The feebler a babe is, the more need there is for haste to baptize it. Major Sigisbert Hugo, in command at that time at Besançon, which was the depot of a Corsican regiment, seeing his third son was so delicate, looked round and selected Victor Faneau de la Horie for godparent, who was shot in 1812 for being the instigating spirit of the conspiracy of which Mallet was the active agent. And from him the poet received his Christian name ofVictor, which, added to his surname, no matter whether it precedes or follows it, can be translated in no other way than to mean—
"Conquering spirit—triumphant soul—victorious breath!"
The poet never thought of calling himself by any other name than the accident of his birth had decreed, as had his maternal cousin Chassebœuf, and we shall even see later that, when the addition would have been useful to him, he declined to call himself Hugo-Cornet.
Victor's father was one of the rough champions bred by the Revolution; he took up arms in 1791, and did not sheathe his sword until 1815. Others kept theirs in use until 1830 and 1848, but it was rarely that it brought them good fortune. In 1795 he was a lieutenant and fought in the Vendéan War. It was his company which formed part of the detachment, led by Commandant Muscar, that took Charette in the forest of la Chabotière. By a strange coincidence, it was Colonel Hugo who captured Fra Diavolo in Calabria, and General Hugo who took Juan Martin, otherwise known as theEmpecinado, on the banks of the Tagus; they were the three principal leaders of that great period of wars which lasted more than a quarter of a century. Of course it will be well understood that we do not compare the noble and loyal Charette with the Calabrian brigand or the Spanish bandit. Charette was shot, Fra Diavolo hung and Juan Martin garroted. After the peaceful settlement of la Vendée the lieutenant got his captaincy, left the Loire for the Rhine and civil war for foreign campaigns, and became attached to the general staff of Moreau, with whom he made the campaign of 1796; he next went into Italy, to serve in Masséna's army corps.
In connection with my father, I have mentioned what an antipathy Bonaparte felt towards officers who came to him already distinguished by their actions in the armies of the West and the Pyrenees and the North. Captain Sigisbert Hugo was yet another instance. At the battle of Caldiero, he was commanded by Masséna to hold the head of the bridge, with his company, and he was the pivot on which the fate of the whole battle turned; Masséna accordingly expected to be able to recompense this magnificent feat of arms by obtaining Captain Hugo his majority (chef de bataillon). But he had not reckoned for the general-in-chief's hatred. Bonaparte asked whence Captain Hugo had come, and when he learnt that he had belonged to the Army of the Rhine, he cancelled the nomination. King Louis-Philippe did pretty much the same injustice to the general as Bonaparte had to the captain: the name of the battle of Caldiero is on the Triumphal Arch atÉtoile, but that of General Hugo is not there. The poet avenged this strange oversight in the last line of his final stanza on the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile:—
"Quand ma pensée ainsi, vieillissant ton attique,Te fait de l'avenir un passé magnifique,Alors, sous ta grandeur je me courbe effrayé;J'admire! et, fils pieux, passant que l'art anime,Je ne regrette rien devant ton mur sublime,Que Phidias absent, et mon père oublié!"
However, as Captain Hugo was not among the number of those who are beaten in their career, he obtained his majority at last, but under what circumstances I am not aware. However that may be, he was a major, and happened to be in garrison at Lunéville when the conferences for the ratification of the treaty of Campo-Formio were begun in that town. At these conferences Joseph Bonaparte, who was later King of Naples, then King of Spain and the Indies, was plenipotentiary of the Republic. I knew this King of Naples and Spain well at Florence. His disposition was more gentle than elevated, more placid than bold; like his brothers Louis and Lucien, and we might even say like his brother Napoleon, he had had at first a passion for literature; the others had written memoirs, comedies and epic poems, he had written novels. His daughter, Princess Zenaïde, who is now Princess of Canino, was, I believe, named after one of her father's heroines. Joseph Bonaparte, as plenipotentiary, became intimate with Major Hugo, who, as we have mentioned, joined the depot of the Corsican regiment at Besançon when the conferences were concluded. And we have also stated that it was there the famous poet was born of whom we are now writing.
Some months after his birth, the depot of which his father was in command received orders to undertake garrison duty on the isle of Elba. And on that island, where Napoleon began his decline and fall, the author of theOde à la Colonne, or, rather, of theOdes à la Colonne, began to grow strong.
The first tongue that the child, who was predestined to be socelebrated, learnt to talk was Italian; and the first word he pronounced—after those two words with which all human voices, lips and tongues begin,papaandmamma—was an apostrophe to his governess: "cattiva!" he called out one day, before anyone knew he had learnt the meaning of the word. Perhaps it may not be generally known thatcattivameansnaughty.Of the isle of Elba the child remembers nothing, and nothing of his early sojourn among his fellow-men; nothing of this earliest halt on the threshold of his existence has remained in his memory.
In 1806 the plenipotentiary Joseph was made King of Naples; he then remembered his friend the major of Lunéville; he inquired what had become of him, learnt that he was living on the isle of Elba, and that he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, or, as it was still called in 1806,gros-major.He wrote to him and proposed he should come and join fortunes with him, and aid him in the establishment of his throne in the beautiful city which all ought to see before they die, and leave in order to die as soon as they have seen it. But no one dared venture on such military escapades without the permission of the master. Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo asked leave of the Emperor Napoleon to attach himself to King Joseph. The Emperor Napoleon condescended to reply that he not only authorised this change of service, but that he should be pleased to see a French element in his brother's armies, which were only the wings of his own army.
