Quotation from M. Alfred Asseline.
“Dans l’état où sont nos mœurs, il est admis que les hommes supérieurs ont le privilège d’imposer à ce qu’on appelle le monde, à la société dont ils sont le charme et l’honneur, une amie,—l’amie,—la femme qu’il leur a plu de choisir comme le témoin voilé de leurs travaux, celle qui, légitime ou non, se tient dans l’ombre, confidente discrète du génie, au moment ou ses rayons s’allument.
“Ce n’est pas la vulgaire Égérie, c’est la Muse, c’est l’âme même du poète qu’il nous est permis, dans les épanchements de l’amitié, de voir, d’admirer, de respecter.”
Careful Exclusion of Impure Ideas.
The reader will observe in these carefully chosen words how deliberately all suggestion of impurity is excluded, and how the writer dwells upon intellectual companionship alone. He may understand this still better by reference to a special case.
Story of Victor Hugo and Juliette Drouet.
Parisian Opinion on that liaison.
Respectful Tone of the Press.
About the year 1833 there was an actress at the theatre of the Porte-Saint-Martin, named Juliette Drouet, who performed in two of Victor Hugo’s plays, Lucrèce Borgia and Marie Tudor. The poet was pleased with her performance, and thought well of her intelligence. In this way he was attracted to herself, and she became his mistress, and lived either with him, or very near him, till she died many years afterwards. She had a residence close to his own at Guernsey, which Victor Hugo arranged and decorated. When he returned to Paris she returned with him and continued to be his very near neighbour. It was the fashion in Paris to think only of the intellectual side of this liaison, and to speak of Madame Drouet with the utmost respect as the poet’s wise and discreet friend, a kind of living Muse for him. The lawful wife herself, who knew all, spoke without bitterness of her rival. “These gentlemen,” she said one day to her cousin, meaning her husband and son, “have arranged a little fête at Madame Drouet’s, and they are expecting you. I insist on your going, it will please my husband.” When Madame Drouet died, the notices in the newspapers were most respectful to her, and sympathetic with the old poet who had lost “the faithful friend and wise and gentle adviser of so many years.”
Protection by the Use of Pure Language.