that he has written most of his latest poems. Indeed, there can be no better observatory, none more propitious to the flashing glance of thought, the straying of the imagination, than this humble post on the public conveyance, which, going from one barrier to the other, making its easy journey in threequarters of an hour, introduces you successively to all the quarters of Paris, revealing and anon concealing, as in a dream, the rich first floor, with its heavy, ornamented curtains half-opened, and with its creamy waves of muslin, and, farther on, the poorer suburbs, where the eye looks into basements sombre and bare, for which a tin reflector steals from the street a few rays of sunlight, or where, for the needs of work or of trade, the gas is lighted before noon. Victor Hugo was known to his neighbors on the omnibus. They had learnt the name of the fine-looking, strong, old man, in his short jacket, with a felt hat on his head, who took his place beside them and politely passed their change. Sometimes the conductor had to inform them, whispering in their ear, "It is Victor Hugo." But the poet's wish to be unrecognized was more gallantly respected than that of a queen on her travels. His desire was understood by all, and while they might glance at him aside, out of a corner of the eye, they pretended not to know him. In the south of France, at Marseilles for example, where everything is expressed, where the people are turbulent and enthusiastic, the carriage would have been unharnessed, the pavements lined with people, the drive interrupted. In Paris, the citizens are of finer instinct, their discretion is exquisitely delicate. At the time of François Victor Hugo's death -François, the last of his sons, -the poet, leaving the deserted home, the distracted household, and seeking solitude in the crowd, had contracted an almost daily habit of lunching on a cutlet or a couple of eggs, and of reading the papers at a tavern in the district of Saint Georges. It was a meetingplace of painters and men of letters. One of my friends, a poet, who took his meal at the same hour, would sometimes find himself seated at a table near the master. Often he would pass him the newspaper, the salt forgotten by the waiter, or the bottle of ice-water. He was sorely tempted to make himself known, for Hugo would have recalled his name. But he was discreet, and held his peace, and even now, his dream, his most ardent desire, is to be introduced to the poet.

When his morning ride is over, Victor Hugo comes home, takes lunch, and, if there be no session in the Senate, writes and works

till evening. In his wonderful organism, so healthy and well balanced, the production of literary work has never been for a moment arrested, either by sorrow or by exile. His capacity resembles a vast spring of water, a Vaucluse fountain fed perennially by the fall of snow and recent rain, drawing from unfathomable depths into the sunlight, with astonishing fullness, force, and regularity, its overflowing waters, bubbling and clear. What glorious verses, what waves of thought and imagery, still lie hidden beneath the soil! Victor Hugo will never check the supply; he can keep nothing back; he would give us all he has. It is admirable to hear him talk, with his placid smile, and the serene tranquility of a sage, concerning the few years which are left him to live, the grand schemes which he carries in his head, and which he would not leave unfinished. Happily, there is no limit at hand beyond which his green old age may not expand, and here, in these latest months, is a splendid work which the whole world reads with admiration,-" Torquemada," the dramatic epic of the Inquisition.

Hugo himself reads nothing, for he has no time to spare. No literary work of our day has ever passed under his eyes. He has never read one of my books. On one occasion, when he was about to pay me some compliment, I hastened to interrupt him. His almost paternal friendship for the man is more dear to me than would be his esteem for the writer. By way of exception, however, he read the articles which Emile Zola devoted to him in the "Figaro." In the midst of the great concert of admiration which France performed at the feet of the old poet, one discordant note, and one alone, was heard. The novelist attacked Hugo with zeal, often with harshness. He had no personal antipathy for the poet, but made the attack in accordance with his literary theories. In assailing the author of "Notre Dame de Paris" he meant to assail the chief of the romantic movement. For my own part, without being at all embarrassed by the recollection of those attacks, I told Hugo how sincerely I prized the abilities of Emile Zola. And Zola, on his side, knows perfectly well what I think of the criticisms showered by him on the patriarch of romanticism. Whatever may be said or done, Hugo's literary influence is unbounded, and we all are subject to it, Zola as well as the rest. Hugo has invented a language and has imposed it on his epoch. It is a violent language and a bold one; it is full of resonance and color; it is, in brief, the language of the nineteenth century, the only language that can express the passions and paint the aspects of our society, which a complex civil