Frenchmen never take service in a foreign army without certain feelings of regret, but this army was destined to be one of the wings of the National Army. And to ameliorate so far as he could the hardships of this exile, the newly made king promotedgros-majorHugo a colonel, made him an aide-de-camp and appointed him governor of the province of Avellino. When installed in his governorship, the husband sent for his wife and children, whom he longed to have near him. So, in 1807, Madame Hugo and her three sons set out for Naples; and the child continued the life of wandering which had begun in his cradle, and which, continued throughhis youth, was to be his lot to the threshold of manhood. It is to these long journeys taken in his dawning days that the poet alludes in the following lines:—
"Enfant, sur un tambour ma crèche fut posée;Dans un casque pour moi l'eau sainte fut puisée;Un soldat, m'ombrageant d'un belliqueux faisceauDe quelque vieux lambeau d'une bannière usée,Fit les langes de mon berceau.Parmi les chars poudreux, les armes éclatantes,Une muse des camps m'emporta sous les tentes.Je dormis sur l'affût des canons meurtriers;J'aimai les fiers coursiers aux crinières flottantes,Et l'éperon froissant les rauques étriers.Avec nos camps vainqueurs, dans l'Europe asservie,J'errai; je parcourus la terre avant la vie,Et, tout enfant encor, des vieillards recueillisM'écoutaient, racontant d'une bouche ravieMes jours si peu nombreux et déjà si remplis.Je visitai cette île en noirs débris féconde,Plus tard premier degré d'une chute profonde!Le haut Cenis, dont l'aigle aime les rocs lointains,Entendit, de son antre où l'avalanche gronde,Ses vieux glaçons crier sous mes pas enfantins.Vers l'Adige et l'Arno, je vins des bords du Rhône;Je vis de l'Occident l'auguste Babylone:Rome, toujours vivante au fond de ses tombeaux,Reine du monde encor sur un débris de trône,Avec une pourpre en lambeaux.Puis Turin; puis Florence, aux plaisirs toujours prête;Naple, aux bords embaumés où le printemps s'arrête,Et que Vésuve en feu couvre d'un dais brûlant,Comme un guerrier jaloux qui, témoin d'une fête,Jette, au milieu des fleurs, son panache sanglant?"
Happy, a hundred times happy, is the man who is able to embroider the web of his life with such magic characters! I too have had recollections similar to those of my literarybrother, but I have expressed mine in humble prose, and I rejoice to find them expressed again in his splendid and sonorous poetry. Thence ascend the earliest recollections of the child, indelible recollections, which still shine clearly when extreme old age has come upon us, as a mirage reflects a vanished oasis.
Hugo, who had only once been across beautiful Italy, often talked to me about the grand pictures of it that remained on his memory; they were as present to his mind as though he had been my companion during my fifteen or twenty journeys therein! But he never remembered things in their normal conditions; they always recurred to him in connection with some momentary incident or accident that happened to have changed their ordinary aspect. Thus, Parma was remembered as surrounded by a flood; Acquapendente's volcanic peak stood out lit with the lightnings of a storm; the Trajan column in connection with the excavations that were being carried on round it. And yet his recollection was as exact as it could be. Florence, with its embattled inns, its massive palaces, its granite fortresses; Rome, with its leaping fountains, its obelisks which make it look like a town of ancient Egypt, and its colonnade of Bernino, twin-sister to that of the Louvre; Naples, with its promenades, its Pausilippe, its rue de Toledo, its bay, its isles and its Vesuvius. The three children had amused themselves on the long journey by making crosses with straw and putting them in the cracks between the glass doors and the grooves they ran in. When the Italian peasants, especially those who lived in the neighbourhood of Rome, saw these simple Calvaries, faithful in their worship of images, they would kneel down or at least make the sign of the Cross. The young travellers had been much terrified at the sight of bandits' heads stuck on poles by the roadsides, shrivelling up in the sun. For a long time the poor children refused to believe they were really human heads, and persisted that they were bewigged masks like those hung outside all hairdressers' shops at that period; but when they were taken down and shown them, in all their hideousreality, they remained very deeply engraved on Victor's memory.
In the case of a man like Hugo, a genius out of the common run, who has already played and will still play a great part in the literary and political history of his country, it is the duty of those who knew him to depict him for his contemporaries and successors, in the light and shade which formed the character of the man and the genius of the poet. Let us hope that the genius of the poet will stand out flawless throughout our narrative: the character of the man will speak for itself by his line of conduct and his accomplished actions.
A home for Madame Hugo and her sons was not prepared for them at Naples, but at Avellino, capital of the province over which Colonel Hugo had been appointed governor. This home was in a palace, a palace of marble, like most palaces in that country, where marble is more common than stone; but this palace possessed a strange peculiarity which was certain to attract the attention and to remain in the memory of a child.
One of those shocks of earthquake which are common in the Italian peninsula had just shaken Calabria from end to end; the marble palace of Avellino had been shaken like the rest of the buildings; yet, being on a more solid foundation than they, after oscillating and trembling in the balance for a moment, it kept upright, but remained cracked from roof to base. The crack extended diagonally across the wall of Victor's bedroom, so that he could see the country through this most original opening almost as plainly as through his window. The palace was built on a sort of precipice, lined with great nut trees, which produce the enormous nuts calledavelines(filberts) from the name of the district in which they are grown. When these nuts reached maturity, the children spent their days wandering among the trees, hung over the abyss, to gather the bunches. No doubt this taught Hugo that familiarity with high places, that scorn of precipices and that indifference to empty space, which he possessed beyondmost men and which filled me with admiration, for I turn giddy on the balcony of a first storey.
About this time, one of the bitterest enemies of the French was Michel Pezza, nicknamed Fra Diavolo, about whom my confrère Scribe composed a comic opera, although the life of the original was a most terrible drama! Fra Diavolo had begun as a brigand chief, something after the fashion of Cartouche, but with more cruelty. He practised that romantic profession, until Cardinal Ruffo, another brigand chief, only in a higher sphere of society, conceived the idea of reconquering Naples for his beloved sovereign Ferdinand I., who had abandoned his capital, disguised as a lackey, in consequence of the French invasion, which was provoked by his insolent proclamations.
