Within the portal of the Church of Saint-Paul and Saint-Louis, in Rue Saint-Antoine, on either side, is a lovely shell holding holy-water, given by Hugo in commemoration of the first communion of his eldest child, Léopoldine. In this church she and young Charles Vacquerie were married in February, 1842. Both were drowned in August of that year. And this is the church selected by Monsieur Gillenormand for the marriage of Marius and Cosette, because the old gentleman considered it "more coquettish" than the church of his parish. For he lived much farther north in the Marais, at No. 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, where a new block of buildings has taken the place of his eighteenth-century dwelling. For this marriage, after playing the obdurate and irascible godfather so long, he was suddenly transformed into a fairy godmother.
Toward the end of 1848, after the escape of Louis-Philippe, Hugo moved to Rue d'Isly, No. 5, for a short period, and then to No. 37, now No. 41 Rue de la Tour-d'Auvergne, where he remained until 1851. In the Paris Bottin during these years he is entitled—considering it, strangely to us, his especial distinction—"Représentant du Peuple." The youthful Royalist poet, the friend of Charles X., the friend later of Louis-Philippe, had become an oracle of Democracy. He added nothing to his honestly earned fame by his long-winded bombast in the Tribune; and however genuine his attitude may have been, it appealed almost entirely to the groundlings.
They came in crowds about this house, with flaming torches and blaring bands, howling their windy homage. They are remembered, with mute disapproval, by the old concierge of the house, Lagoutte Armand. With real pleasure does he recall "Monsieur Hugo," and prattle memories of his friends like Béranger, and of his family. There were two sons, Charles and François-Victor, the former known as "Toto," a "très gentil garçon." In his loge, pointed out with pride by the concierge, to whom it was given by Hugo, is a rare engraving of the poet, which makes him serious, almost stern, of aspect, his mouth showing its strength in the beardless face, his hair plastered down about the superb brow. His head was carried always well bent forward, and he went gravely, the old man tells us. The house is unaltered, but the street has grown commonplace since the days when its half-countryfied cut attracted Hugo and Béranger and Alphonse Karr. This witty editor of "Les Guêpes," something of a poseur with his pen, had a genuine love of flowers and of women, on whom he lavished his pet camelias and tulips. He cultivated them in the garden of the house, now numbered 15, which he occupied in this street from 1839 to 1842. The sculptor Carrier-Belleuse is now in possession of Karr's old rooms, and his studio covers the one-time garden. Béranger came, in 1832, to No. 31, then a small cottage behind a garden, where he lived for three years. The bare walls of the communal school, numbered 35, now cover the site of his home, and there are no more cottages nor gardens in the street.
From 1851, when the coup-d'état of December drove him first into hiding and then into exile, through all the years of the empire, we find in each year's Bottin: "Hugo, Victor, Vicomte de, de l'Institut, . . . . ." These dots represent a home unknown to the Paris directory; no home indeed, for there can be none for a Frenchman beyond his country's borders. Of Hugo's dwellings during these years nothing need be said here, save that his long residence in Guernsey gave him his characters and colors for "Les Travailleurs de la Mer," and such slight acquaintance with seafaring and ships as is shown in "Quatre-Vingt-Treize." Where he got the fantastic English details of "L'Homme-qui-rit," no man shall ever know.
Here, too, he finished "Les Misérables," writing it, he said, with all Paris lying before him in his mind's eye; or, as he puts it, with the exile's longing, "on regarde la mer, et on voit Paris." His topographical memory was none too accurate, and errors of slight or of real importance may be detected in "Les Misérables." It is really in his poetry that he has done for his "maternal city" what Balzac did for her in prose; singing in all tones the splendor and the squalor of "la ville lumière," to use his swelling phrase. Despite some errors, and despite the pulling-about of Paris since Valjean's day, we may still trace his flight through nearly all that thrilling night, when Javert and his men hunted him about the southern side of the town, and across the river from the Gorbeau tenement. This tenement, so striking a set in many scenes of the drama, was an historic mansion run to seed, standing just where Hugo places it—on the site of Nos. 50 and 52 Boulevard de l'Hôpital, almost directly opposite Rue de la Barrière-des-Gobelins. Facing that street—renamed Rue Fagon in 1867—on the northern side of Boulevard de l'Hôpital, the little market of the Gobelins replaces the squalid old shanty which gave perilous shelter to Valjean and Cosette, and later to Marius.
From here, driven by a nameless terror after his recognition of Javert in the beggar's disguise, the old convict started, leading Cosette by the hand. He took a winding way to the Seine, through the deserted region between the Jardin des Plantes and Val-de-Grâce, turning strategically on his track in streets through which we can follow him as easily as did Javert. He was not certain that he was followed, until, turning in a dark corner, he caught full sight of the three men under the light before the police-station. Hugo places this station in Rue de Pontoise, and this is a mistake; it was then and is still in the next parallel street, Rue de Poissy, at No. 31.
Now, Valjean turns away from the river, carrying the tired child in his arms, and makes a long circuit around by the Collége Rollin—long since removed to the northern boulevards—and by the lower streets skirting the Jardin des Plantes—no longer the Jardin du Roi—and so along the quay. He is bent, as Javert guessed, on putting the river between himself and his pursuers. He crosses Pont d'Austerlitz, and plunges into the maze of roads and lanes, lined with woodyards and walls, on the northern side of the river. There Javert loses the trail; while for us, that trail is hidden under new streets laid out along those lanes, and under railway tracks laid down on those roads. We come in sight of the fugitive again, as he climbs the convent wall, drawing up Cosette by the rope taken from the street lantern. Here is that high gray wall, stretching along the eastern side of old Rue de Picpus, and the southern side of the new wide Avenue Saint-Mandé. This wall—of stone, covered with crumbling plaster—is as old as the garden of "Les Religieuses de Picpus," which it surrounds, and as the buildings within, which it hides from the street. We may enter the enclosure by the old gate at No. 35 Rue de Picpus, the very gate through which Cosette was carried out in a basket, and Valjean borne alive in the nun's coffin to his mock burial. About the court within, the red-tiled low roofs of the ancient foundation peep out among more modern buildings. Behind all these and beyond the court stretches the garden, a portion still set aside for vegetables, and we look about for Fauchelevent's protecting glasses for his cherished melons. What we do find is the very outhouse, in an angle of the wall, on which Valjean dropped; it is a shanty nearly gone to ruin, but serving still to store the garden tools of Fauchelevent's successor.
The Cemetery of Picpus.