oi. Ce n'est pas sans quelque but supreme
Que sans cesse, en ce gouffre ou revent les sondeurs,
Un prodigieux vent soufflant des profondeurs,
A travers l'apre nuit, pousse, emporte et ramene
Sur tout l'ecueil divin toute la mer humaine.
(_L'Annee Terrible._)

See too the beautiful lines written when to public disaster was added
private grief for the loss of his son Charles, especially the passage,
too long to quote here, in _L'Enterrement_, beginning 'Quand le jeune
lutteur....'

If, passing from the underlying conception to the actual material of the
_Legende_, we ask to what extent the poems can be regarded as history,
the answer must be that they are not history at all in the ordinary
sense of the word. In his _Preface_ Hugo remarks: 'C'est l'aspect
legendaire qui prevaut dans ces deux volumes.' As a matter of fact,
there is not a single poem in any of the series which is a narrative
based upon actual fact. Of the pieces in the present volume, _Le Mariage
de Roland, Aymerillot_, and _Bivar_ are founded on legends. _Eviradnus_
and _La Confiance du Marquis Fabrice_ are inventions, and the others are
mostly embroideries woven upon ancient themes rather than historical or
even legendary pictures. These latter, of which _La Conscience_ is the
best instance in this volume, suggest De Vigny's conception: 'Une pensee
philosophique, mise en scene sous une forme epique ou dramatique.' Of
accuracy in detail and local colour, Hugo was utterly careless. He
possessed a capacious, but not an exact, memory, and, provided the
general impression produced by a description was the true one, he did
not stop to inquire whether every detail was correct. Nor did he always
enjoy an extensive knowledge of the epoch which he delineated. But he
possessed to the full the poet's faculty of building the whole form and
feature of a past age out of a few stray fragments of information. The
historical colour of _Ruy Blas_ is said to be based on two French books,
carelessly consulted, yet of _Ruy Blas_ M. Paul de Saint-Victor, after
making a close study of the period, wrote: 'Ce fragment de siecle que
je venais d'exhumer de tant de recherches, je le retrouvais, vivant et
mouvant, dans l'harmonie d'un drame admirable. Le souffle d'un grand
poete ressuscitait subitement l'ossuaire des faits et des choses que
j'avais peniblement rajuste.'[3]

[Footnote 3: Quoted in Eugene Rigal's _Victor Hugo, poete epique_.]