Ah! dear Comtesse Dash, you may rightly say that, unluckily, the most interesting facts of these Memoirs are those which I cannot write down!
I witnessed the fresh success of Victor Hugo with great delight—although friends had thrown some clouds across our early friendship—a joy all the greater as, having temporarily renounced the theatre myself, Hugo at that period represented the whole school.
Why had I renounced it? One experiences moments of lassitude and of disgust in life, quite beyond one's own control. I was passing through such a period. I had been deeply hurt—not by the failure of the Fils de l'Émigré, for the play was poor; it had justly failed. I acknowledge and submit to the hard lessons which the public give an author—this simplicity, let us remark in passing, is a part of my strength—but, in the simplicity of my heart, I did not understand the fury of the Press against me. They indeed knew one thing—or rather two—
That I had fallen ill during the second or third act of the work; that I had left France in consequence of the troubles of June—namely, at the beginning of the rehearsals; that, finally, I was hardly responsible for a third of the work, and they attacked me concerning my five or six preceding successes. No wonder I was staggered. But, in other ways, this retiring into my shell, which I am not so presumptuous to compare with that of Achilles, was of great advantage with respect to my literary life, which it split into two divisions. Without the failure of the Fils de l'Émigré, and the explosion of hatred which followed it, I should probably never have done anything but theatrical work. On the contrary, during the year's silence which I kept with regard to the stage, I published my first impressions of my travels, which was very successful among the booksellers, and I prepared my volume entitled, Gaule et France, an unfinished but wonderful book, wherein the double vision of poet supplements the knowledge of the historian. Then, too, this latter work, which absorbed me completely, by precipitating me into the intoxication of unknown matters, was of still greater advantage to me than to the public for which I intended it: it did not teach the public much, but it taught me a great deal. I was, I repeat, profoundly ignorant in history. When I began a historical drama, I did not investigate the whole century in which my heroes had lived, but merely the two or three years during which my action took place and the event which formed the catastrophe of the drama was accomplished. I made a hole after the fashion of well-sinkers; I dived like fishermen. True, by dint of digging, I sometimes brought up an ingot of gold; by diving, I at times came to the surface with a pearl; but it was merely chance. The studies I was compelled to make about the French Monarchy, from Cæsar's invasion of the Gauls to the invasion of the French Republic in Europe, unfolded before my eyes that magnificent continuity of eighteen centuries wrongly styled the history of France, under Charlemagne, Philippe-Auguste, François I., Louis XIV. and Napoleon, which has become the history of the world. I viewed with amazement the marvellous advantage there was to be derived from these changes of dynasty and of morals and of customs. I made acquaintance with the men who summed up a reign, with the men who summed up a century, with those, also, who represented a period. I saw appear, like meteors lost to the vulgar gaze in the night of time, those rare chosen spirits of Providence which pass with fire on their brows, bearing the thoughts of God, unconscious themselves of what they carry and not realising their mission until they go to render up their account to Him who bestowed it upon them.
I confess I was at first dazzled before this awful Sinai, its summit thundered upon by the superb trinity of the men we call Cæsar, Charlemagne and Napoleon. I then understood that there was to be done for this great and beauteous France what Walter Scott had done for poor little Scotland, an illustrated, picturesque and dramatic story of the past—a bringing to life again of all the great dead—a kind of last judgment of all those who had worn a crown, whether of laurels, of flowers or of gold. But, I admit, if I had been dazzled by this historical revelation, I was overwhelmed by the work it imposed on the historian, and I fell prostrate, saying to myself: Happy indeed is the man who shall accomplish this gigantic mission! but God knows full well I have not the vanity to imagine it will be mine.
Yet I proceeded with my work with a growing courage, amidst the doubts and laughter of all my friends. When I meet some one whom I have not seen for some time, he will say to me—
"So it is you!"
"Yes, it is I. What is there surprising in that?"
"I thought you were dead."