Well, at last the huge cavalcade was set in motion and crossed the Bidassoa in view of the isle des Faisans, the famous political and matrimonial island. The first night they slept at Irun. The child's mind was vividly impressed by the fresh style of architecture, strange manners and different tongue. He ever remembered that halt at Irun, and revisited it in his poetical dreams, as well as the towns of Burgos, Vittoria and of Valladolid, noted in other ways:—
"L'Espagne me montrait ses couvents, ses bastilles;
Burgos, sa cathédrale aux gothiques aiguilles;
Irun, ses toits de bois; Vittoria, ses tours;
Et toi, Valladolid, tes palais de familles,
Fiers de laisser rouiller des chaînes dans leurs cours.
Mes souvenirs germaient dans mon âme échauffée;
J'allais chantant des vers d'une voix étouffée,
Et ma mère, en secret observant tous mes pas,
Pleurait et souriait, disant: 'C'est une fée
Qui lui parle et qu'on ne voit pas!'"
The manner of travelling, too, made a deep impression on the brain of the child who, as a man, was to possess the descriptive faculty in the very highest degree! How well one can picture the five hundred men who formed the advance-guard; the thousand escorting the heavy, noisy waggons; the great carriage with its gilding half worn off, that came next, drawn by six mules, reinforced, in difficult places, by two and even four oxen, led by a mayoral,[1] escorted by two zagales![2] Think of the burning sun, the parching dust, the arms sparkling in the glowing atmosphere, of villages laid waste and the hostile and threatening populations, the unspeakably terrible and bloody recollections which seemed to belong rather to the isles of the Pacific than to a European continent!—and we shall have some idea of scenes which we cannot attempt to describe, which only Hugo himself could relate.
The first day they went three leagues! The second day, they halted for the night at the village of Ernani. In the poet's recollections, the name of the village is changed to that of a man. Everyone knows the romantic bandit, lover of Doña Sol, adversary of Charles V., and rival of Ruy Gomez. On the third day, a curious spectacle met the travellers' gaze: a battalion of écloppés. A battalion of écloppés was a gathering of soldiers of all arms, the débris of a score of combats, or, may be, of a single battle; for, in those days, battles were barbarously conducted: often, two, three or four regiments were wiped out; as many as a thousand, fifteen hundred or two thousand wounded would be picked up from the field of battle; a leg would be cut off here, an arm there, a bullet extracted from one, splinters pulled ont of another. All these would go to the rear and, when cured, or nearly so, from the débris of four or five different regiments would be formed a battalion of écloppés (cripples), which was sent back to France and left to defend itself on the way thither. The poor fellows had to extricate themselves from the terrible game of war as best they could.
Our cortège, then, met one of these battalions at Salinas. It was composed of Light Infantry, Cuirassiers, Carabineers and Hussars. Not a man among them but had lost an arm or a leg, a nose or an eye; but they were gay, and sang and shouted "Vive l'empereur!" The children were particularly struck by the fact that every man carried a parroquet or a monkey on his shoulder or at his saddle-bow; some even had both. They had come from Portugal, where they had left their limbs behind them, and whence they had brought this menagerie.
At Mondragon, two or three leagues before Salinas, thanks to the devotion of the soldiers, they escaped a very serious danger. By "they," I mean Madame Hugo and her three children. But a slight explanation will be necessary before giving an account of this incident. The soldiers received their rations every three days; according to their usual custom, they consumed the three days' rations in the first twenty-four hours, or flung away what food burdened them; so that the whole cortège usually fasted one day, at least, out of three. This fast was the more painful to bear—especially in the matter of liquids, which were not thrown away but usually consumed prematurely—as they journeyed over arid plains, under a burning sun and in suffocating air. They started at break of day, to avail themselves of the cool air, halted at noon, to eat and drink and then they set off again and travelled till nightfall. The soldiers camped round the waggons; the officers and travellers lodged in the villages or towns on billet; Madame Hugo was generally lodged with the Alcade. There, her distribution of rations was made her every night: it was the same allowance as that given to her husband when he was on campaign, namely, twenty rations. Now these portions were very large; great mountains of bread and meat and more wine than she could possibly consume, were piled up before her every night. The soldiers who marched to right and left of her carriage, by the side of the six mules and the immense chariot, amounted to about forty men. They were Dutch grenadiers; for the French army, at that time, like the Roman legions of the time of Augustus, was a mixture of all the nations of Europe. These forty men shared the rations of Madame Hugo, who had no need of twenty portions of bread, meat and wine for herself, her children and her servants, since she and they were nearly always supplied with meals by the host with whom they lodged; neither did the mayoral and the two zagales need any, since they lived on a glass of water, a piece of bread smeared with garlic and the smoke of their cigarettes. The forty Dutchmen were accordingly deeply grateful to Madame Hugo, and their gratitude found expression on two occasions. We will relate the first at once: the second will come in due course.
