Читать книгу Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo - Louis Guimbaud - Страница 9

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IN the neighbourhood of Paris, about four miles from Versailles, nestles a valley which the modern devotees of romance should deem worthy of a visit. Not because it boasts of any special features, such as mighty torrents thundering from giddy heights into abysmal precipices below—on the contrary, its character is harmonious and serene, more like a French park decked with flowers by nature, and watered by chance—but because in these classic surroundings, about the year 1830, circumstances led the great men of the new school to seek temporary repose for their fretted souls. To us, these peaceful meadows, flanked by pensive willows weeping on the borders of the silent Bièvres, must evermore be peopled by those troubled shades: by Lammenais, the priestly keeper of consciences, Montalembert, the angelic doctor, Sainte-Beuve, the purveyor of ideas, Berlioz, the musician, and, lastly, by the poet, Victor Hugo, who followed meekly in the rear, while awaiting the glory of conducting the procession.

They used to arrive in the summer, some for a couple of days, others for weeks together, to stay with Monsieur Bertin, editor of the Journal des Débâts and owner of Les Roches,[15] a property situated midway between the villages of Bièvres and Jouy-en-Josas. Genial and lively, as Ingres represents him in his celebrated portrait, Monsieur Bertin loved to divine, promote, and, where needful, encourage their vocations and plans. His housekeeping was on a modest scale, but his hospitality delightful—a mixture of go-as-you-please and kindly despotism; perfect freedom outwardly, but, in reality, careful ministrations skilfully disguised. Louise Bertin, the eldest daughter of the old man, and one of the muses of the period, willingly divided her time between the kitchen and the drawing-room, cookery-books and poems. As an ardent musician, tolerably familiar with the best literature, her mind was full of quaintness, while her heart was instinct with kindliness. When, perchance, she had surfeited her guests with sonatas and song, she would be seized with fear lest she should be interfering with their habits or inclinations, and would hastily substitute anarchy, by commanding each one to choose his own occupation, and pursue his meditation, walk, or game unhindered.

Of them all, Victor Hugo seems to have been the girl’s favourite, and the one who made the largest use of this generous welcome and charming liberty. As soon as the periwinkles blossomed, he settled his wife and children at Les Roches, while he himself came and went between Paris and Bièvres. Gradually he grew to associate the valley with his joys and sorrows; it became one of those familiar haunts to which one instinctively turns, with the comforting assurance of finding there the outward conditions suitable to one’s moods. As a young father, he made it the fitting frame for family joys; when his love was flung back in his face and his friendship betrayed, he returned to seek, if not consolation, at least faith and hope for the future. A year later, again under the shelter of Les Roches, he thought he had found solace. The valley meant something more than an invitation to dawdle: it filled him with sensuous suggestion; he longed to place his ideal of an unquenchable love at the feet of a woman, and to pronounce the word “Forever.”

With the connivance of Madame Victor Hugo, who shut her eyes, and that of Mademoiselle Louise Bertin, who smiled her toleration,[16] this happiness came to him at length; not indeed in the first year of his passion for Juliette, but in the early part of the second. He brought his mistress to Bièvres and to Jouy on July 4th, 1834, a little before the tragic crisis that so nearly separated the lovers, as we have related in the foregoing chapter.

Juliette immediately fell in love with the scenes the poet had so often and so eloquently described to her. Of their joint visit to the Écu de France, the little inn at Jouy-en-Josas,[17] she drew up, in fun, one of those mock official reports in which she excelled. They decided to return and lunch, no matter where, or how, provided it was neither too near nor too far from Les Roches. Then they set out in quest of rooms, which they eventually found in the hamlet of Metz, on the summit of the hill above Jouy on the northern side. They returned to Paris after paying over to the proprietor, Sieur Labussière, the sum of 92 frs. for a year’s rent. Thither they came in September for a sojourn of six weeks, after the troubled interval described above.