ization has thrown into disorder. We may regret the language of the seventeenth century, or that of Voltaire. But, whether we will or no, from the day we take a pen in hand, we must write the language of Victor Hugo. Verse-maker or prose-maker, none escapes him, not even Balzac: nay, Balzac less than others, for the keen steel of Balzac's tools was tempered in the master's forge. For this reason we should only speak of him and his work with a profound sentiment of gratitude and admiration. A dutiful son, though he be strong and tall, will not war with his grandfather, particularly if his weapons are borrowed from the elder's panoply.

Moreover, whatever inevitable signs of weakness may be shown by a genius which is too prolific to be always perfect, Victor Hugo performs in our country, at the present time, an office which is his alone, and the glory of which none can dispute. Without Hugo, I am fond of repeating, France, being devoted to prose, would have lost the habit of the great language of poetry. Save a few stage verses, which are the better received the more they resemble prose, I can say in sober earnest, that the poems of Victor Hugo are the only poems to which the French public lends ear to-day. The sisterhood which worshiped Lamartine, the lily-browed and fairtressed maidens, have long since closed their dreamy eyes. Our young men have forgotten Musset, and care no more for wild orgies. Pierre Dupont is forgotten; Béranger, the great Béranger whom Châteaubriand admired, is sung no more, not even in the tap-rooms. Those admirable artists, Baudelaire and Gautier, who are dead, Banville and Leconte de Lisle, who live, have no fit renown outside the narrow circle of men of letters and men of taste. As for the young contemporary poets, with the possible exception of François Coppée, they know that their flasks, filled with refined essences, are not to the taste of the public. In this general disarray of our poets, Hugo alone covers the retreat: blowing the horn of Roncevaux, creating the din and doing the work of an army.

worn away by the current of the century. Worthy people, thinking no harm, write to Victor Hugo, begging a reply and demanding his opinion of several stout volumes of five hundred pages each. Well, I really am not spiteful, but I cannot conceal the satisfaction with which I now shatter their illusions, the joy with which I say to them: "Write, good friends, send Victor Hugo your volumes; Victor Hugo will not read them. Victor Hugo will not even open your letters." He has two good watch-dogs, Mme. Drouët and Richard Lesclide, the latter an enthusiast from Bordeaux, whose admiration for the poet made him take the part of secretary. It is Mme. Drouët and Richard Lesclide who read and reply. While they are thus engaged, the poet is at leisure to write poetry. What would become of him, ye gods! if he had merely to open the mail which reaches him every morning from France and from abroad. What would he do with the particularly impertinent letters which sometimes find their way into his correspondence. Hugo once received a request from a country lawyer, quite unknown to him, who wanted one hundred thousand francs by return of post, or was else determined to blow out his brains. Nobody can imagine, indeed, what strange demands we literary people, who are somewhat before the public, are liable to receive. It is barely six weeks ago that a young Prussian countess, whose name I had never heard, took to sending me letters and notes of every size and shape. She said that she needed eighty thousand francs to unite her to the man of her choice, and make her life happy. She added that nothing could be easier for me than to obtain this sum among my Parisian friends. If I could obtain it, I confess I would put it to another use than that of joining this unknown Dorothea to her Hermann.

