On June 28th of the same year, at one of those copious banquets to which he still did full justice, and in the midst of an argument with Louis Blanc concerning Voltaire and Rousseau, Victor Hugo had a cerebral attack which alarmed his friends exceedingly. His speech faltered, he gesticulated feebly. Two doctors summoned in haste failed to give reassurance, and prescribed absolute rest in the country. On July 4th, the poet was escorted to Guernsey by a large retinue consisting of his grandchildren, the Meurice family, Juliette, Monsieur and Madame Lockroy, Richard Lesclide, and another friend, Pelleport. But no sooner had they reached the island, than Victor Hugo began to show symptoms of agitation. It could not be on account of his illness, for he was living quietly and comfortably, rejoicing at the amusement the season afforded his friends, and taking his own share of it. But, according to the testimony of one who has published a book concerning the master as witty as it is frank,[56] the reason was that he had left behind him in Paris the heroines of several intrigues; amongst others, the young person whose behaviour had occasioned Juliette’s fit of anger and departure for Brest,[57] and he was fearful lest the post should convey to Guernsey the forlorn cooings of the deserted doves, and that some echo of them should reach Juliette.
Our heroine was certainly informed of some of the circumstances, for on August 20th, 1878, while still at Guernsey, she wrote the old man a letter which is a revelation of the changed character of their intercourse. Victor Hugo answered somewhat crossly and contemptuously, and nicknamed Juliette “the schoolmistress.”
On his return to Paris on November 10th, he consented to remove to the little house at Avenue d’Eylau where he ended his days, and which was then almost in the country. Juliette took the first floor, and he occupied the second. But presently she arranged to spend the nights in a spare room next to his, so that she might be at hand to attend upon him if necessary.
From that moment it may be said that her life declined into uninterrupted sadness and servitude. She was suffering from an internal cancer, and knew that she was condemned to die of slow starvation! Nevertheless, she played her part of sick nurse with a devotion and a minute attention to detail to which all witnesses tender their homage. She it was who entered the poet’s chamber each morning, and woke him with a kiss; she, who put a match to the fire ready laid on the hearth, and prepared the eggs for his breakfast; she, who waited on the old man while he ate, opened his letters, made extracts from them when necessary, and answered the most important. It was she, again, who undertook to keep her beloved friend company until midday, and to amuse him, and acquaint him with the current political and literary news.
The task was heavy enough to weary a much younger brain. Juliette found it almost beyond her strength. In 1880 she was so overwrought that she had become nervous, irritable, and restless. At night, when her offices of reader and sick nurse were over, it must not be supposed that she was able to sleep. From her bed in the adjoining room, with eyes fixed, and ear on the stretch, she watched the slumber of her dear neighbour, under the great Renaissance baldachino, with its crimson damask curtains. Did he cough, she rose hurriedly and administered a soothing drink; but if she coughed herself, and thus ran the risk of awaking him, she was furious, longed for a gag, and tried to suppress the labouring of her suffering breast. She cursed the years that had made her love a burden to its object, and chid her body for a bad servant no longer subservient to her will.
Severe as were the physical sufferings she bore so patiently under shadow of the night, Juliette preferred them to the sadness she endured during the long, solitary afternoons, while her former companion was at the Senate, at the Académie, or elsewhere.
