CHAPTER VII

"THAT WHICH BRINGS SATISFACTION TO THE HEART"

I

When Victor Hugo grasped the full extent of the national disaster in August 1870, he started immediately for Belgium. On the proclamation of the Republic, he proceeded to the frontier, where a few official friends awaited him.

The scene that took place on his arrival was impressive, though somewhat theatrical. The "sublime outlaw" asked for the bread and wine of France. After he had eaten and drunk, he begged Juliette to preserve a fragment of the bread, and buried his face in his hands with the gesture of one who is dazzled by too much light. Juliette relates that big tears flowed through his clenched fingers. The bystanders stood in silence, awed by his emotion....

The poet and our heroine stayed with Paul Meurice at Avenue Frochot for a time, and then went to the Hôtel du Pavillon de Rohan. Finally they settled, he in a small furnished apartment at 66, Rue de la Rochefoucauld, and she close by, in a fairly spacious _entresol_ rented at fourteen hundred francs, at 55, Rue Pigalle.

But hardly had they resumed the peaceful tenor of their ways when they were forced to uproot again. On February 8th, 1871, Victor Hugo was elected a member of the Assemblée Nationale, and, as he could not bear to be parted any longer from his grandchildren, he removed his whole household to Bordeaux, including his son Charles, his mistress Juliette, and the little heroes of _L'Art d'être grandpère_. They started on February 13th, and the poet took his seat on the 15th. On March 8th he felt it his duty to resign, on account of the refusal of his colleagues to allow Garibaldi to be naturalised a Frenchman. He was about to leave, when a fresh sorrow struck him down: this was the sudden death of Charles Hugo, on March 13th.

The body of the unfortunate and charming young man was taken back to Paris, and the funeral took place on the 18th, in the sinister scenario of the rising insurrection. On the 21st, Victor Hugo went to Belgium to make arrangements for his grandchildren's future. Two months and a half later, he was expelled from Brussels, for rewarding its hospitality by throwing his house open as a refuge to the political miscreants who had just fired Paris and shed the blood of their compatriots. He was the object of a violently hostile demonstration on May 27th, 1871, and afterwards received the decree of expulsion. He went to Vianden, in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and returned definitely to Paris in September 1871. Juliette had accompanied him everywhere.

No sooner was the luggage unpacked, than she bravely undertook to amuse him, by forming a small circle of his friends and admirers, in her drawing-room at Rue Pigalle. But the undertaking was beyond her powers. Her long sojourn in a solitary island and her complete absorption in one sole object, had resulted in the loss of what might be termed her social talent. In France, and especially in Paris, everything was new to her, everything caused her agitation.

The state of her health was not such as to restore her equanimity. She suffered from gout and heart-disease, was growing stout, walked with difficulty, slept badly, and was terribly weary: "I am so tired," she writes, "that I feel as if even eternity would fail to rest me."

Victor Hugo, therefore, gave up the entertainments at Rue Pigalle; the boxes were repacked, and on August 14th, 1872, the party returned to that island where everything spoke to the exile of former joys, from the anemones he loved, to the cherry-tree he had planted himself.

In the mornings, at half-past eleven, Victor Hugo used to make his joyous appearance at Hauteville Féerie, and escort his friend to Hauteville House, where the luncheon-table was proudly attended by Georges and Jeanne. In the afternoon, a family drive was organised. The largest carriage on the island was hardly big enough to contain the dear beings by whom he loved to be surrounded. The hours drifted peacefully towards dusk.

While our heroine lived on future hopes and past memories, Victor Hugo enjoyed the present more than ever. Every one knows of his gallantry, and the bold front he offered to advancing age. Amongst other comforting illusions, he chose to believe that women prefer old men, and he gloried in proving his theory. With more sense than she has been credited with, Juliette sometimes managed to close her eyes and ears; at other times she gently rallied him, congratulating him on the success of his most recent exploit. But more often it must be admitted that her temper was not equal to the nobility of her nature. To jealousy was presently added the pain of humiliation and offended dignity, caused by a vulgar intrigue, conducted under her very eyes, at her own fireside.

At last, at the end of the visit to Guernsey, which had turned out so differently from her expectations, Juliette came to a grave decision. She resolved to abandon the field to the frail beauties whom chance, desire, or self-interest, gathered around her poet, and to retire to live at Brest with her sister, or at Brussels with her friends the Luthereau.

Having borrowed 200 frs. from some one, Juliette actually started on September 23rd, 1873, without leaving the smallest note of farewell for Victor Hugo. But he lost no time in despatching a letter of recall, and he couched it in terms so eloquent, and so pathetic, that once more the poor woman was fain to overlook the past. She returned to Rue Pigalle on September 27th. She subsequently wrote to the kind hosts with whom she had taken refuge: "I have been very foolish, very cruel, very stupid; but I am rewarded. If one could hope for a second resurrection like this, one might be almost tempted to go through it all again."

