after all, what a writer has to say rather than what he has to tell that we care for nowadays. In one manner or other the stories were all told long ago; and now we want merely to know what the novelist thinks about persons and situations. Mr. James gratifies this philosophic desire. If he sometimes forbears to tell us what he thinks of the last state of his people, it is perhaps because that does not interest him, and a large-minded criticism might well insist that it was childish to demand that it must interest him. I am not sure that my criticism is suf ficiently large-minded for this. I own that I like a finished story; but then also I like those which Mr. James seems not to finish. This is probably the position of most of his readers, who cannot very logically account for either preference. We can only make sure that we have here an annalist, or analyst, as we choose, who fascinates us from his first page to his last, whose narrative or whose comment may enter into any minuteness of detail without fatiguing us, and can only truly grieve us when it ceases. W. D. Howells. FAITH'S FORTITUDE. WITH but a sail and bank of fragile oars, It was the legends of these dauntless rowers— Trackless, and deeper than our fathoms run; With good, long after all our pain is done. The ignorant Sepoy soldiers, when they saw Marched on them, tranquil, with no doubting awe: Their clumsy instinct reckoned and was bound. Transports our souls triumphant over ground And deep, which reason cannot span nor sound. Our selfish hearts rebel and chafe at this, When once we make our good the test of His. Two things that grow and yield the sweetest sweet, As well on waters salt as on fresh rain Will thrive, and in their sap and fruit complete, H. H. VICTOR HUGO.* errors that we should avoid. He recited them with absurd emphasis and shook in his chair with laughter. My school-mates were servile enough to join in the merriment, applauding their teacher; for my part I was as sorely wounded by these sarcasms as though they had been directed at myself. Whatever was quoted as false, harsh, or trivial, seemed to me excellent. I heartily approved of it. I had the divine instinct of childhood, the freshness of impression which no university tutor could wrest from me. ALL of my generation-all who have reached the age of forty, have known Hugo from childhood. To Hugo I owe my first emotions. My family then lived at Lyons, which to people of the south of France is a place of exile. Black, foggy, comfortless, it is a dreary home for children who need gayety and sunshine. Our sun was Victor Hugo. My elder brother, having a little pocket-money to spend, invested it in the large illustrated livraisons of the poet's works, the popular edition, with plates, by Beaucé, and at night, lying in the same bed, we devoured the feast of poesy with the appetite natural to lads twelve years old. Many a time, wrapping the candle in thick paper lest the light should betray us, have we lain awake till dawn to read Victor Hugo. "Are you asleep, children?" Papa Daudet would cry from the next room, and we would be silent, pretending to sleep. When, he had become the great citizen - the by and by, we returned to the interrupted reading, our alarm gave zest to the banquet. He who thus charmed us was to us more than human. We murmured the cadence of his cradle-song; we caught the throb, the rhythmic beat of his ballad: "Par saint Gille! Viens, écoute, Par la route, Voir la joûte and with feverish hand we turned the pages of the "Feuilles d'Automne," the "Chants du Crépuscule," the "Orientales," and all those noble works in whose sonorous names I still feel the magic of old, though less in the words themselves than in the memory of my earliest sensations. After those nights of poetic enthusiasm came my school days,-the period of formal and wearisome drilling in text-books, rules, and grammars. To understand what I suf fered during that epoch one must recall the condition of our provincial schools in 1851. Hugo was still under the ban of the university. I can only remember one professor at Lyons who read us any of the poet's works, and I think of him gratefully still. All the rest considered Hugo's name a synonym for false taste and false style. A professor of rhetoric used to read and ridicule a few passages, a few detached phrases, as an example of In 1857, when I came to Paris, Hugo was in exile. I now had my second revelation of the poet. It was the hour when the "Châtiments" was in everybody's hands. Its sale was forbidden in France, but the Belgian editions passed from friend to friend. Hugo was no longer the poet only; mouth-piece of the outraged conscience of the nation. This book brought him into our modern life. All our young men, of whom Gambetta was one, knew the "Châtiments" by heart. I can recall Castagnary, who is today a Councilor of State, and was then an attorney's clerk,-I can recall him as he declaimed Hugo's verses in a café near the Tuileries, a meeting-place of the body-guard, the armed retainers of the castle. In his waistcoat, with large lappels, à la Robespierre,made from the velvet of an old arm-chair,—I can see him still, standing