To these rooms came, of evenings, those brilliant young fellows and those who were bent on being brilliant, who made the vanguard of the Romanticists. Here was formed "le Cénacle," of which curious circle we shall soon see more. Here Sainte-Beuve dropped in, from his rooms a few doors off, at No. 19, now No. 37, Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs; dropped in too frequently, for the "smiling critic" came rather to smile on young Madame Hugo than for other companionship. Sometimes of an afternoon, such of the group as were walkers would start for a long stroll out to and over the low hills surrounding the southern suburbs, to see the sun set beyond the plains of Vanves and Montrouge. As they returned they would rest and quench their modest thirst in a suburban guinguette and listen to the shrill fiddling of "la mère Saguet." All this and much more is told in Hugo's verse. The town has grown around and beyond the tavern, where it stands on the southwestern corner of Rue de Vanves and Avenue du Maine, its two stories and steep roof and dormer windows all like an old village inn going to decay.
One day, late in 1828, Hugo started from his house for the prison of the Grande-Force, to visit Béranger. The simple-seeming old singer, during his nine months' imprisonment, had an "at home" every day, receiving crowds of men eminent in politics and in letters. His conviction made one of the most potent counts in the indictment of the Bourbons by the populace, two years later.
It was in this way that Hugo had opportunity to study the prison, in such quick and accurate detail, as enabled him to make that dramatic description of the escape of Thénardier; an escape made possible, at the last, by little Gavroche, fetched from his palatial lodging in the belly of the huge plaster elephant on Place de la Bastille, on the very night of his giving shelter to the two lost Thénardier boys, whom he—the heroic, pathetic, grotesque creature—didn't know to be his brothers any more than he knew he was going to rescue his father!
This prison had been the Hôtel du Roi-de-Sicile, away back in the "middling ages," and had been enlarged and renamed many times, until it came, about 1700, to Caumont, Duc de La Force, whose name clung to it until its demolition early in the Second Empire. Taken in 1754 by the Government, Necker made of it what was then considered a "model prison," to please the King, and to placate himself and the philosophers about him, righteously irate with the horrors of the Grand-Châtelet. The Terror packed its many buildings, surrounding inner courts, with political prisoners, and killed most of them in the September Massacres. Its main entrance was on the northern side of Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, near Rue Malher, recently cut. Just at the southwestern junction of those two streets, stood—men yet living have seen it—the borne (a large stone planted beside the roadway to keep wheels from contact with the bordering buildings), on which was hacked off the head of the Princesse de Lamballe, as she was led from that entrance to be "élargie," on the morning of September 3, 1792.
The landlady of the Hugo household had retired from trade with enough money to buy this quiet place, set far back from this quiet street, intending to end her days in an ideal resting-place. From the first, her smug comfort had been violated by many queer visitors, and when "Hernani" made its hit, there was a ceaseless procession of the author's noisy admirers, by night and by day, on her staircase and over her head—she had kept the ground floor for her tranquil retreat—until the maddened woman gave Monsieur Hugo "notice to quit." She liked her tenants, she hastened to say, she felt for the poor young wife in her loss of sleep, and, above all, she pitied her for having a husband "who had taken to such a dreadful trade!"
So they had to move, and late in 1830, or early in 1831, they went across the river to No. 9 Rue Jean-Goujon, where, in an isolated house surrounded by gardens, in the midst of the then deserted and desolate Champs-Élysées, they could be as noisy as they and their friends chose. Soon after coming here they took their new daughter and their last child, Adèle, to Saint-Philippe-du-Roule for her baptism, as Hugo recalled, twenty years later, at Balzac's burial service in the same church. But here, despite the fields that tempted to walks in all directions, Hugo shut himself in and shut out his friends. For he was bound, by contract with his publisher, to produce "Notre-Dame de Paris" within a few months. With his eye for effect, he put on a coarse, gray, woollen garment, reaching from neck to ankles, locked up his coats and hats, and went to work, stopping only to eat and sleep. He began his melodramatic book to the booming of the cannon of a Parisian insurrection, and he ended it in exactly five and one-half months, just as he had got to the last drop of ink in the bottle he had bought at the beginning. He thought of calling this romance "What there is in a Bottle of Ink," but gave that title to Alphonse Karr, who used it later for a collection of stories. Goethe's verdict on "Notre-Dame de Paris" must stand; it is a dull and tiresome show of marionettes.
