapidity and profusion are the pre-eminent characteristics of this work—'a profusion as of starry worlds, a style resembling waves of the sea, sometimes indeed weltering dark and massive, but ever and anon flashing with the foamy lightning of genius. The finish and rich accurate perfection of our own great living poet Tennyson are absent. Hugo is far more akin to Byron; but his range is vaster than Byron's. He has Byron's fierce satire, and more than Byron's humour, though it is the fashion to generalize and say that the French have none. He is both a lyrical and epic poet. He is a greater dramatist than Byron; and whether in the dramas or prose romances, he shows that vast sympathy with, and knowledge of, human nature which neither Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, nor Wordsworth had. Scott could be his only rival. In France they had lived dramatic lives for the last ninety years; we have lived much more quietly in England, and in France there is a real living drama.'
As this book, full-hearted in its passion, and deeply-veined with human emotion, is the last of Victor Hugo's prose romances, some brief general allusions to him as a novelist will be appropriate. Taking the five books (which have been referred to in the order of their publication) alone, viz., Notre-Dame, Les Misérables, Les Travailleurs, L'Homme qui Rit, and Quatre-Vingt-Treize—they would have made the fame of any writer; and yet, it has been justly remarked, they are but one façade of the splendid monument that Victor Hugo has erected to his own genius. I am not one of those who would contend that Hugo's style is everywhere immaculate. On the contrary, he sometimes sins greatly; but these occasions are rare compared with his mighty triumphs. Still, justice must not be extinguished in admiration. My own view of Hugo's literary gifts, as expressed more especially in his romances, has been so fairly put by another writer that I shall transfer, and at the same time in the main adopt, his language: 'Everywhere we find somewhat the same greatness, somewhat the same infirmities. In his poems and plays there are the same unaccountable protervities that have already astonished us in the romances; there, too, is the same feverish strength, welding the fiery iron of his idea under forge-hammer repetitions; an emphasis that is somehow akin to weakness; a strength that is a little epileptic. He stands so far above all his contemporaries, and so incomparably excels them in richness, breadth, variety, and moral earnestness, that we almost feel as if he had a sort of right to fall oftener and more heavily than others; but this does not reconcile us to seeing him profit by the privilege so freely. We like to have in our great men something that is above question; we like to place an implicit faith in them, and see them always on the platform of their greatness: and this, unhappily, cannot be with Hugo. As Heine said long ago, his is a genius somewhat deformed; but, deformed as it is, we accept it gladly; we shall have the wisdom to see where his foot slips, but we shall have the justice also to recognise in him the greatest artist of our generation, and, in many ways, one of the greatest artists of all time. If we look back, yet once, upon these five romances, we see blemishes such as we can lay to the charge of no other man in the number of the famous; but to what other man can we attribute such sweeping innovations, such a new and significant view of life and man, such an amount, if we think of the amount merely, of equally consummate performance?' It is in the nature of the human intellect, finite as it is, to relax sometimes from its highest strain, and if Victor Hugo failed at times to scale his loftiest note of thought or expression, it may be remembered also that even Shakespeare was not always in the mood for producing Hamlets.
There appeared, in 1874, Hugo's pathetic sketch 'Mes Fils,' containing a tribute of affection to his own dead children; and in 1875-6 was published his Actes et Paroles. This justificatory work was in three parts, which dealt respectively with the period before exile, the period of exile, and the period since exile. 'The trilogy is not mine,' said the author, 'but the Emperor Napoleon's; he it is who has divided my life; to him the honour of it is due. That which is Bonaparte's we must render to Cæsar.' Although he first strongly countenanced resistance, the writer concluded with an exhortation to clemency, holding that resistance to tyrants should not be deemed inconsistent with mercy to the vanquished. We have here a complete collection of Hugo's addresses, orations, and confessions of faith, etc., during the preceding thirty years. Pour un Soldat, a little brochure written in favour of an obscure soldier, appeared in 1875. Its publication not only resulted in saving the life of the soldier, who had been condemned for a venial crime, but the sufferers in Alsace and Lorraine reaped the pecuniary fruits of its popularity. The second part of La Légende des Siècles was published in 1877. At this time the poet was living in the Rue de Clichy, No. 21, sharing part of the house with Madame Charles Hugo, who, after a widowhood of some years, married M. Charles Lockroy, deputy for the Seine, and also known as a man of letters. Madame Drouet, who had befriended the poet when he was proscribed in 1851, placed her salon in this house at the poet's disposal for the reception of his friends. M. Barbou, who saw much of Hugo in this residence, thus describes the man and his habits: 'The hand, no doubt, is too slow for the gigantic work that the poet conceives. And yet no moment is ever lost. Generally up with the sun, he writes until mid-day, and often until two o'clock. Then, after a light luncheon, he goes to the Senate, where, during intervals of debate, he despatches all his correspondence. He finds his recreation generally by taking a walk, although not unfrequently he will mount to the top of an omnibus just for the sake of finding himself in the society of the people, with whom he has shown his boundless sympathy. At eight o'clock he dines, making it his habit to invite not only his nearest friends, but such as he thinks stand in need of encouragement, to join him and his grandchildren at their social meal. At table Victor Hugo relaxes entirely from his seriousness. The powerful orator, the earnest pleader, becomes the charming and attractive host, full of anecdote, censuring whatever is vile, but ever ready to make merry over what is grotesque.... Hale and vigorous in his appearance, precise and elegant in his attire, with unbowed head, and with thick, white hair crowning his unfurrowed brow, he commands involuntary admiration. Round his face is a close white beard, which he has worn since the later period of his sojourn in Guernsey as a safeguard against sore throat; but he shows no token of infirmity. His countenance may be said to have in it something both of the lion and the eagle, yet his voice is grave, and his manner singularly gentle.'
