Meanwhile, a competence amounting almost to a fortune, had come to the young housekeepers: the first edition of Han d'Islande, which was sold for 1000 francs, had run out, and just when Thiers was making his literary début, under cover of the name of Félix Bodin, with his Histoire de la Révolution, Victor was selling his second edition of Han d'Islande for 10,000 francs. Lecointre and Durey were the publishers who thus showered gold upon the nuptial bed of the young people. Honours now knocked at their door. We have spoken before of cousin Cornet, who had been made a senator and count under the Empire, and a peer of France under the Restoration; Victor's growing fame pleased the family pride of the old député of Nantes and member of the Cinq Cents. He had no child of his own to whom to bequeath his coat of arms of azure with its three cornets argent and his peer's robes; so he proposed to throw the mantle over the young poet's shoulders on one condition. True, the condition was a severe one: in order that the giver's name should not be forgotten, the young poet was to call himself Victor Hugo-Cornet. The proposition was transmitted by General Hugo to the author of Han d'Islande and of the Odes et Ballades. The author of Han d'Islande and of the Odes et Ballades replied that he preferred to call himself simply Victor Hugo; and if he wanted to become a peer of France at some future period he did not require the assistance of another, but would become so through his own unaided efforts. So Comte Cornet's offer was declined.
He had another cousin, Comte Volney, who nearly made him a similar proposal to become his heir; but, unluckily, he discovered that Han d'Islande had been written by the same hand as the Odes et Ballades, so he shook his head and buttoned his peer's robes over his own shoulders more tightly than before.
[CHAPTER X]
Léopoldine—The opinions of the son of the Vendéenne—The Delon conspiracy—Hugo offers Delon shelter—Louis XVIII. bestows a pension of twelve hundred francs on the author of the Odes et Ballades—The poet at the office of the director-general des postes—How he learns the existence of the cabinet noir—He is made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur—Beauchesne—Bug-Jargal—The Ambassador of Austria's soirée—Ode à la Colonne—Cromwell—How Marion Delorme was written
In 1824, at the same time as the appearance of a fresh volume of Odes, delightful little Léopoldine was born, whose death he witnessed later under such sad circumstances in front of the château de Villequier, drowned with her husband, on a fine day, by a sudden gust of wind. It was a cruel stroke of destiny, perhaps intended to prove the temper of the father's heart, which was to be severely tried during the days of civil strife that were in preparation for him. All these Odes bore the impress of Royalist opinions. The young man, scarcely past childhood, was the son of his Vendéenne mother, that saintly woman who saved the lives of nineteen priests in the civil war of 1793. General Hugo's friends, who held what were called at that time "Liberal opinions," without openly belonging to the Opposition, were yet often concerned at these ultra-monarchical tendencies; but the general shook his head and answered them smilingly.
"Leave things to time," he said. "The boy holds his mother's opinions; the man will hold his father's."
Here is a statement of the poet himself, which sets forth the promise made by his father, not only to a friend, but to France, to the future and to the whole world:—