This house has gone, that street has been rebuilt, the whole quarter has a new face and an altered aspect. After his book was finished, Hugo hurried out to see the barricades of 1832, which he has glorified in "Les Misérables." At this time, too—by way of contrast—he permits a glimpse of his undisturbed home life. It is seen by a friend, who, "ushered into a large room, furnished with simple but elegant taste, was struck with the womanly beauty of Madame Hugo, who had one of her children on her knee." When he saw the poet, sitting reading by the fireside close by, "he was vividly impressed with the resemblance of the entire scene to one of Van Dyck's finest pictures."
During the rehearsals of "Le Roi s'Amuse," in October, 1832, Hugo found time to settle himself and his family in the apartment on the second floor of No. 6 Place Royale, now Place des Vosges. We shall prowl about this historic spot when we come to explore the Marais; just now, only this apartment and this house come under our scrutiny. It was one of the earliest and grandest mansions of this grand square, and took its title of Hôtel de Guéménée when that family held possession in 1630. Ten years later one of its floors was tenanted by Marion Delorme, whose gorgeous coach with four horses drew a crowd to that south-eastern corner whenever she alighted, and whose dainty rooms drew a crowd of another sort on her evenings, so much the vogue. They were the gathering-place of the swells of her day, of dignitaries of the court and the Church, of men famous in letters and science, all attracted by the charm and wit and polish of this young woman. In his "Cinq-Mars," de Vigny brings together in her salon, among many nameless fine people, Descartes, Grotius, Corneille—fresh from his latest success, "Cinna"—and a youth of eighteen, Poquelin, afterward Molière. This is well enough, but he goes too far in his fancy for a telling picture, and drags in Milton, shy and silent. John Milton had long before passed through Paris, on his way home from Italy, and was then busy over controversial pamphlets in London. Nor can the English reader take seriously the recitation, urged on "le jeune Anglais," of passages from his "Paradise Lost"—written twenty years later—a recitation quite comprehended by this exclusively French audience. For the Delorme is moved to tears, and Georges Scudéry to censure, so shocked are his religious scruples and his poetic taste! De Vigny is surer of his stepping when on French ground, and plausibly makes Marion a spy on the conspirators, in the pay of Richelieu. At that time, during the construction of his Palais-Cardinal—now the Palais-Royal—his residence was diagonally opposite No. 6, in the northwestern corner of Place Royale. That corner has been cut through, and his house cut away, by the prolongation of Rue des Vosges along that side of the square. It has been said that the cardinal's hunting to death of Cinq-Mars was less a punishment for the conspiracy against King and State than a personal vengeance on the dandy, with a hundred pairs of boots, who had supplanted him with Mlle. Delorme. The Marais streets knew them both well. Cinq-Mars lived with his father in the family Hôtel d'Effiat, in Rue Vieille-du-Temple, demolished in 1882. Marion did not pine long after his execution, but went her way gayly, until she was driven by her debts to a pretended death and a sham funeral, at which she peeped from these windows. She sank out of sight of men, and died in earnest, before she had come to forty years, in her mother's apartment in Rue de Thorigny, leaving a fortune in fine lace and not a sou in cash for her burial.
De Vigny proves his intimate acquaintance with this house, during Hugo's residence, by his use of its back entrance for the confederates of Cinq-Mars, making their way to Delorme's house, on the night of their betrayal. And Dumas makes this entrance serve for d'Artagnan in his visits to Lady de Winter and to her attractive maid.
That entrance is still in existence from Rue Saint-Antoine, by way of the Impasse—then Cul-de-sac—Guéménée, and at its end through a small gate into the court, and so by a back door into the house. Through that rear entrance crowded a squad of the National Guard, from Rue Saint-Antoine, during the street fighting of February, 1848, intending by this route to enter the square unseen, and secure it against the regular troops of Louis-Philippe. Some few among them amused themselves by mounting the stairs and invading Hugo's deserted apartment. He had gone, that day, at the head of a detachment of the royal force, not leading it against the rioters, but lending his influence as Peer of France to save, from its bayonets, the fellow-rioters of the men just then intruding on his home. They did no harm, happily, as they filed through the various rooms, and past a child's empty cradle by the side of the empty bed. It had been the cradle of the daughter, Adèle, and perhaps of the other babies, and was always cherished by Madame Hugo. In a small room in the rear, that served as Hugo's study, the leader of the band picked up some written sheets from the table, the ink hardly dry, and read them aloud. It was the manuscript of "Les Misérables," just then begun, but not finished and published until 1862, when the exile was in Guernsey.