Everyone knows the terrible story of the Two Sicilies, the orgies of blood presided over by two courtesans, in which a whole generation disappeared, and in which, in order to prevent the ruin of the State, they were obliged to give fixed salaries to the executioners, who had been having ten ducats per execution.
Fra Diavolo joined his band to Cardinal Ruffo's army, with which he marched upon Naples, recapturing it in company with the cardinal, and finally being made colonel (and even count, so I understand) by Ferdinand I. Nevertheless, Ferdinand I. returned to Sicily later, not only a fugitive before the French invasion, but also before a brother of the emperor; and Fra Diavolo, with his rank of colonel and his title of count, started afresh his guerilla warfare and his brigandage. Colonel Hugo was commissioned to take him, and the price of 20,000 ducats was put on his head. He had already escaped once through a prodigious feat of audacity and address. He was pursued, hounded out and hemmed in on every side, with two hundred and fifty to three hundred men, the remnant of his band; but he hoped to be able to escape by a defile that he believed was known only to himself. So he had directed his course towards this defile, but, to his great surprise, he found this final way of escape guarded like the rest. His last hope had vanished!He had no means of turning back; they had tried every gorge and found a wall of bayonets barring the way.
"Come along, then; we have but one way left us!..." exclaimed Fra Diavolo. "Perhaps they may let us take it! Bind me hand and foot to a horse.... You have taken me prisoner, and are leading me to the French colonel to obtain your twenty thousand ducats, the price of my head. Leave the rest to my lieutenant and do as he does."
They had to hasten, for they were within sight of the French detachment, which was growing uneasy as to who the troop of men might be; moreover, they were accustomed, especially in desperate circumstances, to follow Fra Diavolo's instructions with blind obedience. In a second he was strapped and bound down, like Mazeppa, on a horse, and the cortège continued its way, making straight for the French detachment. This detachment was composed of five or six hundred men and was commanded by a major. When they saw the troop marching to them, the French battalion marched to meet it and the two corps came to close quarters. The Calabrian troop halted within a hundred feet of the French, and only the lieutenant, clad like a simple peasant, stepped forward out of the ranks and advanced towards the major.
"What is your business and who is the man you have strapped there?" demanded the major.
"That strapped man is Fra Diavolo," replied the lieutenant, "whom we have caught ... and we want the twenty thousand ducats promised for his head."
Instantly, the name of Fra Diavolo was passed from mouth to mouth.
"You have taken Fra Diavolo?" exclaimed the major.
"Yes," the lieutenant went on, "and, as proof, there he is, bound hand and foot and strapped to the horse."
Fra Diavolo's eyes flashed fire.
"How did you take him?" asked the major.
The lieutenant invented a fable, to the effect that Fra Diavolo, hunted, pursued, hemmed about, had sought shelter in a village which he believed to be friendly to him; but hehad been arrested, seized and bound during the night, and the whole village had formed his escort for fear he should escape.
"Bandits! wretches! traitors!" exclaimed Fra Diavolo.
The explanation was all sufficient for the major; besides, the chief thing was that Fra Diavolo was caught; any accompanying explanations concerning the capture were mere questions of curiosity.
"Very good!" he said; "hand me over your bandit."
"Certainly; but first hand over to us the twenty thousand ducats."
"How is it likely I should have twenty thousand ducats with me?" retorted the major.
"In that case," said the lieutenant, "no money, no Fra Diavolo!"
"Humph!..." said the major.
"Oh! I am well aware that you are the stronger force," remarked the lieutenant, "and that you can take us if you wish; but, if you do take us, you will have stolen twenty. thousand ducats from our pockets."
The major was a logical soul, and he realised the justice of the reasoning.
"Very well," he said, "take your prisoner to the headquarters; I will give you a hundred men to accompany you."
The lieutenant and Fra Diavolo exchanged a sly glance which implied that the major had played into their hands.
The hundred men of the escorting party and the two hundred and fifty Calabrian peasants set off for the headquarters six leagues away. But the headquarters never received news of Fra Diavolo, and the hundred men of the escort never reappeared. When a defile was reached, the hundred Frenchmen were slaughtered, and Fra Diavolo and his two hundred and fifty men regained the mountains! Colonel Hugo meant to go on with the pursuit; and, from henceforth, there was a constant series of outwittings and marches and counter-marches between him and the Calabrian chief, which ended in Fra Diavolo being defeated. Taken a second time, Fra Diavolo was sent to Naples, where histrial was to take place, and the 20,000 ducats were immediately paid over to those who had taken him. One morning Colonel Hugo learnt that Fra Diavolo was condemned to be hung.
"Hung!" The word sounded odd to French ears. Colonel Hugo at once started off for Naples and obtained an audience of the king, from whom he wished to solicit a commutation, not of the penalty, but of the manner of execution. He asked that, as Fra Diavolo had been a soldier, he might be shot. Unluckily, Fra Diavolo had been a bandit before he became a soldier, and he had served his own ends before enlisting in the services of Cardinal Ruffo and Ferdinand I. The documentary evidence shown to Colonel Hugo by King Joseph was so crammed with wilful crimes, murders and incendiary fires that Colonel Hugo was the first to withdraw his proposition. Consequently, Colonel Michel Pezza, otherwise Fra Diavolo, and Count of I know not what title, was summarily hung.