Mondragon is left by a dark and steep tunnel which forms the gate of the town; the roadway through this tunnel takes a sudden turn on the right, by the side of a precipice. Some slight palings were placed at the edge of the roadway to give any vehicles being carried over the abyss a last chance to pull themselves up, if they happened, by chance, to knock up against one of these barriers. Whether the mayoral and zagales were unacquainted with the geography of the district, or whether they were unable to control the heavy coach, when the vehicle came out of the dark tunnel it was advancing at a rapid pace, carried away by its own weight, towards the precipice, when the Dutch grenadiers, perceiving Madame Hugo's danger, rushed to the heads of the mules and, forcing them quickly to turn round, stopped the carriage just as one of the wheels had begun to roll over the edge of the precipice. For one instant the travellers were literally suspended between life and death. But life gained the day. Two or three soldiers were nearly flung off by the shock; but some of them clung to the traces and others to the poles. And, as it happened, the only injuries were a few bruises and sores, which did not prevent them making merry that night with Madame Hugo's distribution of rations. The Duc de Cotadilla, who was very gallant, in spite of his sixty years, and who cantered by Madame Hugo's carriage door throughout the journey, added some bottles of rum to that distribution, and there was a regular feast.
After about twelve or fourteen days' journey, they reached Burgos. They had had frequent alarms since they left Bayonne, but had often found that what they took for guerilleros were only quiet mule-drivers, united into bands for their own protection. This mistake was easily made, since the mule-drivers were armed almost like soldiers and could not be distinguished from such, on account of the dust raised round them, except at close quarters, when it would be seen they rode mules, not horses. At Burgos a halt of three or four days was made, and Madame Hugo took the opportunity these days offered to show her children the cathedral, that wonderful pile of Gothic architecture, the gate of Charles V. and the tomb of the Cid.
Of the tomb of the Cid, the soldiers had made a rifle-target. The child left Burgos dazed and breathless with wonder. Young as he was, he already possessed a passionate admiration for the chefs-d'œuvre of architecture; and the cathedral of Burgos, with its sixty or eighty bell-towers, is, indeed, a masterpiece of its kind. By a strange coincidence, General Hugo, who was in command of the Spanish retreat in 1813, knocked down three of these bell-towers when he blew up the citadel of the town of Burgos, of which he was the last governor.
The farther they advanced, the more frequent did traces of destruction become apparent. After Burgos, they stopped at a village which had once been Celadas; it was a heap of ruins from one end to the other; and, as though it had been feared that the place might revive, the ruins had been thoroughly set fire to. Nothing could be sadder than to see that fire-destroyed village in the middle of the sunburnt plains. A few wall sides stood crumbling and roofless and, of these, the children belonging to the caravan made a fortress, soon dividing their small party into besiegers and besieged. War, which was, in those days, the trade of the fathers, was the play of the children. Little Victor and his two brothers formed part of the besieging party. Just when they were scaling a breach to enter the town, and Victor, who always loved high places, was running along the top of a wall, doubtless to make a diversion during the attack, he lost his footing and fell head foremost from the top of the wall into an uncovered cellar, and his head struck against the corner of a stone with such violence that he was stunned and lay where he fell. No one had seen him fall: his descent had been effected too rapidly for him to cry out. So the assault was carried on as though the besiegers had not lost one of their number. When the town was taken, vanquishers and vanquished counted their numbers, and only then did they discover that one of them, young Victor Hugo, was left gloriously on the field of battle. They began to search for him, Abel and Eugène at the head, and so carefully did they hunt into every nook and corner, that they soon discovered the wounded victim in the depths of a cellar. They thought he was dead, as he did not give any signs of life, and they rushed off with him amidst great lamentations to Madame Hugo, who soon saw he was still alive.