The little house does not seem to have been altered at all.[18] It was originally built for the game-keeper of the neighbouring château, which belonged to Cambacérès. It still spreads its white frontage, pierced with green-shuttered windows, against the background of woods. It consists only of a ground-floor and an attic; a rambling vine covers its walls; around it are scattered a barn, some outhouses, and an orchard, whose steep sides slope downwards to a gate opening on to the Jouy road.

With the assistance of the landlady, Mère Labussière, as she calls her, Juliette undertook to perform the lighter tasks of housekeeping in the mornings, and it was understood that Victor Hugo should visit her every afternoon unless some grave impediment prevented him.

But the walk from Les Roches to Les Metz was long: not much under two miles, by rough roads. The lovers agreed therefore to meet half-way, by a path settled beforehand, and to abandon the Labussière roof-tree for some leafy bower. Thus began, as Juliette writes, their “bird-life in the woods.”

Victor Hugo had a choice of three ways when he went to meet his lady. One led across the valley of Bièvres; another, along the pavement,[19] as the high road from Bièvres to Versailles was called; and lastly there was the woodland path, which they both preferred. Victor Hugo started by the Vauboyau road, plunged into the woods skirting the boundary of the Château of Les Roches, then, turning to the left, walked straight on as far as the four cross-roads at l’Homme Mort, and bore to the right towards the Cour Roland. There, in the hollow of a hundred-year-old chestnut-tree, all bent and twisted, his lady-love would be awaiting him.

Clad in a dress of white jaconet striped with pink, such as she usually affected, her head covered with an Italian straw hat, left over from the days of her former affluence, with swelling bosom, rosy cheeks, and smiling mouth, she resembled a flower springing from the rude calyx formed by the aged tree. A wide-awake flower, indeed, for, from the first sign of the approach of Victor Hugo, she would fly to him, and afford him one more opportunity of admiring the far-famed aerial gait, that fairy footstep, so light that it had been compared to the sound of a lyre.

Then followed kisses, caresses, a flood of soft words, more kisses, and a rapid rush into the cool green depths whither the twitter of birds invited them. When they issued forth again, silent now, Juliette walked first, making it a point of honour to push aside the branches and thorns before her poet; and he was content, gazing upon the tiny traces left upon the moss or sand by the feet that looked almost absurd by reason of their minuteness.

At the far end of a clearing a fountain burbled. Juliette made a hollow of her little hands and collected a delicious draught for their burning lips. Drops dribbled from between her fingers, and, seeing them, her lover knew that here was a fairy able to “transmute water into diamonds.”[20]

We must not imagine, however, that the treasure of their love expended itself entirely in this sportive fashion. If it be true that passion is the stronger for an admixture of intellect, it follows that only persons of distinguished parts are capable of extracting the full measure of delight from sentimental intercourse. Victor Hugo was far too wise to neglect the training of the sensibilities of his young mistress. Like some block of rare marble, she submitted herself to this able sculptor in the charming simplicity of a nature somewhat uncultivated and rugged, as she herself owns, and he perceived in the formless material the growing suggestion of the finished statue he was soon to evolve. The forest was the studio whither he came every afternoon to cultivate, through novel sensations and delights, his own poetry and eloquence. The forest gave him colour for colour, music for music....

At other times Victor Hugo encouraged in Juliette an inclination for prayer and tearful repentance. He retained, and she had always possessed, strong Catholic sensibilities. The mere satisfaction of sensuality without the hallowing influence of absorbing love spelt defilement, from their point of view. Hence followed painful remorse for a past which the lover liked to hear his mistress bewail, and which she despaired of ever redeeming. Her rôle was the abasement of Magdalen; his, the somewhat strained attitude of an apostle or saviour.