If fame so great as his brooks few contradictions, in practical life on the other hand it has its inconveniences. Unless he learns to keep his working-hours free from the trespass of the importunate, the life of a distinguished man of our time is no longer his own. The folks who scribble and rhyme have not always observed, in their relations with Victor Hugo, the discretion and reserve which we have applauded in his fellow-travelers of the omnibus. They deny the poet his free and peaceful enjoyment of his small fragment of life, some corner, some particle of which is being daily

After his correspondence, the reception of visitors causes a considerable waste of the poet's time. Admiration is naturally as indiscreet as it is candid. All who go through Paris want to see Victor Hugo: from the Emperor of Brazil and the King of the Sandwich Islands to the English or American young ladies who, with a letter of introduction in their hand, and a guide-book under their arm, go to see the poet after they have paid their respects to the tomb of Napoleon, the treasure of Notre Dame, and the well of Grenelle. Victor Hugo's household undertakes to defend him from the enthusiasm of travelers and the attentions of foreigners. But, in the days when the poet lived in the Rue de Clichy, this defense was difficult. The easiest way to save him from vulgar impertinence was to remove him from the center of Paris.

He has been living for several years in one of the avenues which lead from the Arc de Triomphe to the fortifications. A recent decision of the Municipal Council of Paris has changed its name from the Avenue d'Eylau to the Avenue Victor Hugo. The district is in a state of transition, being not yet wholly Paris, and nevertheless being no longer the country. Its mansions, all of white, too high to stand solitary, seem unstable enough to cause alarm, and look like children's toyhouses, lost in the monotonous expanse of building-sites clotted with scanty grass and heaped with rubbish, enclosed by gray palings, with a cabbage-garden or a patch of artichokes kept in order by the janitor of the place, and here and there with a board marking the lots which are for sale and giving the address of the agent. Few go by in the day-time; a whitewasher's cart may be seen, or a market-gardener's, or perhaps a couple of red-trousered soldiers strolling disconsolate through the neighborhood. At night there is complete solitude: gas-lamps stand at long distances apart, in a melancholy row, serving no other purpose than that of making the night more visible; and beyond, in the endless darkness of the avenue, shining like a light-house to the visitor who has lost his way, are the kitchens of two little solitary residences, always open and always gleaming, throwing their hospitable light over five or six yards of the pavement. Those two residences are the home of Victor Hugo. They are built in the English fashion, after the style now popular in the belt of houses which gird Paris,―commodious and private, having neither janitor nor neighbors, realizing the dream of being truly at home.

The poet occupies one of them. In the neighboring house, which has a door in its wall, live the grandchildren of Victor Hugo, with their mother and Édouard Lockroy, her second husband. I name the children first because they are the masters, and, in a degree, the tyrants of the two houses. The mode of life, indeed, has undergone no change in the new home. We occasionally go to dinner in the Avenue Victor Hugo, as we went in the Rue de Clichy, and we are still fascinated by the simple welcome that awaits us. The evening receptions are attended by the same friends as of old; but there is less crowding and more intimacy.

This dwelling, which to the stranger seems so modest, has had its day of epic grandeur; it is for ever memorable to those who, like myself, witnessed the rejoicings of February 25, 1881. On that day it became for an instant the center of the first city in the world: for the whole of Paris came to its doors to lay there a tribute of admiration. In 1879, when

"Ruy Blas" was revived at the Théâtre Français, Victor Hugo had already been acclaimed by those whom convention calls "All Paris." The emotion and cheers of this distinguished throng, which saw the old masterwork revived after so many years, were very sweet to Victor Hugo. In 1880, at the fiftieth anniversary of "Hernani" he saw his bust crowned, amid the actors, by the hands of Sarah Bernhardt; and on that day he truly felt that, being still alive, he had passed into immortality. But there still was wanting the popular festival, more spontaneous, conceived on a grander scale, which should show the poet how deeply his work had penetrated France, how much he was loved even by those who could scarcely read,—by the poor, the artisans, the "misérables" for whom he had often written, whose sufferings he had told, whose cause he had championed. All were full of gratitude, and the seed sown in the shadow, in so many thousand hearts, was bound to bear at least one glorious harvest. Such was the character of last year's festival. Springing from Springing from an instinctive and enthusiastic movement of public opinion, it took as its pretext the celebration of the eightieth birthday of the poet, who, in reality, was only seventy-nine. An immense crowd, such as Paris alone can gather, passed in surging waves, for hours together, beneath Hugo's windows. They came from all points of the city, and formed a procession in the Place de l'Étoile. The trumpeters went first, sounding their brazen melodies; the corporation followed after, bearing their ensigns as before a sovereign. Flowers were carried in the crowd, and crowns and flags. Banners floated in the wind, and on these standards of peace, inscribed, not with the names of bloody victories, but with the date of the greatest battles of thought, I could read "Hernani," "Les Feuilles d'Automne," "Les Orientales," and see all the dreams of my childhood passing before me in a worthy apotheosis.

