"December 1820
"The callow youths who succeed nowadays to political ideas are in a strange predicament: our fathers are generally Bonapartists and our mothers Royalists. Our fathers only see in Napoleon the man who bestowed epaulettes upon them; our mothers only see in Bonaparte the man who took their sons away from them. Our fathers see in the Revolution the grandest result that the genius of a National Assembly could produce; the Empire, the greatest thing that the genius of a man could devise.
"To our mothers, the Revolution only meant the guillotine, and the Empire a sword. We children who were born under the Consulate have all been brought up at our mothers' knees,—our fathers were in camp,—and since they were often deprived of their husbands and brothers through the vagaries of the conquering Man, they riveted their hopes on us, young schoolboys of eight and ten years of age, and their gentle motherly eyes would fill with tears at the thought that by 1820 we should be eighteen, and by 1825 be either colonels, or else killed. The acclamation that greeted Louis XVIII. in 1814 was the delighted cry of our mothers. There are very few adolescents of our generation but have sucked in, with their mothers' milk, a hatred of the two periods of violent upheaval which preceded the Restoration. Robespierre was the bogey that frightened the children of 1803; and Bonaparte the bogey that terrified the children of 1815. I was lately strongly upholding my Vendéen opinions in my father's presence. He listened to me in silence, then he turned to General L——, who was with him, and remarked, 'Leave things to time: the child holds his mother's opinions; the man will follow his father's.' This prophecy set me to thinking. Whatever the case may be, and even admitting that, up to a certain point, experience modifies the impressions that we receive during our early years, the honest-minded man is sure not to be led astray if he submits all these modifications to the severe criticism of his conscience. A good conscience kept ever awake saves him from all the devious pitfalls wherein his honesty might go astray. In the Middle Ages people believed that any liquid in which a sapphire had rested was a preservative against plague, carbuncles, leprosy and every kind of disease. Jean-Baptiste de Rocoles said, 'Conscience is a similar sapphire!'"
These few lines completely explain Victor's political conduct at different periods of his life. Meantime, the Royalist opinions which he revealed in his beautiful verses to those who looked upon such opinions as heresy were absolved by good deeds.
Let us mention a fact that will also serve to show the poet's life from an original aspect. In 1822 the Berton conspiracy burst forth, and all eyes were turned towards Saumur. Among the conspirators,—besides Berton, who died bravely, and Café, who opened his veins like a hero of old with a scrap of broken glass,—was a young man called Delon. I had caught occasional glimpses of this young man at the house of M. Deviolaine, to whom he was related, either carrying little Victor on his shoulder or jumping the future poet up and down on his knees. He was the son of an old officer who had served under General Hugo's orders. In the famous trial of the Chauffeurs this officer was the captain rapporteur; in the equally famous trial of Malet he was major rapporteur, and, in both trials, without making any distinction between the accused, he had pronounced sentence of death on them. So General la Horie, Victor's godfather, of whom mention has been already made, was shot by Delon's orders. It was a strange coincidence that the son of the man who had pronounced sentence of death on others for conspiracy, should be doomed to death for the same cause! Since the day on which Major Delon had delivered sentence on General la Horie, instead of declining to adjudicate in the case, there had been a complete rupture between the Hugo and Delon family.
But although intercourse between the fathers was broken off, there had not been any rupture between the children. Victor lived then at No. 10 rue de Mézières. One morning he read in the papers the terrible story of the conspiracy of Saumur. Nearly all those concerned were arrested, with the exception of Delon, who had escaped. Very soon, childish recollections, strong and indelible, rose to the poet's mind; he seized his writing materials and, forgetting the family hatreds and the difference of opinion, he wrote to Madame Delon, at Saint-Denis:—
"MADAME,—I learn that your son is proscribed and a fugitive; we hold different opinions, but that is only another reason why he would not be looked for at my house. I shall expect him; at whatever hour of day or night he comes he will be welcome. I am sure that no other place of refuge can be safer for him than the share of my room which I offer him. I live in a house without a porter's lodge, in the rue de Mézières No. 10, on the fifth floor. I will take care that the door shall be kept unlocked day and night.
"Accept my most respectful greetings, dear madame, and believe me, yours, VICTOR HUGO"
When this letter was written, with the guilelessness of a child, the poet entrusted it to the post. To the post! A letter addressed to the mother of a man for whom the whole police force was in search! Well, when it was posted, Victor crept out every night at twilight to explore the neighbourhood, expecting to find Delon in each man who was leaning against a wall. Delon never appeared. But something else appeared, to the immense surprise of the poet, who had not made any move towards it whatever, namely, a pension of 1200 francs which the author of Odes et Ballades received one morning in his small room in the rue de Mézières, the grant being signed by Louis XVIII. It could not have arrived at a more opportune time, for the poet had just married.
On 13 April 1825, Hugo went to the hôtel des Postes to engage three places on the mail coach for himself, his wife and a servant. They were going to Blois. He was anxious to secure these three seats in advance, but, unfortunately, this was not an easy thing: the mail went as far as Bordeaux, and to save places as far as Blois meant risking the emptiness of the seats from Blois to Bordeaux. However, the favour which Victor required could be granted by one man, and that man was M. Roger, the Postmaster-general. M. Roger was by way of being a literary man, he belonged to the Académie and might possibly grant Victor Hugo his desire. So Victor decided to go to the Postmaster-general's house. The usher announced the poet and, at Victor Hugo's name, which at that time was already well known, especially by reason of the ode which had appeared on the death of Louis XVIII. (the ode we have already partly quoted), M. Roger rose and approached the poet with demonstrations of the greatest friendliness. Needless to relate, the request for reserved places on the mail coach to Blois was at once accorded. But M. Roger, having the good fortune to have secured a visit from the poet, would not let him go easily: he made him sit down, and they talked together.
"By the way," M. Roger suddenly burst out in the middle of the conversation, "do you know to what you owe your pension of twelve hundred francs, my dear poet?"