In 1808, Napoleon having declared that the Bourbons of Spain had ceased to reign, Joseph Bonaparte passed from the throne of the Two Sicilies to that of Spain, where Colonel Hugo followed him. Upon his arrival in Madrid, Colonel Hugo was made brigadier-general, governor of the Cours de Tagus, first major-domo and first aide-de-camp to the king, a grandee of Spain, Count of Cogolludo and Marquis of Cifuentes and of Siguença! These were high proofs of favour; but there was one among them all which Colonel Hugo accepted with some aversion: and that was the title of marquis.
"Sire," he said to Joseph, when the King of Spain condescended to announce his intentions towards him, "I thought that the emperor had abolished the title of marquis?"
"Not in Spain, my dear colonel ... only in France."
"Sire," insisted the new general, "if the emperor has only abolished it in France, Molière has abolished it everywhere else."
And General Hugo contented himself with using the title of count, and never bore that of marquis. But, in spite ofthis, he was none the less be-marquised and be-majordomoed. Among the privileges which accompanied this latter office was that of presenting people to the king. On one occasion the new major-domo had to present to King Joseph the Archbishop of Tarragona, who had come to profess his allegiance to the king. The Archbishop of Tarragona had a reputation for ugliness, which left far behind it that which General Hugo's son later bestowed on the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame. So, when the major-domo looked at the worthy prelate and recognised that his ugliness had not only not been exaggerated but that it was, perhaps, even worse than people had said, ignorant that the archbishop could speak and understand French, he could not refrain from adding, after he had pronounced the all-important formula in pure Castilian, "Señor, presento á vuestra Magestad el se señor arzobispo de Tarragona," the following words in French: "The most villainous-looking brute in your Majesty's kingdom!"
The archbishop respectfully saluted the king; then, turning to the major-domo, he said in the purest French, with a faultless accent—
"I thank you, general!"
In the precarious state of unsettlement through which Spain was then passing, General Hugo felt it to be out of the question, when he left Naples, to bring his family with him. So Madame Hugo, Abel, Eugène and Victor returned to France. Directly Madame Hugo returned to Paris, she took an old convent that had belonged to the Feuillantines; for, during the two years spent in the palace of Avellino, she had learnt to appreciate the effect on the health of her children of an airy residence, where they had room to run wild and play at liberty. We shall see, later, in connection with this convent, what recollections its large garden, its glorious sunshine and its cool shade left on the mind of the poet. Here the three children were allowed full liberty, as I had been allowed in the great park of Saint-Remy whose splendours I have described. Here Hugo managed to avoid going through the university treadmill, and learnt his Latin fairly well and hisGreek scarcely at all, thanks to the care of a married priest, an ex-Oratorian, named Larivière.
"Il savait le latin très-bien, très-mal le grec!" his pupil said of him, in a scrap of verse yet unpublished.
Madame Hugo dwelt in this retreat, which sheltered her fine brood, from 1808 until 1811. In the early part of 1811 she received a letter from her husband. The government of King Joseph seemed settled, and therefore it became necessary to go to Madrid, where her three children could be attached to the court as pages.
Departure for Spain—Journey from Paris to Bayonne—The treasure—Order of march of the convoy—M. du Saillant—M. de Cotadilla—Irun—Ernani—Salinas—The battalion ofécloppés(cripples)—Madame Hugo's supplies of provisions—The forty Dutch grenadiers—Mondragon—The precipice—Burgos—Celadas—Alerte—The queen's review
Departure for Spain—Journey from Paris to Bayonne—The treasure—Order of march of the convoy—M. du Saillant—M. de Cotadilla—Irun—Ernani—Salinas—The battalion ofécloppés(cripples)—Madame Hugo's supplies of provisions—The forty Dutch grenadiers—Mondragon—The precipice—Burgos—Celadas—Alerte—The queen's review
As we are about to see, it was then a great business to travel to Madrid. First, there was France to cross from Paris to Bayonne. This was merely a question of time. A century ago it took five weeks, and forty years ago it took nine days, to cover a distance that, later, was accomplished in fifty hours, and now is done in fifteen or eighteen. One used to sleep at Blois, at Angoulême and at Bordeaux. Then there was Spain to cross, from Bayonne to Madrid. In due course, we shall see what an uncomfortable business it was to cross Spain from Bayonne to Madrid in the year of grace 1811, in the seventh year of the reign of Napoleon. Madame Hugo hired the whole diligence to take herself, her children and her servants across France. Diligences, at that time, and during the whole of the period, bore the emperor's livery; they were large coaches, painted green; the interior held six and thecabriolets de cuirthree seats—a total of nine places. The whole of the luggage was put behind and above. Six persons only occupied the vast ark, which started on its journey at the accustomed hour, and rolled heavily away towards the frontier. At Poitiers, two passengers wished to take their seats in the coach, a Frenchman and a Spaniard. They were told that the whole diligence was taken by a French lady; but they appeared to be so disappointed that Madame Hugo offeredboth of them seats on condition that they did not pay anything, and they accepted her offer. Madame Hugo kept the interior of the coach for herself, Abel, Eugène, the servant and her chambermaid; Victor declined to be dispossessed of his seat on the cabriolet, and he stayed there with the two strange passengers. He kept an ineffaceable recollection of one of the travellers whose name was Isnel, because he stuffed him and his brothers with cakes and sweetmeats the whole of the journey. At last, on the ninth day, they reached Bayonne; but there they were obliged to stop: they could not go into Spain with what was called treasure. This is a curious bit of history. Joseph was King of Spain, but his sovereignty was confined to Madrid, and to those parts occupied by the French army. All the remaining portions of the country were in a state of insurrection. When any army corps entering the country made an inlet through the insurrectionary forces, the latter, after opening before it, closed up behind it again, and the army became a sort of floating island—a Delos, constantly buffeted by the waves of revolt. There are no means of levying contributions under such circumstances. So the King of Spain and of the Indies, who, in reality, was no more in possession of Spain than of the Indies, not only was unable to maintain the splendours of his court, but would even have died of starvation at Madrid, if Napoleon had not sent this prefect of the empirehis incomefour times a year. King Joseph's income was 48,000,000 francs. Therefore, every three months they sent him a consignment of 12,000,000 francs. And this was called thetreasure.Of course, it will be readily understood that this treasure trove was lovingly coveted by Spanish guerilleros, and a strong escort had therefore to accompany it, to keep these gentlemen as much at a distance as possible. Travellers who had to go to Madrid put themselves under the protection of this escort just as pilgrims to Mecca put themselves under the protection of caravans. But, in spite of every precaution, and the escort of two or three thousand men, the treasure and the pilgrims were not always safe; the preceding convoy had been attacked, pillaged and slain at Salinas,with frightful atrocity. General Lejeune, if I remember rightly, painted a picture of this attack, which was exhibited in the Salon of 1824 or 1825. Notwithstanding this, however, it was much safer to go with the convoy, and our party therefore waited nearly a month for it at Bayonne. It arrived about the end of April.
