But there can be no true reformation or conversion without work. So Juliette must work; she must study her parts, make her clothes and even some of Victor Hugo’s, patch others, keep her little house in order, and spend what leisure she can snatch, in copying the works of the master, cutting out extracts from the newspapers, classifying and collecting his manuscripts and proofs.
When he had completed this splendid programme, of which almost every part, as we shall presently see, was carried out to the letter, the poet experienced an overpowering need to find himself alone somewhere with the woman he had finally subjugated. His mind was still quite Virgilian. He had not yet arrived at confusing duty with politics and happiness with popularity. His greatest enjoyment, next to love, was in rural pursuits, and for the indulgence of these he flattered himself he had discovered in Juliette a companion worthy of himself. The lovers had barely settled in the Rue du Paradis au Marais before they went off to the valley of Bièvres. Half mystics, half pagans, worshipping equally at the shrines of the forest divinities and those of the village churches, they entered upon the consummation of what they themselves called their “marriage of escaped birds.”