on a table and reciting, in his soft and flute-like voice, the strophes of the "Manteau Impérial: "Chastes buveuses de rosée, Ruez vous sur l'homme, guerrières ! Our pretorian guards understood little of the allegory, but they were charmed by the harmony of the language and the meter, and unwittingly applauded the ode of retribution. From that moment all eyes in France turned to the exile's island. From time to time came master-works therefrom,-the "Contempla * Translated from the original French, which was written expressly for the CENTURY MAGAZINE. tions," the "Chansons des Rues et des Bois," the "Misérables," the "Travailleurs de la Mer," "L'Homme qui Rit," and the admirable "Légende des Siècles," which marked a forward step in the poet's life-labors. Each was received with unanimous acclamation. Admiration held us bound to the poet. We read with affectionate sorrow his noble and mournful dedications: "Livre qu'un vent t'emporte Donne sa feuille morte. . . ." were made to Guernsey. The Empire was so confident of its stability that it ceased to trouble itself about these matters, the lyre could be no serious rival to the sword. The doors of his country were opened, but Hugo would not come in. He continued his protest by submitting to voluntary exile; he was one of those whom the success of brute force could not tame. "S'il n'en reste que dix, je serai le dixième, Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-là." Those eighteen years of banishment did much to keep his fame untarnished. He reigned without diminution of popularity. He would have been less great had he not suffered proscription. His terrible ordeal was of use to him; it not only added to his lyre a new and powerful chord, it also served, by keeping his life remote, to prevent his admirers from ever growing weary of him. And below them the flaming initials: V. H. The attitude of his friends, the romanticists, served as example to us of a younger generation. All were faithful to him; even those who accepted the Empire, like Théophile Gautier and Sainte-Beuve, refused to desert the In the closing days of the Empire, "Hernani" was represented at the Théâtre Français. Édouard Thierry, a romanticist, But at last the king came home again, and was the manager, and it was he who put the events combined to give him a welcome heroic drama on the stage. The audience re- worthy of his renown. The prophecy of the ceived it very warmly. So, by his memory poet was fulfilled. Improbable as they had and by his books, during the entire reign of sounded when foretold, in the early days of the Napoleon III., Hugo lived in the midst of us. victorious empire, all the predicted chastiseAll the poets of to-day, who are his sons, ments were turned to reality. Sedan was, insent him their enthusiastic homage, for the deed, a sorry counterpart of the First Empire, imperial police could not close the mouth of the inglorious collapse of the edifice of Dethe muse. Banville wrote his "Ballade à cember. France, alas! seemed to bend beneath Victor Hugo, Père de tous les Rimeurs." Its the blow; defeat struck not the sovereign sad refrain expressed the thought which dwelt alone, but the nation. All was wreck and ruin. in our hearts and presided at our gatherings: Prussia's iron band was closing around Paris. It was therefore a day full of emotion for us all when, amid the anguish of invasion, we learned that Victor Hugo was coming. He came at the very moment when the investment was complete, with the last train, the last breath of free air. On the way, he had seen the Bavarians; he had seen villages burnt with petroleum, and he came to imprison himself in Paris. On his arrival at the SaintLazare station, a memorable ovation was given him by the people,-a clamorous people, stirred by the revolutionary spirit, ready for great deeds, rejoicing in its reconquered liberty rather than frightened by the cannon which growled at its ramparts. I can see the carriage making its way down the Rue d'Amsterdam, Victor Hugo standing upright in it, borne by the mob, and weeping. Surely, this was the pinnacle of greatness: that a poet's destiny should thus be made part of occurrences so fateful. "Gautier parmi ces joailliers Mais le Père est là-bas dans l'île." We could imagine him, "le Père," seated on those rocks which he loves to describe, on the shore of the sounding sea, the coast-line of France traced dimly on the horizon. We could see his eyes follow the white sails, innocently cruel in their invitations to him who could not follow them to his fatherland. His banishment clothed him with a wild and sublime majesty. Guernsey was only a pedestal for his fame, an observatory from which he viewed and encouraged us. "Islands," said a friend of mine the other day,"occupy a large place in the history of our time. Think of Corsica and Saint Helena, of Guernsey and Caprera! Things that exceed the common stature of humanity take place on the islands." The island where Hugo lived is no less glorious than that which saw the birth of Napoleon. To visit our proscribed king the seas had to be crossed. From time to time pilgrimages On the morrow, the memory of this great reception was