Clad in a dress of white jaconet striped with pink, such as she usually affected, her head covered with an Italian straw hat, left over from the days of her former affluence, with swelling bosom, rosy cheeks, and smiling mouth, she resembled a flower springing from the rude calyx formed by the aged tree. A wide-awake flower, indeed, for, from the first sign of the approach of Victor Hugo, she would fly to him, and afford him one more opportunity of admiring the far-famed aerial gait, that fairy footstep, so light that it had been compared to the sound of a lyre.
Then followed kisses, caresses, a flood of soft words, more kisses, and a rapid rush into the cool green depths whither the twitter of birds invited them. When they issued forth again, silent now, Juliette walked first, making it a point of honour to push aside the branches and thorns before her poet; and he was content, gazing upon the tiny traces left upon the moss or sand by the feet that looked almost absurd by reason of their minuteness.
At the far end of a clearing a fountain burbled. Juliette made a hollow of her little hands and collected a delicious draught for their burning lips. Drops dribbled from between her fingers, and, seeing them, her lover knew that here was a fairy able to “transmute water into diamonds.”[20]
We must not imagine, however, that the treasure of their love expended itself entirely in this sportive fashion. If it be true that passion is the stronger for an admixture of intellect, it follows that only persons of distinguished parts are capable of extracting the full measure of delight from sentimental intercourse. Victor Hugo was far too wise to neglect the training of the sensibilities of his young mistress. Like some block of rare marble, she submitted herself to this able sculptor in the charming simplicity of a nature somewhat uncultivated and rugged, as she herself owns, and he perceived in the formless material the growing suggestion of the finished statue he was soon to evolve. The forest was the studio whither he came every afternoon to cultivate, through novel sensations and delights, his own poetry and eloquence. The forest gave him colour for colour, music for music....
At other times Victor Hugo encouraged in Juliette an inclination for prayer and tearful repentance. He retained, and she had always possessed, strong Catholic sensibilities. The mere satisfaction of sensuality without the hallowing influence of absorbing love spelt defilement, from their point of view. Hence followed painful remorse for a past which the lover liked to hear his mistress bewail, and which she despaired of ever redeeming. Her rôle was the abasement of Magdalen; his, the somewhat strained attitude of an apostle or saviour.
Nothing could be more peaceful or uneventful than Juliette’s evenings. She devoured with the appetite of an ogress the frugal supper put before her by Madame Labussière, repaired the damage done to her clothes by the afternoon’s ramble, or studied some of the parts in which she hoped to appear sooner or later at the Théâtre Français. At ten o’clock she went to bed. This was the much-prized moment of her solitude, when she retired, as she says, into the happy background of her heart to rehearse in spirit the simple events and delights of the day, to recall the face of her lover, see him, speak to him, and hang upon his answers; then, as drowsiness gradually gained the upper hand and clouds dimmed the dear outline, to surrender to slumber. It was at Les Metz that she coined the happy phrase: “I fall asleep in the thought of you.” Sometimes the wind moaning in the heights awoke her, and she resumed her sweet musing. The poet was in the habit of working at night; she would picture him in his room at Les Roches, bending over his writing-table. Then she “blessed the gale that made her the companion of the dear little workman’s vigil across the intervening space.”
As soon as dawn broke she was up again. She jumped out of bed, ran to the window, opened the shutters, and interrogated the heavens—not that she feared rain, any more than she minded “blisters on her feet or scratches on her hands"—but she had only two dresses, a woollen and a linen, and the condition of the weather controlled her choice of the two. Her toilet was rapid, her breakfast simple. She spent the remaining time copying the manuscripts confided to her by Victor Hugo. Then, lightly running, as she says, like a hare across the plain, she started for the rendezvous. As becomes a loving woman, she was always first at the trysting-tree. She scrutinised the intertwined initials she herself had carved upon its bark, or conned again from memory the verses she had found the day before in its hollow trunk. She “sings them in her heart,” presses them to her bosom, and kisses the letters she has brought in answer.