II

Shortly after Juliette's act of defiance, her friend imposed the fatigue of a new removal upon her. The author of _L'Art d'être grandpère_ had just lost his son, François Victor. More than ever he turned to his little grandchildren for consolation, and at the end of 1873, he decided to join households with them and their mother. For a rental of 6,000 frs. a year, he took two apartments, one above the other, at 21, Rue de Clichy. On April 28th, 1874, Juliette took possession of the third floor with her maid, while Madame Charles Hugo, her children, and the poet, settled in the fourth.

The receptions and dinners began again almost at once. At first they were weekly, then bi-weekly, and finally daily. The table was large and well attended. In addition to the five people forming the family party, including Juliette, there were rarely fewer than seven guests. Our heroine, in her capacity of chief steward, usually provided for twelve. She liked the fare to be simple and substantial: _sole Normande_, _côtelettes Soubise_, and _poulets au cresson_ were the chief items of the repast.

Housekeeping on this scale demanded a staff of competent servants. Juliette had five, for whom she was responsible. She superintended their expenditure, their purchases, and the use to which they put the provisions; she commended good work and reproved faults, and in fact fulfilled the functions of a majordomo in a situation where the daily expenditure exceeded £4 for food, and approximated £2 for wines and spirits. She also had to supervise the department of the invitations, draw up lists, and sort the guests of each day, so as to temper the solemnity of a Sch[oe]lcher or a Renan, with the wit and froth of a Flaubert or a Monselet. Juliette assumed this charge, submitted the names to Victor Hugo, wrote the letters, opened the answers, and classified them. If anybody failed at the last moment, she telegraphed to some one on the "subsidiary list," as she called it, and only ceased her efforts when she was assured of being able to offer to the gratified master a full table and a numerous and docile court.

She was now at the head of that court, but it must not be supposed that it was by her own desire. On the contrary, she practised the most severe self-effacement. Clad in black, wearing as her only jewel a cameo set in gold, representing Madame Victor Hugo, and bequeathed to her in the latter's will, she usually sat at the chimney-corner in a large arm-chair. Fatigued by her laborious preparations, it frequently happened that she fell asleep in the drawing-room, as Madame Victor Hugo had been wont to do. This lapse of manners so covered her with confusion, that she made a vow either to bring her health up to the level of her devotion or else to disappear from view. She did, in fact, redouble her activities, to an extent astonishing in a septuagenarian. She undertook to follow the aged poet whenever he mingled with crowds. At Quinet's and Frédéric Lemaître's funerals, she was present in the throng, an infirm old woman, watching from a distance, over a Victor Hugo, upright as a dart, and full of vitality. Did he wish to make an ascent in a balloon, she was there; when he conducted a rehearsal, or read one of his early dramas to his modern interpreters, it was she who led the applause, declared that the voice of Olympio had retained all its strength and beauty, and that he had never read better.

In the period between 1874 and 1878 it must be conceded that Victor Hugo did his best to secure to his friend a greater degree of mental tranquillity than she had ever enjoyed before. He was careful to conceal his infidelities from her, and often succeeded in averting scenes and reproaches; or, if denial seemed impossible, he tried to palliate his fault and gain indulgence by addressing to her one of those poetical odes in which he excelled, and from which she derived such pride and joy.

But these were only passing revivals of youthful emotions, in the poet as well as in his friend. They resemble those bonfires of dead leaves, lighted by labourers in autumn on the summit of bare hills--their flame can ill withstand the slightest puff of wind. Such a puff blew upon the old couple in the course of the year 1878.

Juliette was greatly troubled about the state of her health. She wrote to the poet, on January 8th: "I feel that everything is going from me and crumbling in my grasp: my sight, my memory, my strength, my courage."

On June 28th of the same year, at one of those copious banquets to which he still did full justice, and in the midst of an argument with Louis Blanc concerning Voltaire and Rousseau, Victor Hugo had a cerebral attack which alarmed his friends exceedingly. His speech faltered, he gesticulated feebly. Two doctors summoned in haste failed to give reassurance, and prescribed absolute rest in the country. On July 4th, the poet was escorted to Guernsey by a large retinue consisting of his grandchildren, the Meurice family, Juliette, Monsieur and Madame Lockroy, Richard Lesclide, and another friend, Pelleport. But no sooner had they reached the island, than Victor Hugo began to show symptoms of agitation. It could not be on account of his illness, for he was living quietly and comfortably, rejoicing at the amusement the season afforded his friends, and taking his own share of it. But, according to the testimony of one who has published a book concerning the master as witty as it is frank,[56] the reason was that he had left behind him in Paris the heroines of several intrigues; amongst others, the young person whose behaviour had occasioned Juliette's fit of anger and departure for Brest,[57] and he was fearful lest the post should convey to Guernsey the forlorn cooings of the deserted doves, and that some echo of them should reach Juliette.

