The infirmities of increasing age occasionally prevented our heroine from following her indefatigable companion. She would then remain at her chimney corner, reading the Lives of the Saints or some devotional book. She was more than ever prone to reflect upon death. She had been greatly shocked by the rapidity with which Madame Victor Hugo had succumbed, and she felt that her turn, and that of the poet, must soon come. She prayed ardently that she might be permitted to go first.
In August 1869 Victor Hugo took Juliette with him, first to Brussels, where Charles Hugo and Paul Meurice joined them, and then to the Rhine, which held so many sweet memories for both. On their return to Guernsey on November 6th, he proceeded to plan a journey to Italy for the following winter. He also made arrangements for the revival of Lucrèce Borgia at the Porte St. Martin. The journey to Italy was never carried out, but on February 2nd, 1870, on the anniversary of its first performance, Lucrèce had a brilliant success.
The old poet was enchanted.
Foreseeing the fall of the Empire, and guessing that the French were sick of a régime which, during the last eighteen years, had confused government with spying, and politics with police, he redoubled the activity of his propaganda, and indited letter after letter, manifesto after manifesto. The more Juliette confessed to the lassitude of age, the more he seemed to defy his years.
CHAPTER VII
“THAT WHICH BRINGS SATISFACTION TO THE HEART”
I
WHEN Victor Hugo grasped the full extent of the national disaster in August 1870, he started immediately for Belgium. On the proclamation of the Republic, he proceeded to the frontier, where a few official friends awaited him.
The scene that took place on his arrival was impressive, though somewhat theatrical. The “sublime outlaw” asked for the bread and wine of France. After he had eaten and drunk, he begged Juliette to preserve a fragment of the bread, and buried his face in his hands with the gesture of one who is dazzled by too much light. Juliette relates that big tears flowed through his clenched fingers. The bystanders stood in silence, awed by his emotion....
The poet and our heroine stayed with Paul Meurice at Avenue Frochot for a time, and then went to the Hôtel du Pavillon de Rohan. Finally they settled, he in a small furnished apartment at 66, Rue de la Rochefoucauld, and she close by, in a fairly spacious entresol rented at fourteen hundred francs, at 55, Rue Pigalle.