CHAPTER VIII

Segovia--M. de Tilly--The Alcazar--The doubloons--The castle of M. de la Calprenède and that of a Spanish grandee--The _bourdaloue_--Otero--The Dutchmen again--The Guadarrama--Arrival at Madrid--The palace of Masserano--The comet--The College--Don Manoël and Don Bazilio--Tacitus and Plautus--Lillo--The winter of 1812 to 1813--The Empecinado--The glass of _eau sucrée_--The army of merinoes--Return to Paris

At length they reached Valladolid; then, after a few days' stay there, they proceeded from Valladolid to Segovia across steep mountains, sometimes sharp peaked, sometimes leading by gentler slopes to high summits from which they could see vast plains basking in the June sunshine.

The Count of Tilly was governor of Segovia. He belonged to the old court, was page to Louis XVI. and left Memoirs which are not wanting in a certain picturesqueness of their own--a much rarer quality at that epoch than the quality of arousing interest. He came to the door of Madame Hugo's carriage to welcome her, installed her in a palace and looked after her and her children during their stoppage at Segovia.

The event that struck the young poet most and remained most vividly in his memory during his sojourn in this town was his visit to the Alcazar--that splendid fairy palace, less famous but as beautiful as those of Granada and Seville, with its gallery containing portraits of all the Moorish kings painted in the trefoils and on backgrounds of gold. We need not explain to our readers that these pictures are later than Arabian times, the religion of the Arabs forbidding them to paint images. The Alcazar at that time was also used as the Mint. M. de Tilly took Madame Hugo and her children into the coining-room, where he had a doubloon struck specially for each child to keep. One of the greatest of Hugo's youthful troubles was the losing of his coin in Madrid by letting it fall through the crack of a carriage door.

They waited eight days for reinforcements; for they dared not risk setting ont for Madrid without a fresh escort; when this new escort arrived, they resumed their journey to rejoin the convoy party on the Madrid road. At Segovia, Madame Hugo, as we know, had, through the intervention of Count Tilly, been lodged in the palace of a Spanish grandee. As in M. de la Calprenède's palace, everything was of silver, chandeliers, plates, basins, washing-bowls, everything, even to the chamber articles. One of the pieces of furniture that especially charmed Madame Hugo with its beauty and originality of shape was a delightful little _bourdaloue._

Here I shall be pulled up and asked why a night commode should have been associated with the name of the celebrated pupil of the Jesuits and why a chamber utensil should have been named after a preacher. I will explain, after I have done with Madame Hugo's fascination for this little article of furniture and the consequences that ensued.

Well, Madame Hugo was so delighted with the form of the charming _bourdaloue_ that she asked the master of the house in which she was staying if she might buy it of him. But, like a true Spaniard, the old Castillian was an implacable enemy to our nation, so he replied that Madame Hugo could have the coveted object if she wished, but that he never sold anything to the French. As, in this case, to take it was equivalent to stealing it, Madame Hugo refrained, supposing the _bourdaloue_ to form part of a collection which it would be a pity to spoil. Now let us explain why those little elongated vessels are called _bourdaloues._ The famous preacher gave such interminably long sermons that ladies were compelled to take certain precautions against their length which we think we need not explain more fully. More happy than Christopher Columbus, who gave his name to a new continent, the pillar of Christian eloquence gave his name to a new article of furniture, made especially because of his doings--an article which from its long and narrow shape was easily carried about.

