The Memoirs of Victor Hugo

THE REVOLUTION OF 1848: I. The Days of February. II. Expulsions and Evasions. III. Louis Philippe in Exile. IV. King Jerome. V. The Days of June. VI. Chateaubriand. VII. Debates...

That is to say, Nodier read. He knew English (without being able to speak it, I believe) enough to make it out. He read aloud, and translated as he read. At intervals, while he...

Really, now, an old house! You counted upon an old house and turned up your nose at it in advance. Ah! yes, old houses; don’t you wish you may get them! A dilapidated, tumble-do...

* The little Rue de Chartres was situated on the site now occupied by the Pavilion de Rohan. It extended from the open ground of the Carrousel to the Place du Palais-Royal. The...

I was warming myself, for it is very cold, and the ground is covered with snow, which is not good for the apricot trees. M. Guizot, leaning against the mantelpiece, was saying t...

Night may become as black as it likes, the spark is still there. However low you go there is light. Light in the vagabond, light in the mendicant, light in the thief, light in t...

“M. Guizot has great qualities and immense defects. (Queerly enough, M. Guizot on Tuesday had made precisely the same remark to me about the King, beginning with the defects.) M...

The guests arrived at half-past eight. The Duke de Nemours lives on the first floor of the Pavilion de Marsan, over the apartments of the Duchess d’Orleans. The guests waited in...

“Do you know? Genoude is going to bring in an impeachment on his own account. They would not allow him to sign the Left’s impeachment. He would not be beaten, and now the Minist...

The Tuileries are still guarded by troops. The Mayor shows his sash and they let us pass. At the gate the concierge, to whom I make myself known, apprises us that the Duchess d’...

“It is not a mairie I would like you to have, but a ministry. Victor Hugo, the Republic’s Minister of Instruction! Come now, since you say that you are Republican!”

Suddenly another woman appeared. This one was even younger and more beautiful; she was almost a child, being barely seventeen years of age. Oh! the pity of it! She, too, was a s...

The Assembly, however, pursued Garnier-Pages with its hooting, and when he said to Cavaignac: “You wanted to throw us down,” it burst into a laugh, at the sentiment as well as a...

Odilon Barrot ascends the tribune step by step and slowly; he is solemn before being eloquent. Then he places his right hand on the table of the tribune, throwing his left hand...

As I passed I glanced at the sinister portal of the Praslin mansion adjoining the Elysee. The large green carriage entrance, enframed between two Doric pillars of the time of th...

September 9.--Received a visit from General Montfort. The generals are asking me for commands, I am being asked to grant audiences, office-seekers are asking me for places. I re...

I mention here once for all that I authorise whoever desires to do so, to read or perform whatever he likes that I have written, if it be for cannon, the wounded, ambulances, wo...

Besides my usual Thursday guests I had Louis Blanc, Rochefort and Paul de Saint Victor to dinner. Mme. Jules Simon sent me a Gruyère cheese. An extraordinary luxury, this. We we...

Meeting in the Rue Lafaurie. I proposed that we all refuse to discuss the situation in Paris, and that a manifesto be drawn up, to be signed by all of us, declaring our intentio...