Nothing could be more peaceful or uneventful than Juliette’s evenings. She devoured with the appetite of an ogress the frugal supper put before her by Madame Labussière, repaired the damage done to her clothes by the afternoon’s ramble, or studied some of the parts in which she hoped to appear sooner or later at the Théâtre Français. At ten o’clock she went to bed. This was the much-prized moment of her solitude, when she retired, as she says, into the happy background of her heart to rehearse in spirit the simple events and delights of the day, to recall the face of her lover, see him, speak to him, and hang upon his answers; then, as drowsiness gradually gained the upper hand and clouds dimmed the dear outline, to surrender to slumber. It was at Les Metz that she coined the happy phrase: “I fall asleep in the thought of you.” Sometimes the wind moaning in the heights awoke her, and she resumed her sweet musing. The poet was in the habit of working at night; she would picture him in his room at Les Roches, bending over his writing-table. Then she “blessed the gale that made her the companion of the dear little workman’s vigil across the intervening space.”

As soon as dawn broke she was up again. She jumped out of bed, ran to the window, opened the shutters, and interrogated the heavens—not that she feared rain, any more than she minded “blisters on her feet or scratches on her hands"—but she had only two dresses, a woollen and a linen, and the condition of the weather controlled her choice of the two. Her toilet was rapid, her breakfast simple. She spent the remaining time copying the manuscripts confided to her by Victor Hugo. Then, lightly running, as she says, like a hare across the plain, she started for the rendezvous. As becomes a loving woman, she was always first at the trysting-tree. She scrutinised the intertwined initials she herself had carved upon its bark, or conned again from memory the verses she had found the day before in its hollow trunk. She “sings them in her heart,” presses them to her bosom, and kisses the letters she has brought in answer.

CHURCH OF BIÈVRES, SEINE-ET-OISE.

For the chestnut-tree served them as a letter-box as well as a shelter. According to an arrangement between them, the first thing they did on arrival was to deposit within its friendly shade everything they had written in the course of the preceding day for, or about, one another. On Juliette’s part, especially, the letters became more and more numerous: two, four, sometimes six per day. She no longer wrote, as at first, to expatiate upon her passion or assure the poet that she loved him with real love, or to relieve boredom and make the hours of her solitude pass more quickly. She wrote because Victor Hugo, who had formerly been indifferent to her “scribbles,” now exacted them as a daily tribute, and reproached her if they were too brief or not numerous enough. This jealous lover had discovered the advantages of a pretty woman’s mania for writing. When thus occupied, he reflected, she is contented. He also found that her letters were full of enthusiasm, humour, feeling, fun, and poetry, and he therefore desired that they should be preserved; one day, when Juliette had thrown a packet of them into the fire in a fit of temper, he made her write them all over again. Juliette might protest prettily, entrench herself behind her ignorance, and allege her want of intelligence; but the more she pleaded that she knew not how to write, the more her lover insisted upon her doing so. No one has ever carried to greater lengths that form of affectation which consists in vilifying oneself in order to gain praise. Having thus placed herself, as far as her style is concerned, in the kneeling position she prefers, Juliette remains there. It is at Les Metz that her letters commenced to be a hymn of praise in honour of her divinity. Adoration and excessive adulation are their basis; for form and imagery, Juliette does not hesitate to borrow from the sacred writings she had studied at the Convent of Petit-Picpus. Sooth to say, this mixture of religiosity and passion presents an aspect both disproportionate and pathetic. When love raises itself—or degrades itself—to this almost mystical adoration, one cannot be surprised if it ends by believing in its own virtue. Having adopted the forms of religion, it insensibly acquires its importance and dignity; it ennobles itself.

We do not possess Victor Hugo’s answers, but partly from the note-books in which his lady-love punctiliously copied and dated the poems addressed to her, and partly from the dates inscribed at the bottom of each page in the collected works of the poet, we know which of his verses were composed during his sojourn at Les Metz. It is not too much to say that the author of Feuilles d’Automne was never more happily inspired. Nowhere did he more closely approach the classical model he had chosen at that time, the gentle Virgil.