Now that we think we have cleared up this historical question to the satisfaction of our readers, we will rejoin the convoy on its journey to Madrid. It had reached within a league of Otero, where they were to pass the night and whose towers they could already discern, when, because one of the spokes of a back wheel of Madame Hugo's gigantic coach snapped in two, they had to make an enforced halt on the high-road, which was paved with enormous pieces of rock. Faithful to his courteous habits, the Duc de Cotadilla had ordered a general halt, causing an outburst of objections. A general halt at seven in the evening! a halt which might last a couple of hours and allow the convoy to be overtaken by nightfall! The duke could hardly have done more even if the accident had happened to one of the waggons containing the treasure, and he was exceeding his duties altogether when it was only for the wife of a French general, a lady who had been a member of the Spanish aristocracy for barely three years! So there was a great clamour throughout the convoy. There had been precedents in similar cases, and the unfortunate carriage had been left behind bag and baggage to the mercy of Providence! The Duc de Cotadilla wished to keep his word, but he had to give way before the chorus of complaints. The convoy meant to continue its way to Otero; but help on which she had not counted was to be given to Madame Hugo and her poor abandoned coach. The forty Dutch grenadiers asked to be allowed the favour of remaining by her coach as escort until the wheel could be mended and it was possible to continue the journey. This favour was granted them. The convoy moved off and gradually, like a receding tide, left the coach stranded on the highway. But never did shipwrecked people alone on a desert island set themselves to work with greater energy to construct a raft than did the forty Dutch grenadiers to the mending of the wheel. It was completed in an hour or so. When they set off again, the rear of the convoy had long been lost to sight and darkness had begun to fall. However, in spite of all these adverse circumstances, the coach, with Madame Hugo, her three children, the servant, the chambermaid, the forty Dutch grenadiers, entered Otero by ten that night, without having had to pay toll to the guerilleros--a most unusual stroke of good luck. During the night, owing to the efforts of a local wheelwright, whom they compelled by force to undertake the job, with two army blacksmiths superintending his labours, the coach was mended; and next day it was ready to take its place at the head of the file of carriages.

They reached the chain of the Guadarrama Mountains and began to climb them; ascending the highest summit, they made a halt at the foot of the gigantic lion which turns its back on Old Castile, and, with one paw on the scutcheon of the Spains, looks to New Castile; then they descended towards the campagna round Madrid. The campagna of Rome is bare and gloomy, but flecked with glorious sunshine, and looks alive, if one may so put it, in spite of its loneliness. The campagna of Madrid is bare, arid and grey, and like a cemetery. And the Escurial rises up at the end of the plain like a tomb. This, indeed, was the impression it left on me, and also the impression it left on Hugo, who visited it thirty-five years before I did.

"L'Espagne m'accueillit livrée à la conquête; Je franchis le Burgare où mugit la tempête; _De loin y pour un tombeau, je pris l'Escurial_, Et le triple aqueduc vit s'incliner ma tête Devant son front impérial.

Là, je voyais les feux des haltes militaires Noircir les murs croulants des villes solitaires; La tente de l'église envahissait le seuil; Les rires des soldats, dans les saints monastères, Par l'écho répétés, semblaient des cris de deuil!"

The convoy wound over the plain from the Escurial to Madrid like a long snake; they only slept once on the road, at Galapagar. Next day, by six in the evening, they had reached Madrid. They had scarcely entered its streets before everybody disbanded, overjoyed at being no longer under the restraint of military discipline. Madame Hugo bade farewell to the Duc de Cotadilla, of Colonel Montfort and her forty Dutchmen; then Colonel du Saillant took her to the palace of the princes of Masserano, which was prepared for her reception. The general was at his governorship in Guadalajara: we shall see later what he was doing there.

The palace of Masserano was in the _Calle de la Reyna._ It was a vast building of the seventeenth century, in all the splendour and severity of that period; it had no garden but a multitude of little square courtyards paved with marble, each with a fountain in the centre. These courtyards could only be entered through a kind of postern gateway; the sun never reached down into them, for the walls enclosing them were some forty to fifty feet high; and they were only just large enough for a wolf to walk round the fountain; in fact, they were simply store-places of shade and coolness. So far as Victor's memory carried him, the interior of the palace was of incredible magnificence; especially the dining-room, which had large glass windows on each of its four sides, the light through which showed up in all their glory splendid paintings by Fra Bartolommeo, Velasquez, Murillo, Sébastian del Piombo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michael Angelo. This dining-room led into a large salon, upholstered in red damask, which led into another salon upholstered in blue damask, which in its turn led to what was called the princess's room, an immense chamber, upholstered and furnished in blue figured silk and silver. On the other side of the dining-room, through an anteroom, ornamented solely with oak chests which were meant to serve as seats for attendants, you entered a large gallery which contained a collection of full-length portraits of the Counts of Masserano, in court dress, also of princes of the same name; the principality, by the way, only dated back as far as the middle of the seventeenth century. It was in these great galleries that the children played hide-and-seek with the sons of General Lucotte, in rooms a hundred and fifty feet long, and among Chinese vases and porcelain ornaments six feet in height! Their evenings were spent on a large balcony, from whence they could see the comet, in which they could distinguish the Virgin giving her hand to Ferdinand VII.,--so said the Spanish priests.

