[2] Any one interested in their real story will find it told according to the original historical documents in Cuvillier-Fleury's Portraits Politiques, 1851, pp. 377, &c.
[3] For example, Émile Deschamps, Poésies, edition of 1841, p. 124. "Une page des martyrs."
[4] Lamartine, Mémoires; Voyage en Orient; Méditations poétiques; Nouvelles méditations poétiques; Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, i. ii; Victor Hugo, Odes et Ballades; Edmond Biré, Victor Hugo avant 1830.
[X]
LOVE IN THE LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD
Of great significance as regards the whole character of the period is the answer to the question: What is the nature of the amatory sentiment in the writings of the authors of this group?
Of all the emotions treated of in literature the emotion of love is that which receives most attention, and as a rule makes most impression on the reader. Knowledge of the manner in which it is apprehended and represented is an important factor in any real understanding of the spirit of an age. In the age's conception of the passion of love we have, as it were, a gauge by which we can measure with extreme accuracy the force, the nature, the temperature of its whole emotional life. We see gallantry transformed into passion in the works of Rousseau. In the writings of Germany's great poets this passion is chastened and humanised. The German Romanticists turn love into a sort of moonlight sentimentality. In revolutionary times it is represented as at war with existing and regular social relations. In the works of the sceptical authors of the nineteenth century, such as Heine, it is undermined by doubt of its existence.[1]
In such a period as that at present under consideration, a period which rejects the claims of the body, pins its faith to authority, and prizes order above all things, love necessarily receives a characteristic imprint. If we glance at the most notable descriptions of love which the period has bequeathed to us, we gain some idea of its main types of humanity, male and female.
The first pair to meet our eyes are Eudore and Velléda in Les Martyrs.