The Memoirs of Victor Hugo | Page 5

illusions, revolts, wrath, anguish, and also its gaiety; for during these
long months Paris never gave up hope and preserved an heroic
cheerfulness.
On the other hand a painful note runs through the diary kept during the
meeting of the Assembly at Bordeaux. France is not only vanquished,
she is mutilated. The conqueror demands a ransom of milliards--it is his
right, the right of the strongest; but he tears from her two provinces,
with their inhabitants devoted to France; it is a return towards
barbarism. VICTOR HUGO withdraws indignantly from the Assembly
which has agreed to endorse the Treaty of Frankfort. And three days

after his resignation he sees CHARLES HUGO, his eldest son, die a
victim to the privations of the siege. He is stricken at once in his love of
country and in his paternal love, and one can say that in these painful
pages, more than in any of the others, the book is history that has been
lived.
PAUL MAURICE.
Paris, Sept. 15, 1899.

AT RHEIMS.
1823-1838.

AT RHEIMS.
1823-1838.

It was at Rheims that I heard the name of Shakespeare for the first time.
It was pronounced by Charles Nodier. That was in 1825, during the
coronation of Charles X.
No one at that time spoke of Shakespeare quite seriously. Voltaire's
ridicule of him was law. Mme. de Staël had adopted Germany, the great
land of Kant, of Schiller, and of Beethoven. Ducis was at the height of
his triumph; he and Delille were seated side by side in academic glory,
which is not unlike theatrical glory. Ducis had succeeded in doing
something with Shakespeare; he had made him possible; he had
extracted some "tragedies" from him; Ducis impressed one as being a
man who could chisel an Apollo out of Moloch. It was the time when
Iago was called Pezare; Horatio, Norceste; and Desdemona,
Hedelmone. A charming and very witty woman, the Duchess de Duras,
used to say: "Desdemona, what an ugly name! Fie!" Talma, Prince of
Denmark, in a tunic of lilac satin trimmed with fur, used to exclaim:
"Avaunt! Dread spectre!" The poor spectre, in fact, was only tolerated
behind the scenes. If it had ventured to put in the slightest appearance
M. Evariste Dumoulin would have given it a severe talking to. Some
Génin or other would have hurled at it the first cobble-stone he could
lay his hand on--a line from Boileau: ~L'esprit n'est point ému de ce
qu'il ne croit pas~. It was replaced on the stage by an "urn" that Talma
carried under his arm. A spectre is ridiculous; "ashes," that's the style!

Are not the "ashes" of Napoleon still spoken of? Is not the translation
of the coffin from St. Helena to the Invalides alluded to as "the return
of the ashes"? As to the witches of Macbeth, they were rigorously
barred. The hall-porter of the Théâtre-Français had his orders. They
would have been received with their own brooms.
I am mistaken, however, in saying that I did not know Shakespeare. I
knew him as everybody else did, not having read him, and having
treated him with ridicule. My childhood began, as everybody's
childhood begins, with prejudices. Man finds prejudices beside his
cradle, puts them from him a little in the course of his career, and often,
alas! takes to them again in his old age.
During this journey in 1825 Charles Nodier and I passed our time
recounting to each other the Gothic tales and romances that have taken
root in Rheims. Our memories and sometimes our imaginations,
clubbed together. Each of us furnished his legend. Rheims is one of the
most impossible towns in the geography of story. Pagan lords have
lived there, one of whom gave as a dower to his daughter the strips of
land in Borysthenes called the "race-courses of Achilles." The Duke de
Guyenne, in the fabliaux, passes through Rheims on his way to besiege
Babylon; Babylon, moreover, which is very worthy of Rheims, is the
capital of the Admiral Gaudissius. It is at Rheims that the deputation
sent by the Locri Ozolae to Apollonius of Tyana, "high priest of
Bellona," "disembarks." While discussing this disembarkation we
argued concerning the Locri Ozolae. These people, according to Nodier,
were called the Fetidae because they were half monkeys; according to
myself, because they inhabited the marshes of Phocis. We
reconstructed on the spot the tradition of St. Remigius and his
adventures with the fairy Mazelane. The Champagne country is rich in
tales. Nearly all the old Gaulish fables had their origin in this province.
Rheims is the land of chimeras. It is perhaps for this reason that kings
were crowned there.

Legends are so natural to this place, are in such good soil, that they
immediately began to germinate upon the