One morning an escort of Westphalian cavalry arrived, accompanying a messenger bearing a letter from General Hugo. The general was unable to come to Madrid, being busily engaged in warfare on the banks of the Tagus. The main purpose of the letter was to recommend the best college for the education of the three children. They were to be placed in the Séminaire des Nobles, where they would be prepared as pages of the king. It was not usual to take boys under thirteen, but, although Abel was only twelve, Eugène but ten and Victor only eight, an exception was made in their favour and a license from the king provided for their immediate admission. They had to leave the splendid Masserano palace, with its beautiful paintings by old masters, its splendid tapestries, its interminable galleries decorated with Chinese vases and the walls whereon three generations of counts and princes seemed to come to life again in their state costumes or in their trappings of war, for the gloomy seminary in the _Calle San-Isidro._ The Séminaire des Nobles was, indeed, a formidable and severe-looking edifice, with its great treeless courts, and one might almost go so far as to say its vast schoolrooms without scholars. There were twenty-five pupils, not including the three new-comers in this seminary, which had contained three hundred before the French invasion. This was, approximately, the proportion of the aristocracy of Spain that had rallied round Joseph Bonaparte. And besides the twenty-five scholars there was, as we have said, the three sons of General Hugo and a Spanish prisoner. The seminary looked indeed a gloomy place to the poor children when they entered it. Imagine those schoolrooms and dormitories and lavatories and refectories intended to meet the needs of three hundred pupils, now containing but twenty-five unhappy scholars, who looked lost therein. Virgil's phrase, _rari nantes_, seemed entirely to meet the case. The establishment was kept by two Jesuits who controlled the college with apparently equal strictness; these two Jesuits each represented opposite types of their order: one was named Don Manoël and the other Don Bazilio. Don Bazilio was tall and nearly fifty-five years of age; his forehead was bare and bald, and his nose was like a vulture's beak; his mouth was large and firm, and his chin protruded. He was hard and severe in character and never forgave. But, at the same time, he was just, and never punished unless punishment was deserved. The other, Don Manoël, was plump and very broad. His figure was thick-set; he had a smiling, almost a gay, face; and his manner towards new-comers was gentle and gracious and caressing; judging from his appearance, he was always ready to excuse, or at any rate to make allowance for faults; he was extremely false, very deceitful and utterly mischievous; he directed the college alone, in spite of the pretended collaboration of Don Bazilio, doubtless by order of his superiors. When the first edge of his appearance of sympathy had worn off, Don Manoël became unbearable. Lads began by detesting Don Bazilio; but, as he was just, in spite of his severity, this hatred gradually passed away; whilst, on the other hand, people began by liking Don Manoël, and ended by detesting him. But when the latter feeling was aroused it went on increasing _crescendo._

The studies which these two Jesuits set their pupils were ridiculous. They were so feeble that, in a college composed of young people of eighteen to twenty years of age, a special class had to be started for the new arrivals of whom the oldest was but twelve. They actually judged of the children's capacities by their size when they began to examine them, and gave Abel a Quintus Curtius, and Eugène _De Viris_, and little Victor an _Epitome._ But at sight of this book, with which he had finished a long time before, the child rebelled and boldly asked for Tacitus. The fathers looked at one another in stupefaction and, refraining from punishing the audacious boy who had delivered himself of this ill-timed jest, they brought him the book. Victor opened it and immediately translated the paragraph about Cocceius Nerva on which he had alighted at haphazard. The two other brothers took up Tacitus in their turn, and gave an equal, if a not superior, proof of skill. They brought them Perseus and Juvenal; the children were familiar with both these satirists, and could not merely interpret them, but even offered to recite whole satires by heart. Thus the children fresh from France made light of these three authors, who were looked upon at the Séminaire des Nobles as beyond the reach of rhetoricians of twenty! The two Jesuits put their heads together, decided that they must make a special class for the three new-comers and settled that they would expound Plautus to them. Don Manoël it was, a true Jesuit, who chose an author full of ellipses, bristling with idioms, crammed with Roman patois, like that which Molière puts into the mouths of his peasant-folk, and for ever alluding to customs that had disappeared even in Cicero's time. But Don Manoël's end was accomplished: the children's brains grew dull over Plautus; and this was exactly what he wished, to break their pride. The twenty-two other pupils were Spaniards, sons of Spanish grandees who had thrown in their lot with Joseph. Among them were two sons of high birth to whom Victor dedicated different Souvenirs in his works: one, the Count of Belverana, whom he put in his _Lucrèce Borgia_, and Raymond de Benavente, to whom he addressed, in 1823, the Ode that begins with this stanza:--

"Hélas! j'ai compris ton sourire, Semblable au ris du condamné Quand le mot qui doit le proscrire A son oreille a résonné! En pressant ta main convulsive, J'ai compris ta douleur pensive, Et ton regard morne et profond, Qui, pareil à l'éclair des nues, Brille sur des mers inconnues, Mais ne peut en montrer le fond."