Meantime, Madame Hugo had had plenty of time to complete her preparations; she had purchased a carriage, the only one, moreover, there was for sale in Bayonne. It was one of those large trunk-like conveyances only to be seen nowadays in the drawings of Piranesi and also, perhaps, occasionally in the procession of a pontifical gala in the streets of Rome. Picture to yourself an enormous chest, hung between two poles, upon colossal straps, with steps united to these poles, so that you began to climb over the pole, and ended by descending into the carriage. This vehicle had one advantage, however, since, at a push, it could be converted into a fortress, its sides being shot-proof, and only destructible by bullets or grape-shot. Before starting, grave dispute arose concerning the course to take during the march. There were about three hundred carriages and five or six hundred passengers waiting, like Madame Hugo, for the reassuring escort; and it was no easy matter to enforce rules of etiquette in such a crowd as this, composed, besides, almost exclusively of men or women attached to the highest offices in the State, or members of the oldest families of Spain.
Casting a glance over the order of the march, it will be seen that the desirable places, concerning which everyone put forth his own special claims, possessed a value which make the persistency with which they were quarrelled for excusable. This is how the march of the convoy was arranged, with its escort of a detachment of three thousand men:—
First, at the head as advance-guard, marched five hundred men, with loaded arms. Next came the waggons containing the treasure, twenty-five or thirty carriages, surrounded by a thousand men placed five deep. Then came the travellers, according to their rank, title, grade and, especially, according tothe seniority of their titles to nobility. These travellers who, as we have said, might easily number some six hundred, filled three hundred carriages, some drawn by four and some by six mules, forming a line a league in length. This line could not be defended so energetically as the treasure; it would have needed ten thousand men instead of three to protect it. So the carriages were only guarded by a single line of soldiers, instead of five abreast. Finally, the convoy was completed by five hundred more men dragging a piece of cannon forming the extremity of this immense reptile, which could bite with its head, and sting with its tail. The consequence of this disposition was that, to be properly guarded, you had to be quite sure you were of that portion of the convoy which was immediately behind the waggons containing the treasure. Therefore, it was not simply a question of etiquette, who came first, second or third, but a matter of life or death.
Madame Hugo, who had to protect herself and her three children at the same time, advanced her claim not as a fearful woman, but as an anxious mother. Several grand ladies of Spain of very old family, and, among them, the Duchess of Villa-Hermosa, had a right, if they had chosen to enforce it, of taking precedence over Madame Hugo; but as Madame Hugo was the wife of a French general, aide-de-camp to the king, she took precedence of all others and went first, in spite of the protests, recriminations and complaints of the grandees of Spain, male and female, her superiors. She had, also, been wonderfully helped in her claim by the arrival at Bayonne of an aide-de-camp from her husband, M. le Marquis du Saillant, son of that sister of Mirabeau whom the famous orator loved and held in sufficiently high esteem to acquaint with his political sayings and doings, in one of the most curious letters he has written.
The escort was commanded, first, by the Duc de Cotadilla, a man of noble name, great fortune and huge appetite, who had thrown in his lot with Joseph; and, secondly, by Colonel de Montfort, a young man of thirty, who looked charming in his hussar's uniform, and belonged to the race of curleddarlings who were nevertheless brave young colonels; amongst whom were Colonels Lefèvre, Bessières and Moncey—all sons of marshals who had been left killed or mutilated on the battlefields of the Empire; Colonel Moncey was, probably, the only one who survived that ten years' tempest of shot and shell, and saw the Restoration. The Duke of Cotadilla and M. de Montfort produced a very different impression on the youthful imagination of the future poet. Twenty years later we find a reminiscence inClaude Gueuxof the impression made by the Duc de Cotadilla's appetite.
"Claude Gueux was a great eater; it was a peculiarity of his constitution; he possessed a stomach made in such a fashion that the food supply for two men was hardly sufficient to last him one day. M. de Cotadilla had a similar appetite and laughed at it: but what may be a matter of mirth to a grand-duke of Spain who possessed 500,000 sheep is a burden to a working man and a misfortune to a prisoner."
There is no other mention either before or after this paragraph of the Duc de Cotadilla inClaude Gueux; so we see that this illustrious Spanish grandee left a very special mark on Victor Hugo's memory.
I do not know whether Hugo has anywhere spoken of Colonel Montfort; but he will do so, some day or other, for the earliest memories of childhood are bound to break forth sooner or later.
The Marquis du Saillant was a man of fifty or fifty-five, who loved taking life easily, always courageous, but bravest of all if anyone disturbed him at a meal or during his sleep, since nothing being more disagreeable to him than to be disturbed, he thereupon did his very best to make the enemy suffer for disturbing him.