swept away in a wave of lamentable events. But at least the poet was among us; his poems were read in the theaters, in the guard-rooms, even in the forts, while the shells were whistling through the air. It was during the siege that I saw him for the first time face to face. I was at the Théâtre Français, the vestibule of which had been turned into a hospital. Beds were laid in rows under the mirrors; Édouard Thierry, the manager, in the cap of the ambulance service, the red cross on the groundwork of white worked upon his sleeve, was directing the dressing of wounds; Madam Favart, Nathalie, and Madeleine Brohan, were tending the wounded; and the poet, with the képi of a national guard upon his head, was passing silent and sorrowful among the beds of the vanquished. Hugo took up his abode in the Rue de Clichy. All Paris, which had suffered his absence so long, came there to visit him; there were dinners and parties every day at his house. I, among the rest, went to call on the master, and took my wife, who, being reared in a family of artists, knew Hugo's poetry as well as I, and held him in equal regard. Flaubert was to introduce us. In a troubled voice we asked the porter to tell us on which story Victor Hugo lived. The simple words seemed hard to pronounce. We were asking on which story lived Bug-Jargal, Hernani, Ruy-Blas. Could they inhabit a bourgeois lodging in the Rue de Clichy? The poet lived on the third story; his rooms were adorned with works of art; in the drawingroom were fine pieces of bronze and a large Venetian chandelier. In meeting Victor Hugo, my preconceived ideas suffered no shock. His simple, peaceful dignity fascinated me. I contemplated at leisure that extraordinary forehead; those cheeks which had the tint of a rock embrowned by the sea-winds; the beard and hair short and bristling, shaded like old woodmoss; the eye deep and soft, generally motionless, fastened upon an image within itself. After my first visit, I could chat with him familiarly, and on these occasions the cold eyes would brighten, and Hugo would regard me with the expression of playful slyness which he sometimes assumes. Those who talk freely with the poet are few. His genius inspires too much respect. I spent a delicious evening-for, to have heard Hugo talk, is one of the pleasantest recollections of my literary life. He has a prodigious memory which forgets nothing, grasps the entire century, links together twenty generations, and passes with all the freshness of youth from M. de Talleyrand to M. de Broglie, from the first Bonaparte to Napoleon III. We, like him, had seen the siege of Paris; but, unlike us, he had seen the War in Spain. His mode of address is an original mixture of lofty politeness and easy good-nature, having something of the manner of an old French peer, who in antique style kisses the hand of a lady,—and combined with this something also of the affectionate familiarity of the exile. Madame Drouët did the honors of Hugo's drawing-room. She was his companion in banishment, his invaluable friend, and, as she stood beside us smiling, her hair white as swan's down, she amply justified the reputation for beauty which she enjoyed in her day. The poet's grandchildren entered the room, all tumbled and disordered. Jeanne and Georges are the children of Charles Hugo, the poet's eldest son, who died in 1871, and was brought by his father from Bordeaux to Paris at the moment when the revolution of March 18 burst on us. The barricades of the Place de la Bastille opened respectfully before the mourning father, and let the hearse go by which held the body of his son. This son, whose death was so deeply lamented, left Victor Hugo two charming children, who love him and are worshiped by him. Their grace and dainty qualities he has sung in "l'Art d'être Grand-Père." Their mother, who accompanied them, is a very pretty young woman, with large, bright eyes, a person of elegance and fashion, who knows how to bring to the poet all that he needs of the bustle and gossip of Paris. Near her stood one who was to become her second husband,— Édouard Lockroy, who, in the last days of the Empire, founded the newspaper "Le Rappel," having for partners Meurice, Vacquerie, and the two sons of Victor Hugo. Lockroy's face is bright and lively, typical of Paris which has chosen him for its deputy,-a witty, saucy face, without fear or reproach, young, in spite of its prematurely whitened hair. I knew him as an art-student, when he was leaving the studio, a true rapin, fond of making caricatures. He might have become a painter, too, but his father, an author and actor, had played in Hugo's romantic dramas, and that achievement, it appears, marked out the son for a career of adventure. And, in truth, the jovial fellow, taking life broadly, asking no better than to laugh, met with adventures in abundance. He was sent to Syria by an illustrated paper to sketch the massacres of Christians by the Druses. He was found by M. Renan under some forlorn Mussulman roof, abandoned, robbed, shivering with fever. Still thirsting for travel and excitement, he donned a red shirt, and accompanied the cosmopolitan hero, whom Italy so