The young poet noticed one custom peculiar to Spanish manners, namely, these children, whose ages varied from thirteen and every year up to twenty, all used the familiar form of address among themselves, as became sons of Spanish grandees, and never addressed one another by their baptismal or family names, but only by their titles of prince, duke, marquis, count or baron. They called Victor "Baron," which filled him with pride.

Among these young folk--and to be exact in our figures we ought to reduce the number of these juvenile nobilities to twenty-one--was one who was neither knight, baron, count, marquis, duke nor prince, and who nevertheless was not the least remarkable inmate of the college. This was a young Spanish officer named Lillo, aged fifteen, who had been taken prisoner at the siege of Badajoz. He had fought like a demon, had killed a French grenadier with his own hand and had been taken only after a heroic defence. They were about to shoot him when Marshal Soult happened to pass by, and, having inquired and been informed what was being done, had him despatched to Madrid, with orders that he should be placed in the college. The order was carried out, and Lillo was sent to the college, but in the twofold capacity of pupil and prisoner. The lad, who had borne the rank of second lieutenant, had commanded grown men, had faced battle in open field, equipped as a soldier, took badly to the college discipline full of Jesuitical chicaneries, to which he had to submit like all the others, save in the matter of the common dormitory, where, however, each pupil had his own cubicle. He therefore, as far as he was permitted, kept to himself in solitude, rage burning at his heart's core, and in his relations with the other young lads he was cold, melancholy and haughty. Of course, the three French boys were the object of his particular aversion, and he was constantly picking quarrels with one and sometimes with all three of the sons of the general attached to Joseph, he a soldier of Ferdinand VII. Once he called Napoleon _Napoladron_ before Eugène--true, nearly every Spaniard called the conqueror of Austerlitz by that nickname, but Eugène was none the less sensitive? to the insult on that account, and he retorted that Lillo had been taken prisoner between the legs of a French grenadier. Lillo had a pair of compasses in his hand; he did not wait for any other weapon, but threw himself on Eugène and stabbed him brutally with it on the cheek. The wound, or rather the tear, was an inch and a half in length. Eugène wished to fight a duel, and Lillo was willing enough; but the professors intervened and separated the youth and the lad. Lillo disappeared the next day; and neither Victor nor his brother ever heard what became of him. I can still hear Victor's grave voice when he told me the anecdote, saying--

"And the young fellow was right: he was standing up for his country ... but children do not understand that."

The living at the Séminaire des Nobles was cloistral; probably no monastery throughout Spain kept severer rules. Once a fortnight they went for a walk, but even this was restricted, and they might not even go to the Délices (corresponding to our Champs-Élysées), for fear of guerilla bands. These twenty or twenty-five lads would have been a great prize, and worth a good ransom, belonging, as they did, not only to the first families in Madrid, but also to the families which had thrown in their lot with the brother of _Napoladron_, as Lillo had called him.

From time to time, the boys would look up at the sound of an opening door and they would see a vision out of the seventeenth century appear in the beginning of the nineteenth. One day, when in the refectory, eating their meal in silence, while a junior master, seated on a raised chair in the midst of an immense hall, was reading to them in Spanish out of a pious book, suddenly, the door opened, after a couple of knocks, as though a prince, cardinal or Spanish grandee were outside. The four little Benavente boys had not seen their mother for over a year, and it was the Princess of Benavente. She advanced a few steps into the room and waited. Then her four sons rose, ranged themselves according to their age, eldest first, second next, and so on, and, without taking one step faster than another, advanced ceremoniously and kissed their mother's hand in turn from the tallest to the smallest. The three young French lads were greatly astonished at the proceeding and at a loss to understand such etiquette as this, for they were accustomed to rush to their mother and fling themselves on her neck, when they caught sight of her.

At the end of six months' sojourn at the Séminaire des Nobles, Abel attained his twelfth year and was allowed by special privilege to enter as a page at that age.

Then came the winter and famine. It was cold everywhere during the fatal winter of 1812-1813, although it was nothing compared with the severity experienced in Russia.