Well, at last the huge cavalcade was set in motion and crossed the Bidassoa in view of the isle des Faisans, the famous political and matrimonial island. The first night they slept at Irun. The child's mind was vividly impressed by the fresh style of architecture, strange manners and different tongue. He ever remembered that halt at Irun, andrevisited it in his poetical dreams, as well as the towns of Burgos, Vittoria and of Valladolid, noted in other ways:—
"L'Espagne me montrait ses couvents, ses bastilles;Burgos, sa cathédrale aux gothiques aiguilles;Irun, ses toits de bois; Vittoria, ses tours;Et toi, Valladolid, tes palais de familles,Fiers de laisser rouiller des chaînes dans leurs cours.Mes souvenirs germaient dans mon âme échauffée;J'allais chantant des vers d'une voix étouffée,Et ma mère, en secret observant tous mes pas,Pleurait et souriait, disant: 'C'est une féeQui lui parle et qu'on ne voit pas!'"
The manner of travelling, too, made a deep impression on the brain of the child who, as a man, was to possess the descriptive faculty in the very highest degree! How well one can picture the five hundred men who formed the advance-guard; the thousand escorting the heavy, noisy waggons; the great carriage with its gilding half worn off, that came next, drawn by six mules, reinforced, in difficult places, by two and even four oxen, led by amayoral,[1]escorted by twozagales![2]Think of the burning sun, the parching dust, the arms sparkling in the glowing atmosphere, of villages laid waste and the hostile and threatening populations, the unspeakably terrible and bloody recollections which seemed to belong rather to the isles of the Pacific than to a European continent!—and we shall have some idea of scenes which we cannot attempt to describe, which only Hugo himself could relate.
The first day they went three leagues! The second day, they halted for the night at the village of Ernani. In the poet's recollections, the name of the village is changed to that of a man. Everyone knows the romantic bandit, lover of Doña Sol, adversary of Charles V., and rival of Ruy Gomez. On the third day, a curious spectacle met the travellers' gaze: a battalion ofécloppés.A battalion ofécloppéswas a gathering of soldiers of all arms, the débris of a score of combats, or, may be,of a single battle; for, in those days, battles were barbarously conducted: often, two, three or four regiments were wiped out; as many as a thousand, fifteen hundred or two thousand wounded would be picked up from the field of battle; a leg would be cut off here, an arm there, a bullet extracted from one, splinters pulled ont of another. All these would go to the rear and, when cured, or nearly so, from the débris of four or five different regiments would be formed a battalion ofécloppés(cripples), which was sent back to France and left to defend itself on the way thither. The poor fellows had to extricate themselves from the terrible game of war as best they could.
Our cortège, then, met one of these battalions at Salinas. It was composed of Light Infantry, Cuirassiers, Carabineers and Hussars. Not a man among them but had lost an arm or a leg, a nose or an eye; but they were gay, and sang and shouted "Vive l'empereur!" The children were particularly struck by the fact that every man carried a parroquet or a monkey on his shoulder or at his saddle-bow; some even had both. They had come from Portugal, where they had left their limbs behind them, and whence they had brought this menagerie.
At Mondragon, two or three leagues before Salinas, thanks to the devotion of the soldiers, they escaped a very serious danger. By "they," I mean Madame Hugo and her three children. But a slight explanation will be necessary before giving an account of this incident. The soldiers received their rations every three days; according to their usual custom, they consumed the three days' rations in the first twenty-four hours, or flung away what food burdened them; so that the whole cortège usually fasted one day, at least, out of three. This fast was the more painful to bear—especially in the matter of liquids, which were not thrown away but usually consumed prematurely—as they journeyed over arid plains, under a burning sun and in suffocating air. They started at break of day, to avail themselves of the cool air, halted at noon, to eat and drink and then they set off again and travelled till nightfall. The soldiers camped round the waggons; the officers and travellers lodged in the villages or towns on billet;Madame Hugo was generally lodged with the Alcade. There, her distribution of rations was made her every night: it was the same allowance as that given to her husband when he was on campaign, namely, twenty rations. Now these portions were very large; great mountains of bread and meat and more wine than she could possibly consume, were piled up before her every night. The soldiers who marched to right and left of her carriage, by the side of the six mules and the immense chariot, amounted to about forty men. They were Dutch grenadiers; for the French army, at that time, like the Roman legions of the time of Augustus, was a mixture of all the nations of Europe. These forty men shared the rations of Madame Hugo, who had no need of twenty portions of bread, meat and wine for herself, her children and her servants, since she and they were nearly always supplied with meals by the host with whom they lodged; neither did themayoraland the twozagalesneed any, since they lived on a glass of water, a piece of bread smeared with garlic and the smoke of their cigarettes. The forty Dutchmen were accordingly deeply grateful to Madame Hugo, and their gratitude found expression on two occasions. We will relate the first at once: the second will come in due course.
Mondragon is left by a dark and steep tunnel which forms the gate of the town; the roadway through this tunnel takes a sudden turn on the right, by the side of a precipice. Some slight palings were placed at the edge of the roadway to give any vehicles being carried over the abyss a last chance to pull themselves up, if they happened, by chance, to knock up against one of these barriers. Whether themayoralandzagaleswere unacquainted with the geography of the district, or whether they were unable to control the heavy coach, when the vehicle came out of the dark tunnel it was advancing at a rapid pace, carried away by its own weight, towards the precipice, when the Dutch grenadiers, perceiving Madame Hugo's danger, rushed to the heads of the mules and, forcing them quickly to turn round, stopped the carriage just as one of the wheels had begun to roll over the edge of theprecipice. For one instant the travellers were literally suspended between life and death. But life gained the day. Two or three soldiers were nearly flung off by the shock; but some of them clung to the traces and others to the poles. And, as it happened, the only injuries were a few bruises and sores, which did not prevent them making merry that night with Madame Hugo's distribution of rations. The Duc de Cotadilla, who was very gallant, in spite of his sixty years, and who cantered by Madame Hugo's carriage door throughout the journey, added some bottles of rum to that distribution, and there was a regular feast.