Our heroine was certainly informed of some of the circumstances, for on August 20th, 1878, while still at Guernsey, she wrote the old man a letter which is a revelation of the changed character of their intercourse. Victor Hugo answered somewhat crossly and contemptuously, and nicknamed Juliette "the schoolmistress."

On his return to Paris on November 10th, he consented to remove to the little house at Avenue d'Eylau where he ended his days, and which was then almost in the country. Juliette took the first floor, and he occupied the second. But presently she arranged to spend the nights in a spare room next to his, so that she might be at hand to attend upon him if necessary.

From that moment it may be said that her life declined into uninterrupted sadness and servitude. She was suffering from an internal cancer, and knew that she was condemned to die of slow starvation! Nevertheless, she played her part of sick nurse with a devotion and a minute attention to detail to which all witnesses tender their homage. She it was who entered the poet's chamber each morning, and woke him with a kiss; she, who put a match to the fire ready laid on the hearth, and prepared the eggs for his breakfast; she, who waited on the old man while he ate, opened his letters, made extracts from them when necessary, and answered the most important. It was she, again, who undertook to keep her beloved friend company until midday, and to amuse him, and acquaint him with the current political and literary news.

The task was heavy enough to weary a much younger brain. Juliette found it almost beyond her strength. In 1880 she was so overwrought that she had become nervous, irritable, and restless. At night, when her offices of reader and sick nurse were over, it must not be supposed that she was able to sleep. From her bed in the adjoining room, with eyes fixed, and ear on the stretch, she watched the slumber of her dear neighbour, under the great Renaissance baldachino, with its crimson damask curtains. Did he cough, she rose hurriedly and administered a soothing drink; but if she coughed herself, and thus ran the risk of awaking him, she was furious, longed for a gag, and tried to suppress the labouring of her suffering breast. She cursed the years that had made her love a burden to its object, and chid her body for a bad servant no longer subservient to her will.

Severe as were the physical sufferings she bore so patiently under shadow of the night, Juliette preferred them to the sadness she endured during the long, solitary afternoons, while her former companion was at the Senate, at the Académie, or elsewhere.

We must picture her at that period, not as Théodore de Banville represents her in his formal description, but as Bastien Lepage painted her with more truth, about the same time. Disease has made cruel inroads on the grave, serene, once goddess-like features. Her poor countenance is worn and wasted, covered with a fine network of wrinkles, each one of which tells its tale of suffering. Her hair, whose sheen was formerly likened by poets to the satin petals of a lily, and which once fell naturally into crown-like waves, is roughened and harsh, and has assumed that yellowish tinge which so often presages death. Her lips, no longer revived by kisses, are pale, her eyes heavy and anguished, her smile faded.

Seated by the fire in winter, and at the open window overlooking the Avenue d'Eylau in summer, she who was the "Princesse Négroni," now presents the woeful appearance of a grandmother without grandchildren.

Sometimes she tries to pray. She calls death to her aid, she complains of the slowness with which the bonds of the soul loose those of the body.

In September 1882, she made a short journey with Victor Hugo to Veules, to stay with Paul Meurice, and to Villequier, to stay with Auguste Vacquerie. She took to her bed immediately on her return. By a great effort of will, she got up once more, to attend the revival of _Le Roi s'amuse_ on November 25th; then she finally returned to her chamber and never left it again.

Neither her body nor her mind was capable of assimilating nourishment. She waved happy memories aside.

Every afternoon the old poet paid her a visit. He disliked any mention of death, and could not bear the sight of suffering. If we are to believe Juliette, he had made a rule that every one must forswear melancholy, and shake off sad thoughts, before appearing in his presence. Docile as ever, the sick woman endeavoured to smile when he entered her room. She listened submissively to the arguments by which he sought to persuade her that she did not really suffer, that there is no such thing as suffering. Up till May 11th, 1883, the very day of her death, there remained thus about one hour of the day during which she still had to play her part, restrain her moans, and look cheerful. She did it to the best of her power, and doubtless, in the triumph of that daily victory gained over torture by her indomitable spirit, she found at last the answer that the poet should have put into the mouth of Maffio--she discovered that "That which brings satisfaction to the heart" is neither desire, nor caresses, nor even love: it is self-sacrifice.[58]