It was the fate of Napoleon to attract and concentrate the attention of the world upon him during his reverses as during his victories.

The twenty-five pupils buried in that vast Séminaire des Nobles, in the dormitories, schoolrooms and refectories intended for three hundred inmates, were perished with cold. Nothing could warm those great rooms wherein there was not a single fireplace; braziers placed in the middle of the rooms only served to emphasise winter's triumph. Besides this, the children were not only perishing of cold, but, worse still, were dying of starvation. The wealthiest in Madrid could not get bread in 1812. And King Joseph himself--probably to set a good example--ordered that nothing but soldiers' bread should be served at his table. People were constantly found in the streets who had not even as much warmth as the braziers at the Séminaire des Nobles, or King Joseph's army bread, lying down on the thresholds of the great in tattered cloaks and dying of hunger and cold. If they were still alive, every effort was made to feed and warm them; if they were dead, they were removed and buried. Bread was as scarce at the Séminaire des Nobles as elsewhere, and the lads complained bitterly of hunger; to the less patient, father Manoël would say--

"Make the sign of the Cross on your stomachs, and that will feed you."

The boys made many crosses, and, although the action warmed them a little, it certainly did not nourish them. But they suspected Don Manoël, who kept fat amongst all the sad and emaciated faces, to have an illicit intimacy with the kitchen, which he hid even from Don Bazilio.

All this while, General Hugo was waging war along the banks of the Tagus against the famous Juan Martin, nicknamed the _Empecinado_, as he had against Charette in the Vendée and against Fra Diavolo in Calabria. He has himself given a modest and learned account of the strategic movements of that fine campaign, which concluded with the capture and execution of the captain of the guerilla hordes which he combatted. We will select a few only of the picturesque accounts of dangers incurred--those fragments which History drops from her robe and which chroniclers carefully collect for their Memoirs.

One day, General Hugo and a hundred men came to a village situated on one of the many little streams that run into the Tagus. In order to avoid rousing needless alarm, he entered the village with only his two aides-de-camp, to obtain from the inhabitants some information of which he stood in need. He came from his camp, which included some five to six thousand men, who were a league lower down the river. To obtain the desired information, he applied to the proprietor of a large sugar-refining factory, who, seeing him accompanied by only two aides-de-camp, said never a word. General Hugo was thirsty. Unable to get his information, he thought he might at any rate get some refreshment and asked for a glass of water.

"Water?" said the proprietor of the sugar refinery. "There is plenty in the river."

And he shut the door in the general's face. The general waited a moment to see if the door would be reopened. Instead of the door, it was a window that was opened, the muzzle of a gun slyly protruded, fired, and a bullet whizzed past. At the sound of the gunshot, the detachment which had remained outside the town rushed in; and when the soldiers learnt what had just happened they wanted to demolish the sugar factory and burn the village. General Hugo stopped them and said to his orderly, "Go back to the camp, and invite the whole of the six thousand men who form it, in my name, to come and drink some _eau sucrée_; it will be a treat for them--it is a long time since the poor devils tasted any!" It was one of the special virtues of the Imperial epoch to be quick to understand when one wished to understand: the aide-de-camp understood and set off at a gallop. The soldiers also understood. They burst open the doors of the sugar factory, threw two or three thousand sugar-loaves into the river; and for the rest of that day General Hugo's six thousand men had as much _eau sucrée_ to drink as they wanted! This was the only revenge he took on the refusal of a glass of water and the gun fired at him. The deed has remained in the annals of the army of Spain as one of the most toothsome jokes a general ever cracked with his men.

On another occasion, also when they were marching by the banks of the Tagus, in the place where I myself--I will tell the story in due course--sojourned thirty years later, one wretched night, on the great plains of Old Castile, between Toledo and Aranjuez, and it was just such a burning sun as made Sancho bitterly regret he had not an excellent curd cheese at hand, suddenly, the scouts fell back at full gallop on the advance-guard to warn General Hugo that what appeared to be an army corps of the enemy, of considerable number, was marching to encounter the French army. And, indeed, so great a cloud of dust was to be seen on the horizon as only a great body of men or the simoom could produce. This dust shone like those clouds of crimson and gold which appear in the atmosphere during the hottest of the dog-days. General Hugo gave orders for a halt. He then rode on in advance with a hundred men to examine the enemy's position himself, and if possible to divine its intentions. There was no doubt about it--it was an immense troop to judge by the space it occupied and the dust it raised, and it was marching towards him with one of its wings on the right bank of the Tagus. The infantry instantly received orders to prepare for battle, the artillery to plant their batteries on a small hillock, and the cavalry to take up a position on the right wing. Then they despatched a few men on horseback in front under the command of an orderly officer. But both officer and men returned at a gallop a few moments later. General Hugo thought his men must have been _driven back_, and as not a single shot had been fired he was just preparing to give the fugitives a good wigging when on nearer approach he detected unequivocal signs of hilarity on the countenances of both officer and men.