After about twelve or fourteen days' journey, they reached Burgos. They had had frequent alarms since they left Bayonne, but had often found that what they took for guerilleros were only quiet mule-drivers, united into bands for their own protection. This mistake was easily made, since the mule-drivers were armed almost like soldiers and could not be distinguished from such, on account of the dust raised round them, except at close quarters, when it would be seen they rode mules, not horses. At Burgos a halt of three or four days was made, and Madame Hugo took the opportunity these days offered to show her children the cathedral, that wonderful pile of Gothic architecture, the gate of Charles V. and the tomb of the Cid.
Of the tomb of the Cid, the soldiers had made a rifle-target. The child left Burgos dazed and breathless with wonder. Young as he was, he already possessed a passionate admiration for thechefs-d'œuvreof architecture; and the cathedral of Burgos, with its sixty or eighty bell-towers, is, indeed, a masterpiece of its kind. By a strange coincidence, General Hugo, who was in command of the Spanish retreat in 1813, knocked down three of these bell-towers when he blew up the citadel of the town of Burgos, of which he was the last governor.
The farther they advanced, the more frequent did traces of destruction become apparent. After Burgos, they stopped at a village which had once been Celadas; it was a heap of ruins from one end to the other; and, as though it had been feared that the place might revive, the ruins had been thoroughly setfire to. Nothing could be sadder than to see that fire-destroyed village in the middle of the sunburnt plains. A few wall sides stood crumbling and roofless and, of these, the children belonging to the caravan made a fortress, soon dividing their small party into besiegers and besieged. War, which was, in those days, the trade of the fathers, was the play of the children. Little Victor and his two brothers formed part of the besieging party. Just when they were scaling a breach to enter the town, and Victor, who always loved high places, was running along the top of a wall, doubtless to make a diversion during the attack, he lost his footing and fell head foremost from the top of the wall into an uncovered cellar, and his head struck against the corner of a stone with such violence that he was stunned and lay where he fell. No one had seen him fall: his descent had been effected too rapidly for him to cry out. So the assault was carried on as though the besiegers had not lost one of their number. When the town was taken, vanquishers and vanquished counted their numbers, and only then did they discover that one of them, young Victor Hugo, was left gloriously on the field of battle. They began to search for him, Abel and Eugène at the head, and so carefully did they hunt into every nook and corner, that they soon discovered the wounded victim in the depths of a cellar. They thought he was dead, as he did not give any signs of life, and they rushed off with him amidst great lamentations to Madame Hugo, who soon saw he was still alive.
We have forgotten to mention that there were specimens of all kinds of humanity in the convoy, including six or eight Councillors of State, whom Napoleon was sending ready-made to his brother! So a doctor was easily found. The doctor attended to the child and, luckily, the shock had been worse than the actual blow; the wound was therefore more terrifying to look at than dangerous and, although the mark of the cut can even to-day be plainly seen, where Hugo parts his hair, by the next day the child had forgotten all about it; and like Kléber after the capture of Alexandria, he was ready to take part in besieging a fresh town.
So far, nothing serious had disturbed the march of the caravan. Occasionally, a bullet from a hidden guerillero would bury itself in the thickness of the panels of one of the carriages, or break the glass of a door; and Colonel Montfort would send a score of hussars to search among the undergrowth from whence the stray shot had come; but it was easy enough in that part of the country through which the travellers were then passing for the culprit to slip down the sides of a ravine or gain a mountain gorge and put himself beyond reach.
One night, however, they had a genuine alarm, and expected this time that they were really face to face with a formidable enemy. They had traversed nearly two-thirds of their way and had reached the small town of Valverde, a collection of sombre-looking houses with high walls and no windows, looking like a nest of fortresses of the time of Louis XIII. As usual, the escort had set up its camp at the entrance to the town, sentinels had been posted in all directions and the travellers and officers had received their billeting papers for the houses of the principal inhabitants. Madame Hugo, as usual, lodged with the Alcade. As he left her, the Duc de Cotadilla said—
"Be on your guard, madame; we are in the heart of the insurrection, and your host has not only a very bad reputation but also a very evil-looking face."
Madame Hugo could only judge of the face, and her opinion thereon entirely coincided with that of the Duc de Cotadilla. Moreover, the inside of the house accorded with the appearance of the town and with her host: doors were barred with iron and lined with sheet-lead; there were severe-looking vestibules as dark as the passages in a convent, huge bare-walled rooms with only the earth for flooring on the ground floor and bricks on the first floor; and the furniture was composed of wooden benches and leather arm-chairs. When Madame Hugo had seen over the whole house to select the rooms that suited her best, she decided on an immense low room on the ground floor, lighted by a branch of pinewood burning in an iron hand whichwas attached to the wall; she drew ont her bed from the immense portmanteau which enclosed it during the day, and put the children to sleep on a dozen sheepskins, placed M. du Saillant in a recess adjoining the large room and, when night fell, awaited what might happen. The outlook was not a cheerful one; the events that might be expected were terrible to contemplate, for the Spanish had been steadily gaining a reputation for ferocity since the beginning of the war; and the tortures they invented for the wretched Frenchmen who fell into their hands were unmentionably horrible. Among primitive peoples, who are wholly savage, like the Turks, for instance, you know what to expect; it will be one of their three methods of torture and execution—chopping off heads, strangulation or impalement; and the imagination of the executioners does not exceed those three ways of killing. But with a civilised people like the Spanish, who had their Charles V., Philip II. and the Inquisition, it is another matter: the miserable man under sentence of death may be roasted over a slow fire, sawed between two planks, put on the rack, hung by the feet; or have his entrails unravelled like a skein of cotton; or his body slashed in slices like a sixteenth-century doublet; or his eyes put out, his nose, his tongue or his hands cut off. Spanish executioners are men of resource! Besides, if they had exhausted their own imagination, there remained the resources of the Inquisition, for it should be borne in mind that the men who fought against us were Catholics first and foremost, priests and saints!
