Part 34 (1/2)

When the Gerht a duel with the King of Prussia, and to have the result of it settle the war; ”for,” said he, ”the King of Prussia is a great king, but I areat poet We are, therefore, equal”

In spite, however, of his ardent republicanisain and again he styled himself ”a peer of France;” and he and his fahts and bishops and counselors of state hom he claimed an ancestral relation This was more than inconsistent It was soo's ancestry was by no os of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not in any way related to the poet's family, which was eminently honest and respectable, but by no randfather was a carpenter One of his aunts was the wife of a baker, another of a barber, while the third earned her living as a provincial dressmaker

If the poet had been less vain and more sincerely de frohed at titles As it was, he jeered at all pretensions of rank in other men, while he claimed for himself distinctions that were not really his His father was a soldier who rose froeneral His hter of a shi+p owner in Nantes

Victor Hugo was born in February, 1802, during the Napoleonic wars, and his early years were spent a the ca that he should have been born and reared in an age of upheaval, revolt, and battle He was essentially the laureate of revolt; and in some of his novels-as in Ninety-Three-the druh every chapter

The present paper has, of course, nothing to do with Hugo's public life; yet it is necessary to remember the complicated nature of the man-all his power, all his sweetness of disposition, and likewise all his vanity and his eccentricities We must remember, also, that he was French, so that his story ht of the French character

At the age of fifteen he was doh still a schoolboy and destined for the study of law, he dreamed only of poetry and of literature He received honorableyear took prizes in a poetical coan the publication of a literary journal, which survived until 1821 His astonishi+ng energy became evident in the many publications which he put forth in these boyish days He began to becoh poetry, then as noas not very profitable even when it was adht him the sum of seven hundred francs, which seemed to hireater prosperity

It was at this ti girl of eighteen hom he fell rather tempestuously in love Her nahter of a clerk in the War Office When one is very young and also a poet, it takes very little to feed the flauest at the apartentleman and his family French etiquette, of course, forbade any direct communication between the visitor and Adele She was still a very young girl, and was supposed to take no share in the conversation Therefore, while the others talked, she sat demurely by the fireside and sewed

Her dark eyes and abundant hair, her grace of ht played about her, kindled a flah he could not speak to her, he at least could look at her; and, before long, his share in the conversation was very slight This was set down, at first, to his absent-mindedness; but looks can be as eloquent as spoken words Mence, noted the adoring gaze of Victor Hugo as he silently watched her daughter The young Adele herself was no less intuitive than her mother It was very well understood, in the course of a few o was in love with Adele Foucher

Her father and o himself, in a burst of lyrical eloquence, confessed that he adored Adele and wished to irl was but a child She had no dowry, nor had Victor Hugo any settled incoe But when did a common-sense decision, such as this, ever separate a man and a woo was insistent With his supreme self-confidence, he declared that he was bound to be successful, and that in a very short time he would be illustrious Adele, on her side, created ”an at about with hollow eyes and wistful looks

The Foucher fao immediately followed them Fortunately for him, his poems had attracted the attention of Louis XVIII, as flattered by soo five hundred francs for an ode, and soon afterward settled upon him a pension of a thousand francs Here at least was an income-a very small one, to be sure, but still an income Perhaps Adele's father was impressed not so much by the actual money as by the evidence of the royal favor At any rate, he withdrew his opposition, and the two young people were e, unforainst too early o's death-a married life of forty-six years-yet their story presents phases which would have made this io devoted all his energies to work The record of his steady upward progress is a part of the history of literature, and need not be repeated here The poet and his ere soon able to leave the latter's family abode, and to set up their own household God in a hoathered, in a sort of salon, all the best-knoriters of the day-draos knew everybody

Unfortunately, one of their visitors cast into their new life a drop of corroding bitterness This intruder was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, a o, and one who blended learning, iift of critical analysis Sainte-Beuve is to-day best rereatest critic ever known in France But in 1830 he was a slender, insinuating youth who cultivated a gift for sensuous and soo's friendshi+p by writing an enthusiastic notice of Hugo's drale,” ”a blazing star,” and paid hioesque But in truth, if Sainte-Beuve frequented the Hugo salon, it was less because of his admiration for the poet than from his desire to win the love of the poet's wife

It is quite impossible to say how far he attracted the serious attention of Adele Hugo Sainte-Beuve represents a curious type, which is far more common in France and Italy than in the countries of the north Human nature is not very different in cultivated circles anywhere Man loves, and seeks to win the object of his love; or, as the old English proverb has it:

It's a man's part to try, And a woman's to deny

But only in the Latin countries do men who have tried make their attempts public, and seek to produce an impression that they have been successful, and that the wo lands, is set down simply as a cad, and is excluded fro is regarded with a certain amount of toleration We see it in the two books written respectively by Alfred de Musset and George Sand We have seen it still later in our own tie and half-repulsive story in which the Italian novelist and poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a very thin disguise, revealed his relations with the falo-Saxons thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust for the erate a siuilt But it is not so in France and Italy And this is precisely what Sainte-Beuve attee McLean Harper, in his lately published study of Sainte-Beuve, has su of The Book of Love:

He had the vein of emotional self-disclosure, the vein of romantic or sentimental confession This last was not a rich lode, and so he was at pains to charge it secretly with ore which he exhuly, but which was really basethis false route was partly ambition, partly sensuality Many a worse ood taste And no man with a sense of honor would have perht-a so, and designed to implicate her

He left two hundred and five printed copies of this book to be distributed after his death A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was not too expressive when he declared that its purpose was ”to leave on the life of this woe of a snail leaves on a rose” Abominable in either case, whether or not the implication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve's nuo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy not only cost him his h endeavor

How monstrous was this violation of both friendshi+p and love s:

In that inevitable hour, when the glooulf shall roll over our heads, a sealed bottle, belched forth from the abyss, will render immortal our two na after union