The lovers returned to Les Metz twice: once in October 1837 for a few days, and again, for a day, on September 26th, 1845. In 1837 it was Victor Hugo who directed the expedition and took the lead. He sought one by one the traces of their amours; his eccentric genius admired nature’s grand indifference, which had failed to preserve them intact for his honour and pleasure, and, deploring this ingratitude concerning outward things, he composed that masterpiece, La Tristesse d’Olympio. He laid it at the feet of Juliette, who accepted it, read and reread it, and learnt it by heart, without criticising it.

In 1845, the pilgrimage was hers; she planned it and begged for it, writing on August 19th: “I have an inexpressible longing to see Les Metz again. We absolutely must go there.”[21]

They did. Early in the month of September Juliette arranged the little journey. Which dress should she wear? The striped organdy one, or the blue tarlatan shot with white, she had worn a few months previously, at the reception of St. Marc Girardin at the Académie Française? She chose the former because her lover preferred it; the same reason determined her to wear a straw hat “trimmed with geraniums above and below the brim.” Thus decked, with cheeks rosier than usual, and eyes glowing, Juliette climbed with her poet into the omnibus from Paris to Sceaux.

Victor Hugo disliked omnibuses, and especially that one. He remembered his many drives in it with his friend Sainte-Beuve, at the time the latter was most assiduous in his visits to Les Roches, and in spite of himself he seemed to see the ghost of Joseph Delorme in the back seat, with his ecclesiastical appearance, and his mania for nestling cosily between two fat people. Silently the poet dwelt upon these memories, while Juliette volubly recalled others. She wondered whether they would find the beggar at the foot of the Bièvres hill, into whose hands she had often emptied her purse, in order that alms should bring them luck, and whether the baker in the Square still made those little tarts her lover used to be so fond of. At last the omnibus deposited them at Bièvres in front of the Chariot d’Or. The striped organdy dress created a great sensation among the village children. Juliette rushed off to the little church; nothing was changed—the same simplicity, the same silence, the same brooding peace as in the old days. The young woman fell on her knees, then, together, the lovers returned to the Chariot d’Or, breakfasted, and started to walk to Les Roches. There again, in Juliette’s opinion, everything was unchanged. To the left, behind tall grasses, the river flowed unseen and unheard. In deference to the needs of man and those of the valley, its course had been diverted, and it now spread itself through meadows and orchards. Its presence could be divined from the abundance of flowers and reeds born of its moisture. When they reached Les Roches, Juliette insisted upon abandoning the valley for the forest. They ascended through Vauboyau to the wood of l’Homme Mort. She walked straight to a chestnut-tree which she said she recognised; then she found a mountain-ash upon whose bark she had once carved their interlaced initials; after that the spring, and the paths. She wished to revisit what she called “the chapels of their love,” to pay at each one a tribute of devotion.[22]

At length they reached Les Metz and the house of the Labussière. Delirious enchantment! Everything was just as she remembered it: the gate, the bell, the kitchen-garden, the mile-stone upon which she used to sit to watch for her lover when the rendezvous was at the cottage; the bed, with its curtains of printed cotton, the rustic wardrobe, the oak table.... “Heaven,” she cried, “has put a seal upon all the treasures of love we buried here! It has preserved them for us,” and she longed to take possession of them all and carry them away with her.[23]

How charming Juliette is at this moment, and how superior to Olympio! How preferable is her enthusiasm, with its power of bringing back to life the dead past, to the melancholy which disparages and kills! One sole interest animates her. Her instinct is creative, for where the poet sees death she perceives life. The roses he thought faded and scattered, she admires in full bloom; she can still breathe their perfume. From the dust and ashes he has tasted and bewailed, she draws the savour of honey. In this instance, surely, her love does not merely aspire to sit on the heights with the poet’s genius, as she claimed—it soars far beyond it.