"Well, what is it?" asked the general. "Who is our enemy?"

"General," replied the aide-de-camp, "our enemy is a flock of three hundred thousand merino sheep being driven by two hundred dogs, conducted by a dozen shepherds, and belonging to M. _Quatrecentberger._"

"What tomfoolery is this, monsieur?" said the general, frowning.

"I am not joking, general," said the officer, "and in ten minutes you will see that I have had the honour to tell you the precise truth."

A flock of 300,000 sheep! It made the mouths of the soldiers water! What a suitable aftermath to the barrels of _eau sucrée_ which the general had provided for them!

The army corps consisted of 4000 men; each soldier could have at least a sheep to himself, and each began considering what kind of sauce he would serve to his own dish.

At the announcement of this strange news, M. Hugo advanced to the front. And there he saw through the dust first a dozen men on horseback, armed with long sticks studded with nails, like lances; behind these came the impenetrable front of 300,000 sheep; and upon the heels of these 300,000 sheep two hundred barking, biting dogs darting hither and thither. It looked like the migration of a great Arab tribe, in the time of Abraham. The story was quite correct, except the name of the owner, which the officer had taken the liberty of mispronouncing slightly to suit the occasion. The proprietor's name was not _Quatrecentberger_ (four hundred shepherds), but _Katzenberger._ It will be seen that the difference in pronunciation was so slight that the officer may be forgiven his appropriate pun. M. Katzenberger was a wealthy Alsatian speculator who had risked almost the whole of his fortune in a speculation in merino sheep. A great melancholy spread throughout the troops when it became known that the flock belonged to a compatriot. It was utterly unlikely that M. Hugo would allow M. Katzenberger's flock to be impounded, whether of 300,000 or even of 400,000 beasts. And, as a matter of fact, the chief shepherd, who had trembled for a moment at the prospective ruin of his master, received from General Hugo a promise that not only should every single hair of his merinoes go scot free, but that he should have a passport requesting all the French army corps to treat M. Katzenberger's shepherds, dogs and sheep with the utmost respect.

It was an odd incident! The flock reached France without any serious accident, and by this almost unexpected good fortune M. Katzenberger doubled, trebled and quadrupled his fortune. His first action was to offer General Hugo a sum of money proportionate to the service he had rendered him. General Hugo's first and final decision was to decline the offered sum. I believe it was 300,000 francs--a franc per sheep.

And here let us state that General Hugo, who held a high position for four years during the wars in Spain, who was given the charge of conducting the retreat from Madrid to Bayonne, a position which always allowed a general great facilities for enriching himself, died without any picture gallery, or a single Murillo or Velasquez or Zurbaran, possessing no other fortune but his retiring pension. It seems incredible, does it not? And yet so it was. But, the directors of the Musée will ask me, or those millionaire collectors who bought pictures for 600,000, 200,000, 50,000 and even 25,000 francs, at the sale after the decease of the late Marshal Soult, what benefit did he derive from his disinterested conduct towards M. Katzenberger? He was the gainer by an annual dinner which M. Katzenberger came from Strasbourg on purpose to give him and all the members of his family in Paris, on the anniversary of the great event that made his fortune. And this dinner was on a splendid scale: it must have cost the grateful Strasbourgian at least fifty louis.

During the winter of 1812 and the early months of 1813, in consequence of our misfortunes in Russia, matters began to assume such a threatening aspect in Spain that General Hugo felt it was dangerous to keep his wife and children at Madrid. Therefore Madame Hugo and her two youngest sons were put under the protection of quite as strong an escort as the one we have described, and they made the return journey from Madrid to Bayonne on their way to Paris, as successfully as they had travelled between Bayonne and Madrid. Madame Hugo had thought it best to keep the convent of the Feuillantines, so the two children returned to their old nest with its light and shade, its recollections of work and of play, and, furthermore, the abbé Larivière and his _Tacitus_. Abel Hugo, a soldier boy of thirteen, remained with his father.