The same writer devotes a chapter to Hugo's love of children, à propos of his L'Art d'être Grand-père. It is perfectly true that women, and children also, stirred in the poet an element of chivalrous devotion. He also strove to exalt woman as something far beyond the mere passion and plaything of man; while as to children, 'he is pathetic over an infant's cradle, he is delighted at childhood's prattle, and to him the fair-haired head of innocence is as full of interest as the glory of a man.' Nor was there anything derogatory to his genius in this, or in his making Georges and Jeanne, his two grandchildren, the hero and heroine of the work above named. When the wisdom of his indulgence was questioned, he replied that he agreed with M. Gaucher, who held that 'a father's duties are by no means light; he has to instruct, to correct, to chastise; but with the grandfather it is different, he is privileged to love and to spoil.' But he taught the oneness of humanity even to his grandchildren; and once, when they were about to enjoy the good and pleasant things of this life, he bade the children fetch in some houseless orphans who were crouching under the window, in order to share their appetizing dishes. Unconquered by his opponents, Hugo confessed himself a captive to the children, and he defined Paradise as 'a place where children are always little, and parents are always young.'
Towards the close of his eighth decade, the poet seemed to have almost abandoned political life, but he had not forgotten his friends and the electors of Paris. Innumerable letters published in the public press proved this, as well as his presence as chairman at a number of Democratic conventions, and the delivery of a number of public discourses, such as those pronounced at the obsequies of M. Edgar Quinet and Madame Louis Blanc. Preparatory to the first Senatorial elections, M. Clémenceau, President of the Municipal Council of Paris, waited upon the poet, and in the name of the majority of his colleagues offered him the function of delegate. Hugo accepted, and at once issued his manifesto, entitled 'The Delegate of Paris to the Delegates of the 36,000 Communes of France,' in which he reiterated, with redoubled energy, his old idea of the abolition of monarchy by the federation of the peoples. On the 30th of January, 1876, he was elected Senator of Paris, but only after a keen struggle. He was fourth out of five, and was not returned until after a second scrutiny, when it was found that he had secured 114 votes out of a total of 216.
Soon after his election, Hugo introduced a proposal in the Senate for granting an amnesty to all those condemned for the events of March, 1871, and to all those then undergoing punishment for political crimes or offences in Paris, including the assassins of the hostages. On the 22nd of May he delivered an eloquent oration in support of his motion. Towards the close of his address, he described the state of the prisoners in New Caledonia. Having painted their agony, and deplored the continuation of the prosecutions and the last transport of convicts, he said: 'That is how the 18th of March has been atoned for. As for the 2nd of December, it has been glorified, it has been adored and venerated, it has become a legal crime. The priests have prayed for it, the judges have judged by it, and the representatives of the people, at whom the blows were dealt by this crime, not only received them, but accepted and submitted to them, acting with all rigour against the people and all baseness before the Emperor. It is time to put a stop to the astonishment of the human conscience; it is time to renounce that double shame of two weights and two measures. I ask a full amnesty for the events of the 18th of March.' The motion was rejected, only about seven hands being held up for the amnesty. The poet-orator again pleaded the same cause in January, 1879, but his proposal was coldly received. Nevertheless, in the following month an Amnesty Bill was passed by the Chamber of Deputies.
Early in 1877 appeared the second part of the Légende des Siècles; and it is pleasant to recall an interchange of courtesies which took place in this year between Victor Hugo and our own greatly-honoured poet, Lord Tennyson. In the month of June, 1877, there appeared in the Nineteenth Century the following sonnet, addressed to Hugo by the Poet Laureate: