Meanwhile, two years of rhetoric in Latin, two years of philosophy and four years of mathematics had prepared the student for entrance at the École polytechnique.
He now began to face the future seriously, for the first time, and it terrified him. The vocation for which he was being educated was not the one for which he was fitted.
Just when he was about to take the leap and present himself for examination, he wrote to his father that he had found a profession: he was a poet and did not wish to enter the École; he would do without his allowance of 1200 francs. General Hugo was a man of decision himself and he realised that the boy had made up his mind; there was no time to be lost: Victor had eighteen months yet to study. He suppressed the allowance and abandoned the poet to his own resources. Victor possessed within himself as inexhaustible a treasure as those in the Thousand and One Nights, and he had the 800 francs from his satires and the ode. On these 800 francs he lived for thirteen months, and during these thirteen months he composed Han d'Islande. That curious book was the work of a youth of nineteen.
While he was writing Han d'Islande Victor's mother died—an event that influenced the sombre tone of his work considerably. This was his first sorrow and he never forgot it. From the day that that deep sorrow settled on his life, Victor never wore anything but black clothes or a black coat, and he never sealed his letters with aught but black sealing-wax.
And, indeed, we who have seen him grow up, from his childish days at the Feuillantines, at Avellino and at the Séminaire des Nobles, can guess how much his mother was to him. One day, in one of those moments of profound grief when the sorrowful heart seeks for surroundings in harmony with its own mourning, the youth went to Versailles, that most sorrowful and mournful of all places. He breakfasted at the café, holding a paper in his hand which he was not reading, for he was deep in thought. A life-guardsman, who was not given to thought and wanted to read, took the paper out of his hands. Victor at nineteen was fair and delicate of complexion and he looked only fifteen. The life-guardsman thought he was dealing with a boy, but he had insulted a man—a man who was in one of the dark crises of life, when danger often comes as a blessing. So the young man accepted the quarrel that was thrust upon him, coarse and foolish though it was. They fought with swords, almost there and then, and Victor received a slash in the arm. This contretemps hindered the appearance of Han d'Islande for a fortnight. Happily, his grief-stricken heart had its star as every dark night has, and its flower as has every precipice;—he was in love! He was passionately in love with Mademoiselle Foucher, a maiden of fifteen with whom he had been brought up. He married this young girl, and she is to-day the devoted wife who followed the poet into exile. Han d'Islande, sold for 1000 francs, was the dowry of the wedded pair, who between them could only add up thirty-five years. The witnesses of the marriage were Alexandre Soumet and Alfred de Vigny, both poets just starting out in life and in art themselves. This thousand francs had to be used for housekeeping.
The first volume of poetry Victor published at this time was printed by Guiraudet, No. 335 rue Saint-Honoré and sold by Pélissier, place du Palais-Royal; it brought him in 900 francs, which were to be spent on luxuries. And out of these 900 francs the poet bought the first shawl he gave his young wife. Other women, wives of bankers and princes, have had more beautiful Cashmere shawls than yours, Madame Hugo, but none were woven out of more precious and valuable tissue!
This first volume was an immense success. I remember hearing about it when I was in the provinces.
Lamartine's first volume, Méditations poétiques, had appeared in 1820. It had an enormous and deserved success, and sooner or later it was destined to be superseded by another successful rival. It chanced this time that the rival proved equally successful, and the two successes kept pace with one another, hand in hand supporting each other. Nothing happened that could set the poets at variance, their styles were so unlike; nor did politics, thirty years later, succeed in severing the two men, no matter how different their opinions were.
The wedding took place at the house of M. Foucher, the father of the bride, who lived at the War Office. The wedding feast took place in the very hall where, by a strange coincidence to which we shall presently return, General la Horie, Victor's godfather, was sentenced.
Han d'Islande, which we have most unfairly deserted, achieved, by reason of its curious originality, quite as great a success as its admired sisters the fair and fresh Odes. But it did not bear its author's name and it was impossible to guess that that bunch of lilies and lilacs and roses called Odes et Ballades grew under the shade of the rugged and dark oak tree called Han d'Islande. Nodier read and marvelled at the latter production. Good and worthy Nodier! he was always to be found feeding his mind on everything that could nourish it and on everything that could expand his intellect. He announced that Byron and Mathurin were surpassed and that the unknown author of Han d'Islande had attained the ideal of a nightmare. He, the man who was to write Smarra! was, upon my word, very modest. Nodier was not the sort of man from whom an author could long conceal his anonymity, no matter in what disguise he masqueraded. The great bibliomaniac who had made so many discoveries of this kind, quite as difficult to detect, discovered that Victor Hugo was the author of Han d'Islande. But who was Victor Hugo? Was he a misanthrope like Timon, a cynic like Diogenes or a mourner like Democritus? He raised the veil and found, as we are aware, a fair-complexioned youth who had only just reached his twentieth year and looked but sixteen. He recoiled in amazement: it was incredible. He expected to find the distorted countenance of an aged pessimist; he found the youthful, open, hopeful smile of a budding poet. The very first time they met each other the foundations of a friendship were laid that nothing ever changed. Nodier always loved and was loved in return after this fashion.