In spite of reflections like these, dispiriting enough to a mother who is answerable to her husband for the safety of herself and their three children, Madame Hugo began to fall asleep, envying the tranquillity of Colonel du Saillant, who had been asleep a long time in the recess they had discovered adjoining this low room, when, suddenly, the cry "To arms!" and the noise of sharp firing roused her. She had gone to bed with very few clothes off, especially after the warning she had received, and she was up in an instant. The fusillade went on continuously, though somewhat irregularly directed, and the cries "To arms!" redoubled. In the midst of these cries,someone knocked on the outside shutters of the large low room, loud enough to be heard, but meant evidently to be reassuring. Madame Hugo opened the shutter. It was Colonel Montfort, who had knocked on the shutters with the hilt of his sword.
"It is I, madame," he said, "Colonel Montfort, who have the honour to address you. The enemy has attacked us, but we have taken measures to give it a warm reception, therefore be tranquil. In any case, please barricade yourself in here, and only open to the Duc de Cotadilla or to myself."
Madame Hugo thanked Colonel Montfort for his attentive care; M. du Saillant went out to him, and she shut the door fast behind him, barricaded it, with every available precaution, and waited further developments. The firing continued for some time, and even occasionally seemed to increase; finally it decreased and gradually died out. Which had been victorious? French or Spaniards? She did not know as yet, but she had good hopes that the French had won, and soon there came a fresh rapping on the shutters, and, amidst shouts of laughter, which Madame Hugo recognised as coming from the Duc de Cotadilla, Colonel Montfort and her husband's aide-de-camp, she was asked to open the great door. This done, the three officers entered.
A trumpeter of the hussars had discovered, just outside the town, a bit of meadow where he thought that his horse, to which he was greatly attached, could find a little fresh grass when the sentinels had been placed, he had picketed his horse in this tiny oasis. A peasant had noticed and wondered at this confidence and, when night fell, he had slipped from bush to bush, in order to steal the horse; the animal had allowed him to approach until he felt the picket detached, when, with a violent shake, he freed himself from his thief, and rushed off neighing and rearing back to the French camp. The sentinel advanced shouting, "Who goes there?" And the horse, of course, went past him without replying. The sentinel fired and fell back on the first outpost, crying, "To arms!" The first outpost fired and cried, "To arms!" and then the soldiersin their turn had run to their piled and loaded muskets, fired and shouted, "To arms!" Hence the alarm, the firing, the fearful tumult, which for an hour had filled the little town of Valverde with fire, smoke and noise.
Nobody dreamt of trying to sleep again for the remainder of that night, so Madame Hugo and the three officers spent it together, and next morning, at daybreak, they continued their march.
The following day, another scene almost as grotesque as the alarming incident of the previous night, was in preparation for the travellers, under the rays of the hot noontide sun. They were halting at that hour in the middle of a great plain. The soldiers were covered with dust, and streaming with perspiration, under a sun of 35 degrees Centigrade, having finished their meal, when a courier arrived for the Duc de Cotadilla, to announce that the queen, who was also on her way under an escort to rejoin her husband, would soon pass by the cortège. The Duc de Cotadilla thanked the courier for his information and, when he had learnt the time that they were likely to meet the queen, and found they could still count on nearly an hour, he sent the courier on his way. Then he went to the door of Madame Hugo's coach, where, we know, he was accustomed to hold converse.
"Madame," he said, "I venture to ask you to lower your blinds, first on account of the sun, and next because of the sights you would see going on among the escort. The queen is going to pass by in an hour's time, and I desire to show her due deference by making my men dress themselves in parade attire; and, to do this, they will have to change everything, from their collars to their leggings. During this transformation, which will be even more extensive than I have described, there will be evolutions which may be all right for a general or a colonel to see, but which are more unseemly for a lady to look upon. I have warned you, madame, and I am now going to warn the Duchesse de Villa-Hermosa and the other ladies."
And, with his usual politeness, the Duc de Cotadilla tookleave of Madame Hugo and issued his commands. Madame Hugo drew down her blinds.
The orders of the Duc de Cotadilla were that the men should at once put on parade dress to line the route for the queen. The men quickly formed single line along the whole of the roadside, piled arms, opened knapsacks and began their toilet. They had just reached the most delicate part of their toilet, on account of which the Duc de Cotadilla had cautioned the ladies to lower their carriage blinds, when a huge cloud of dust appeared on the top of a mountain five hundred feet off, and cries of "The queen! The queen!" rang through the air. The queen had come half an hour sooner than the courier had announced. A stronger head than that of the Duc de Cotadilla might have been upset by such an accident as this; moreover, in no book on the art of warfare had provision been made for such a contingency. So he kept silence, and, left to their own inspiration, the drums beat the call to arms, the soldiers shouldered their weapons and the non-commissioned officers yelled, "Fall in!"
Thus it fell ont that the Queen of Spain held a review such as no other queen or empress, were she even Marguerite of Burgundy or Catherine II., had ever held; and, as she learnt later that M. de Cotadilla had been forewarned of her arrival, nothing removed the idea from her mind that the nakedness of those three thousand men was a joke which the illustrious duke had prepared for her.
The queen went by, and, as the parade dress was of no further use, they resumed their everyday uniform, restored their fine clothes to their knapsacks, the signal for starting was given and the journey was resumed.