I walked in the throng with my wife and children. We advanced with difficulty, so long was the procession. We were placed by chance amid a group of freemasons, who were marching behind their banner, each carrying his scarf in a shoulder-knot, as on a holiday. We marched behind a poorly dressed couple, a man and a woman, and when we came in sight of the house, covered already with tributary flowers, and observed the poet standing with his grand-children, while all Paris defiled before his window

"Put on your scarf," cried the woman in front of us.

"I dare not," replied her husband, "it is too dirty."

THE stranger in New York who may chance to visit the east side of the city in the neighborhood of Twenty-sixth street will have his attention called to a long, grayish, fourstory prison-like structure, with a wing, situated in a block which extends to the East River, and inclosed by a high, forbidding stone wall. This is Bellevue Hospital, the chief free public institution of the kind in New York. For many years it has been famous for the high medical and surgical skill of which it is the theater, its faculty embracing many leading members of the profession in the city. For many years to come it is likely to be popularly associated with another high development of the curative arts, the results of the founding, in 1873, of the Bellevue Training-school for Nurses, and of a new profession for women in America.

Not long ago, a lady living in the suburbs of one of our eastern cities, whose daughter was ill with fever, was urged by her physician to employ a professional nurse. She was loth to do this, but, as the malady increased in virulence, she finally yielded. The following morning the servant announced "the nurse." To the mother's imagination-overwrought as it was by lack of rest and by unremitting watching the words called up the most disagreeable anticipations of a careless and disorderly person, and perhaps even a dark reminiscence of Sairey Gamp scolding trembling invalids, removing their pillows, or drinking copiously from black bottles, while grim-visaged Betsey Prig looked on with unconcern. With these pictures of the professional nurse before her, she descended to the hall. There, to her surprise, she found a young woman of intelligent face, neat apparel, and quiet demeanor.

"You are

"The nurse, madam."

Saying which, the stranger exhibited a badge inscribed with the words "Bellevue Hospital Training-school for Nurses," and decorated with a stork, the emblem of watchfulness.

The physician now appearing, the nurse listened attentively to his instructions. Her movements, while preparing for duty, inspired with confidence both mother and patient. Her skillful hand prepared the food, her watchful eye anticipated every want. She was calm, patient, and sympathizing; but, though eager to please and cheer the invalid, she did not stoop to simulate an affection she did not feel, nor to express hopes of recovery that could not be realized. The exaction, the impatience incident to illness, seemed but to incite her to renewed effort in behalf of her charge. She met every emergency with knowledge and unruffled spirit. To the physician she proved an invaluable assistant, executing his orders intelligently, and recording accurately the various symptoms as they were developed. She watched the temperature of the room as closely as she did that of the patient, and, while always polite and obliging, was never obsequious. The mother had doubtless heard indirectly of the school of which her efficient nurse was a graduate, but she was, as many others are, unfamiliar with its work and aims.

To understand the almost revolutionary progress that, through the instrumentality of this school, has been made in the system of nursing the sick, let us look for a moment at the previous condition of this great hospital. The present building was constructed about