And, indeed, the very next day Hugo chose the drama of Marion Delorme from among the different subjects that were already in his mind. For, just as a mother carries her babe within her until it is ripe for birth, so we mental creators carry our subjects in our brains before they are brought forth. Then, one day, he said to himself, "On 1 June 1829 I will begin my drama." And on that date he did actually set to work upon it.
On the 19th, he had completed the first three acts. On the 20th, at break of day, as the sun rose and filled his window with its golden rays, lighting up his room in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, he composed the first lines of his fourth act:—
"LE DUC DE BELLEGARDE.
Condamné?
LE MARQUIS DE NANGIS.
Condamné!
LE DUC DE BELLEGARDE.
Bien!... mais le roi fait grâce?..."
Next day, just twenty-four hours later, when the sun was again paying his accustomed visit, he wrote the last line—
"On peut bien, une fois, être roi par mégarde!"
During those twenty-four hours he had neither eaten, nor drunk, nor slept; but he had written an act containing nearly six hundred lines—an act which I take to be a masterpiece; six hundred lines which to my thinking are among the finest in the French language.
On 27 June Marion Delorme was finished.