Fortunately, at this very juncture, the unwelcome attentions of the Belgian police, who were nervous about the forthcoming publication of Napoléon le Petit, had decided Victor Hugo to leave Brussels and go to Jersey. Juliette was to go also, either in the steamer with him, or in one starting a few hours later. Naturally he urged her to go on writing, if only to bridge over the short separation. She admits that when she landed at St. Helier, on August 6th, 1852, hope had once more gained the ascendant within her breast. For the first time in her life, she was about to enjoy the society of her “dear little exile,” her “sublime outlaw,” all by herself, far from the madding crowd.
II
Victor Hugo resided at first in an hotel at St. Helier, called La Pomme d’Or. Later he settled on the sea-front at Marine Terrace, Georgetown, in an enormous house which, owing to its square shape and skylights, resembled a prison.
Juliette had intended to put up at the Auberge du Commerce, but for twenty years she had never sat at a table d’hôte without the protection of the poet. The proximity of tradespeople and farmers proved insupportable to her. On August 11th she began a search for a suitable boarding-house, and presently concluded a bargain with the proprietress of Nelson Hall, Hâvres-des-Pas, for lodging at eight shillings a week, and board at two shillings a day. This made a monthly expenditure of about a hundred and fifteen francs, to which was added twenty-five francs, the wages of Suzanne, her maid.
Like Marine Terrace, Nelson Hall’s chief claim to maritime advantages was its name. At Victor Hugo’s house there were no large windows overlooking the sea, and in Juliette’s ground-floor rooms, a high paling screened the topmost crest of the highest wave.
Our heroine tried to console herself by listening to the surge of the ocean, and copying the nearly completed manuscript of L’Histoire d’un crime, or the poems the poet intended to add to the volume of Les Châtiments. At the end of September she moved upstairs to a large room on the first floor of the house, whence a wide view could be had of the barren scenery of Hâvres-des-Pas, from the battery of Fort Regent on the right, to the rocks of St. Clément on the left; but Juliette’s peaceful contemplation was constantly disturbed by the violence of the proprietress, a drunkard, who was renowned all over the island for the vigour with which she beat her husband when in her cups.
A further removal was therefore decided upon in January 1853, and carried out on February 6th. Juliette went to live in furnished apartments next door, consisting, as in Paris, of a bedroom, drawing-room, dining-room, and kitchen, on the first floor. They overlooked a vast stretch of sand and shingle, rocks and seaweed.
At first Victor Hugo seldom went to his friend’s house, but met her each day at the outset of his walk and took her with him along roads where the magic of summer glorified every blade of grass. From end to end of the island, Dame Nature had transformed herself into a garden, where all was perfumed, gay, and smiling. Juliette, walking arm in arm with her lover, could feel the glad beating of his heart; her upraised eyes noted that his dear face seemed less worried. With the ingenuity of a twenty-year-old sweetheart, she entertained him of his own country, and invoked memories of the journeys they had made together in former days to the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees. The exile remembered, not the rain, nor the omnibuses, nor the thousand trifles recalled by Juliette, but France ... his own beautiful France.... Under the influence of that voice which had once made him free of the realm of love, his country was restored to him for a fleeting moment.