But hardly had they resumed the peaceful tenor of their ways when they were forced to uproot again. On February 8th, 1871, Victor Hugo was elected a member of the Assemblée Nationale, and, as he could not bear to be parted any longer from his grandchildren, he removed his whole household to Bordeaux, including his son Charles, his mistress Juliette, and the little heroes of L’Art d’être grandpère. They started on February 13th, and the poet took his seat on the 15th. On March 8th he felt it his duty to resign, on account of the refusal of his colleagues to allow Garibaldi to be naturalised a Frenchman. He was about to leave, when a fresh sorrow struck him down: this was the sudden death of Charles Hugo, on March 13th.
The body of the unfortunate and charming young man was taken back to Paris, and the funeral took place on the 18th, in the sinister scenario of the rising insurrection. On the 21st, Victor Hugo went to Belgium to make arrangements for his grandchildren’s future. Two months and a half later, he was expelled from Brussels, for rewarding its hospitality by throwing his house open as a refuge to the political miscreants who had just fired Paris and shed the blood of their compatriots. He was the object of a violently hostile demonstration on May 27th, 1871, and afterwards received the decree of expulsion. He went to Vianden, in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and returned definitely to Paris in September 1871. Juliette had accompanied him everywhere.
No sooner was the luggage unpacked, than she bravely undertook to amuse him, by forming a small circle of his friends and admirers, in her drawing-room at Rue Pigalle. But the undertaking was beyond her powers. Her long sojourn in a solitary island and her complete absorption in one sole object, had resulted in the loss of what might be termed her social talent. In France, and especially in Paris, everything was new to her, everything caused her agitation.
The state of her health was not such as to restore her equanimity. She suffered from gout and heart-disease, was growing stout, walked with difficulty, slept badly, and was terribly weary: “I am so tired,” she writes, “that I feel as if even eternity would fail to rest me.”
Victor Hugo, therefore, gave up the entertainments at Rue Pigalle; the boxes were repacked, and on August 14th, 1872, the party returned to that island where everything spoke to the exile of former joys, from the anemones he loved, to the cherry-tree he had planted himself.
In the mornings, at half-past eleven, Victor Hugo used to make his joyous appearance at Hauteville Féerie, and escort his friend to Hauteville House, where the luncheon-table was proudly attended by Georges and Jeanne. In the afternoon, a family drive was organised. The largest carriage on the island was hardly big enough to contain the dear beings by whom he loved to be surrounded. The hours drifted peacefully towards dusk.
While our heroine lived on future hopes and past memories, Victor Hugo enjoyed the present more than ever. Every one knows of his gallantry, and the bold front he offered to advancing age. Amongst other comforting illusions, he chose to believe that women prefer old men, and he gloried in proving his theory. With more sense than she has been credited with, Juliette sometimes managed to close her eyes and ears; at other times she gently rallied him, congratulating him on the success of his most recent exploit. But more often it must be admitted that her temper was not equal to the nobility of her nature. To jealousy was presently added the pain of humiliation and offended dignity, caused by a vulgar intrigue, conducted under her very eyes, at her own fireside.