It was just at the height of the Restoration. The Académie had announced as the subject for its annual prize, to be awarded on 25 August, Saint Louis's Day, "The happiness that study brings in all situations of life."
Victor went in for the competition without saying a word to anyone about it. He put his name down, according to the rules of the competition, in a sealed paper together with his piece of verse; but, after his name, he added his age, fourteen and a half. Besides giving his age thus, there were these lines in the course of the poem:—
"Moi qui, toujours fuyant les cités et les cours,
De trois lustres à peine ai vu finir le cours."
Think of this future philosopher, who, at fourteen, had fled from cities and courts! What delicious childish naïveté! But, strange to relate, it was this admission of fourteen years of age that condemned the poet, and prevented him from winning the prize. M. Raynouard, the rapporteur, declared that the competitor, by allowing himself trois lustres à peine—this was the method of counting in 1817 and is still used by the Académie—had intended to make game of the Académie. And, as though it were not a customary thing for the Académie to be made fun of, the prize was divided between Saintine and Lebrun. However, they read the whole piece composed by the impudent person who made fun of the Académie by speaking of his fourteen years and a half. The assembly, which enjoyed the Académie being thus made game of, highly applauded the lines of the young poet, who at the very moment he was being praised at the Académie was playing prisoners'-base in the college courtyard.
The following stanza was specially applauded, and would have been encored if encores were allowed at the Académie:—
"Mon Virgile à la main, bocages verts et sombres,
Que j'aime à m'égarer sous vos paisibles ombres!
Que j'aime, en parcourant vos gracieux détours,
A pleurer sur Didon, à plaindre ses amours!
Là, mon âme, tranquille et sans inquiétude,
S'ouvre avec plus de verve aux charmes de l'étude;
Là, mon cœur est plus tendre et sait mieux compatir
A des maux que peut-être il doit un jour sentir."
It had been a remarkable contest; for, among the competitors, besides those we have named who won the prize—Saintine and Lebrun—were Casimir Delavigne, Loyson, Who has since acquired a certain popularity which has been interrupted by death, and Victor Hugo. Loyson obtained the accessit, and Victor Hugo, in spite of M. Raynouard's contention that he had made game of the Académie, was the first to have honourable mention.
Casimir Delavigne, who had really committed the crime of poking fun at the Académie by treating the subject in exactly the opposite way, had a separate honourable mention apart from the competition.
Victor was playing at prisoners'-base, as we have said, whilst he was being applauded at the Académie. The first news he heard of his success was brought him by Abel and by Malitourne, who came rushing in, leapt on him and told him what had just happened and that he would in all probability have obtained the prize if the Académie had been ready to admit that a poet of fourteen could have written the lines. The supposition—not that he had wished to mock the Académie, but that he could lie—hurt the child exceedingly, and he procured his birth-certificate and sent it the Académie.
Vide pedes! vide latus!