Читать книгу Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo - Louis Guimbaud - Страница 8

The poor girl was, in fact, overwhelmed with debt. When Victor Hugo, desirous of setting her free for ever, asked her to draw up a detailed statement of her affairs, she nearly broke down under the task, for there were not only ordinary bills, such as 12,000 fr. to Janisset the jeweller, 1,000 fr. to Poivin the glove-maker, 600 fr. to the laundress, 260 fr. to Georges the hair-dresser, 400 fr. to Villain the purveyor of rouge, 620 fr. to Madame Ladon, dressmaker, 2,500 fr. to Mesdames Lebreton and Gérard for dress materials, 1,700 fr. to Jourdain the upholsterer—but also fictitious and usurious debts intended to disguise money loans, and all the more numerous because they were for the most part invented under the direction of an attorney who answered to the name of Manière. She took good care not to reveal to Victor Hugo, whose own burdens, and practical, economical mind, she was well acquainted with, the amount of her expenditure and the magnitude of her liabilities. The moment came, however, when the creditors realised that they had to deal with a pretty woman inefficiently vouched for by a poet. They lost patience and threatened her, and it was then that Juliette had recourse to money-lenders. The remedy was worse than the evil. Stamped paper soon flooded her rooms. Her furniture was seized, and also her salaries from the Théâtre Français and the Porte St. Martin. She tried to save a few clothes, and was had up for illegally making away with the creditors’ property. Her landlord threatened her with expulsion; she imagined herself homeless, and lost her head.

Instead of confiding in Victor Hugo, her natural protector, she had recourse to former friends. There were many such, from Pradier, the sculptor, to Séchan, the scene-painter of the Opera and other theatres. Pradier replied with advice; he was not without just pretext for refusal, for, since her intrigue with Victor Hugo, Juliette no longer wrote to the father of her child except “par accident et monosyllabes” or else in a school-girl’s handwriting, calculated to cover the pages in very few words. Séchan and a few others were less stingy; they sent small but quite insufficient contributions. She was therefore forced to take the big step of revealing the whole truth to the beloved.

The scene was stormy, although Victor Hugo did not hesitate for a moment before complying with an obligation that was also a satisfaction, since it secured his possession of Juliette. Fussy and meticulous though he was in the small circumstances of life, he knew how to be generous and even lavish in the great—but Juliette’s petty deceptions had infused doubts in his mind; moreover, he was in love and therefore jealous. Towards the end of 1833 and in the early part of 1834, suspicion, anger, unjust recriminations and noisy quarrels became almost daily affairs. As invariably happens in these cases, friends, male and female, interfered. Juliette was slandered by Mademoiselle Ida Ferrier, her understudy in the rôle of Jane at the Porte St. Martin—who would, if rumour may be trusted, have gladly understudied her also in the heart of Victor Hugo—also by Mademoiselle Georges, who was getting on in years[13] and could not forgive the lovers for not acknowledging her sovereignty in the green-room and drawing-room as they admitted it upon the stage. To aspersions and reproaches Juliette opposed, not only indignation, but angry words, violent retorts, and sometimes even insulting epithets; or else she protested in innumerable letters and notes, rendered eloquent by their sincerity. She complained that she was “attacked without the means of defence, soiled without opportunity of cleansing herself, wounded without chance of healing”; she affirmed her intention of putting an end to the situation by suicide or final rupture. Generally Victor Hugo arrived in time to calm her frenzy with a caress or a soothing word, and then Juliette would try to resign herself and let hope spring uppermost once more. But Victor Hugo, under the influence of some new tittle-tattle, resumed his grand-inquisitorial manner, and the tone, words, reproaches and even threats appertaining to the part. The creditors continued to harry her without intermission; so in the end the couple passed from words to actions.

As we have stated above, Juliette’s furniture had been seized, and she was about to be turned out of her apartment in the Rue de l’Échiquier. She had endeavoured vainly to interest her friends, past and present, in her difficulties. Even Victor Hugo, disheartened probably by the difficulties of the task, had returned a refusal. The lovers therefore exchanged farewells which they thought final, and on August 3rd Juliette started for St. Renan, near Brest, where her sister, Madame Kock, was living. Happily she travelled by the Rennes diligence, and there were many halts on the way. From the very first of these she sent an adoring letter to the poet. She wrote again from Rennes, from Brest once more, and lastly from St. Renan. Victor Hugo responded with expressions of poignant regret and remorse, according to those who have read them. He promised to do his very best to find the few necessary banknotes to satisfy the biggest creditors. In the end, he set out for Rennes himself, and rejoined his friend. The lovers returned to Paris on August 10th.

Now commences the most singular period of the life of Juliette, one which has been aptly entitled an “amorous redemption after the romantic manner.”[14] For nearly two years Victor Hugo, taking his mistress as the subject of his experiment, put into practice the theories, in part religious, and in part philosophical, which he professed concerning courtesans, namely: the expiation of faults by faithful, passionate, disinterested love; love itself being considered as a species of sesame, capable of opening wide the doors of science, and throwing light upon all hidden things.

The first condition of redemption was poverty, voluntarily, almost joyously, accepted. The furniture of the Rue de l’Échiquier must be sold and the beautiful rooms given up. A tiny apartment consisting of two rooms and a kitchen was taken for Juliette at No. 4, Rue du Paradis au Marais, at a yearly rental of 400 fr. There she shivered through the winter, and spent part of her days in bed to economise her fuel; but at least she proved that she loved truly and was deserving of love.

No more dresses or jewels ... every evening Victor Hugo repeated to his mistress that dress adds nothing to the charms of a lovely woman, that it is waste of time to try to add to nature where nature herself is beautiful; and proudly, as if indeed she were clothed in the hair-shirt of her former mistresses at the convent, Juliette wrote: “My poverty, my clumsy shoes, my faded curtains, my metal spoons, the absence of all ornament and pleasure apart from our love, testify at every hour and every minute, that I love you with all my heart.”

But there can be no true reformation or conversion without work. So Juliette must work; she must study her parts, make her clothes and even some of Victor Hugo’s, patch others, keep her little house in order, and spend what leisure she can snatch, in copying the works of the master, cutting out extracts from the newspapers, classifying and collecting his manuscripts and proofs.

When he had completed this splendid programme, of which almost every part, as we shall presently see, was carried out to the letter, the poet experienced an overpowering need to find himself alone somewhere with the woman he had finally subjugated. His mind was still quite Virgilian. He had not yet arrived at confusing duty with politics and happiness with popularity. His greatest enjoyment, next to love, was in rural pursuits, and for the indulgence of these he flattered himself he had discovered in Juliette a companion worthy of himself. The lovers had barely settled in the Rue du Paradis au Marais before they went off to the valley of Bièvres. Half mystics, half pagans, worshipping equally at the shrines of the forest divinities and those of the village churches, they entered upon the consummation of what they themselves called their “marriage of escaped birds.”

JULIETTE DROUET IN THE RÔLE OF LA PRINCESSE NÉGRONI.

HOUSE IN THE VILLAGE OF LES METZ, IN THE PARISH OF JOUY-EN-JOSAS, SEINE-ET-OISE, In which Juliette Drouet lived while Victor Hugo was staying at Les Roches. This is the house referred to in La Tristesse d’Olympio.