loudly mourns to-day. He took part in nearly all the expeditions of Garibaldi. At present he is simply the wittiest of our deputies. Vacquerie, a masterly writer, I also saw, and Meurice, his inseparable crony. Both were recruits, though now promoted, of the great wars of romanticism. One is tall, the other short: Auguste Vacquerie thin and long,-a Norman Don Quixote; Paul Meurice of Kalmuck build, with hair brushed straight and mustache hard and stiff. Both formed part of the family. Then came the intimate friends of the house,-Paul de Saint Victor, the author of "Hommes et Dieux," the most delicate worker in prose known to our literature since Gautier; Théodore de Banville, the latest, but not the least fervid of the romanticists; Leconte de Lisle, chief of the poetic school of the Parnassians; Emile de Girardin, Ivan Tourguéneff, Gustave Flaubert, Monselet, and others whom I forget. Of those whom I saw in Hugo's drawing-room, surrounding him under the chandelier, listening to him, hymning his glory, some are no more. Flaubert, Girardin, Saint-Victor,-the novelist, the journalist, the critic: these have passed out of the circle of the poet's friends. Death has taken them from us. In the midst of the tributes paid by so many master-minds to Victor Hugo, as to a king who, after a long voyage, returns to take possession of his throne, I felt more than once a very singular emotion. One notices that, in spite of all, the poet retains evidences of his adventurous life, even in the short and easy jacket which he wears. One thinks involuntarily of the promiscuous society with which he must so long have mingled. Of the flood of visitors who thronged Hugo's drawing-room, many came and were received who had never been seen there before December. I often reflected on the life of exiled kings, as I stood in this throng and saw the purest diamond in Parisian society rubbed by the commonest pebble. Kings, as well as proscribed poets, must adopt the same tolerant mode of existence, make the same submission to social necessities, permit the same facility of intercourse. I will add, moreover, that the serious side of my book, "Les Rois en Exil," was studied in the drawing-room of Victor Hugo. In those days, when the great poet talked more than to-day, he would install himself on a narrow, little sofa, where there was only room for two. Each of us, in turn, would there take seat beside him and chat for a few moments. Now, in later days, the evenings are less prolonged than of old, and come to an end about ten o'clock; but when I first used to go to the Rue de Clichy, we still indulged in those midnight cups of tea which Hugo would fortify with rum and transform to grog of formidable strength. One day he served me himself, and emptied into both our cups about half a bottle of rum mixed with Spanish wine, thus concocting an old Guernsey sea-dog's " night-cap." I felt scorched for a week, but Hugo drank it without winking, and with Olympian serenity. His health, in fact, is wonderfully robust. His eighty years are full of sap. At table, he is well worth watching. Sound in digestion, strong in appetite, between each dish he pours out huge draughts of sweet wine. He eats slowly, with majestic air, masticating his food like an old lion. You feel that he is a man always in good health; one who bathes every morning in cold water; who works with open windows; who, when he comes home in winter from the Senate, does not even close the carriage windows. He seems to grow no older. His voice alone has changed somewhat. There are longer pauses in his speech. His words seem to come from a distance. His life has always been scrupulously exact. In the days of the Rue de Clichy, he rose at five and went out at eight, save in extraordinarily bad weather. Like Montaigne and Madame de Staël, he always loved the great city, even its gutters, even its evil spots. But since his return from exile this passion has grown stronger than ever. Who does not know the lines which he addressed to Paris at the moment of his return, - the lines which breathe so deep an affection : "J'irai, je rentrerai dans ta muraille sainte, Je te rapporterai l'âme jamais éteinte He had scarcely arrived in the beloved city before he was anxious to know its new districts, its latest passages, its broad avenues, now filled with the noise of the horns of the tramway conductors, the Seine covered with ferry-boats. All those innovations of late years, which give Paris a new physiognomy, rejoiced the heart of the poet. His greatest pleasure, at early morning, was to climb to the top of an omnibus, and so traverse the whole city, passing the sumptuous boulevards, the workmen's quarters, the districts of the poor, until he reached the gloomy streets of the suburbs, near the fortifications where, along the walls that skirt the yards of low, one-storied houses, grow in luxuriance the dandelion and the nettle. Every day, in the heart of Paris, which is undergoing so many changes, Victor Hugo would discover some picturesque, unknown corner; and it is in this manner, on the top of an omnibus, observing and dreaming, at the time when the streets awaken to their morning life, |