Truth to tell, she merited a rich share of the praise herself. The little comfort Victor Hugo was able to enjoy, and the moral support he needed more than ever, came to him solely through her.
She lodged almost next door, at No. 10, Passage du Prince,[48] with Madame Luthereau, a friend of her youth, married to a political pamphlet writer. For the modest sum of 150 frs. a month, of which 25 were paid to her servant, Juliette obtained food, shelter, and sincere affection. But what she appreciated more than all these, was the liberty she enjoyed of superintending from afar the poet’s domestic arrangements, and preparing under the shadow of the galleries the dishes and sweetmeats he partook of in the publicity of the Grand’ Place. Every morning at eight o’clock her maid, Suzanne, conveyed to Victor Hugo a pot of chocolate made by Juliette, linen freshly ironed and mended, and sometimes even the modicum of coal the great man either forgot, or did not trouble, to order.
When Suzanne had swept and cleaned the room which Charras, Hetzel, Lamoricière, Émile Deschanel, Dr. Yvan, Schoelcher and sometimes Dumas père daily enlivened with their wit and littered with the ashes from their pipes, she returned at about two o’clock. She found her mistress busy preparing the master’s luncheon—a cutlet generally, which Juliette took the trouble to select herself, in order to make certain that the butcher cut it near the loin! Suzanne started off again bearing the cutlet, the bread, the plates and dishes, and even the cup of coffee! Obedient to her mistress’s injunction, she hurried through the street, for, at any cost, the luncheon must not be allowed to get cold.
When Charles Hugo joined his father in February 1852, it might be supposed that Juliette would relinquish her rôle of cordon bleu; but nothing was further from her intention. She merely proceeded to supplement the daily cutlet with a dish of scrambled eggs, in honour of the young man. Hugo having opened the necessary credit, she continued the task she had undertaken, and prepared two luncheons instead of one. Again, when on May 24th Madame Victor Hugo came for the second time to visit her husband in Brussels, it was Juliette who undertook to cook a little feast for her. In the agitation caused by such a high honour, she forgot to add an extra fork. She worried for the rest of the day over the omission, and apologised in successive letters to the poet, in the terms a dévote might employ to confess a mortal sin.[49]
But these occupations did not prevent the afternoons from hanging heavy on her hands. Victor Hugo spent them in writing Napoléon le Petit; or he organised expeditions to Malines, Louvain, Anvers, with friends; or he yielded to the material pleasures of Flemish life, and accepted invitations to dine at some of those culinary institutes on which Brussels so prides herself.
But none of these resources were open to Juliette. Confined within the four walls of her narrow chamber, her only view was of roofs, and a dull wall, pierced by a single dirty window; she spent whole hours watching a canary in its cage, through the thick panes. She likened her condition to that of the tiny captive. At other times, she allowed her thoughts to roam among past events, and brooded over the packet of letters so cruelly sent to her the year before[50]; she dwelt upon the grief she had endured for many months, the choice the poet had finally made in her favour, and their joint excursion to Fontainebleau to celebrate the reconciliation. Under the depressing influence of the grey Belgian sky, always partially obscured by thick smoke, she realised that her splendid vitality and her love for novelty had departed for ever. Then she allowed jealousy to resume its sway over her, more powerfully than ever.
In this mood, she once more resolved to set Victor Hugo free: “If you tell me to go,” she wrote on January 25th, 1852, “I will do so without even turning my head to look at you.” But again he bade her stay.
Gravely, then, without showing any symptom of her former coyness, she proposed to discontinue her letters.
