ious friendships, but crippled him in every
high endeavor.

How monstrous was this violation of both friendship and love may be
seen in the following quotation from his writings:

In that inevitable hour, when the gloomy tempest and the jealous gulf
shall roll over our heads, a sealed bottle, belched forth from the
abyss, will render immortal our two names, their close alliance, and
our double memory aspiring after union.

Whether or not Mme. Hugo's relations with Sainte-Beuve justified the
latter even in thinking such thoughts as these, one need not inquire
too minutely. Evidently, though, Victor Hugo could no longer be the
friend of the man who almost openly boasted that he had dishonored him.
There exist some sharp letters which passed between Hugo and
Sainte-Beuve. Their intimacy was ended.

But there was something more serious than this. Sainte-Beuve had in
fact succeeded in leaving a taint upon the name of Victor Hugo's wife.
That Hugo did not repudiate her makes it fairly plain that she was
innocent; yet a high-spirited, sensitive soul like Hugo's could never
forget that in the world's eye she was compromised. The two still lived
together as before; but now the poet felt himself released from the
strict obligations of the marriage-bond.

It may perhaps be doubted whether he would in any case have remained
faithful all his life. He was, as Mr. H.W. Wack well says, "a man of
powerful sensations, physically as well as mentally. Hugo pursued every
opportunity for new work, new sensations, fresh emotion. He desired to
absorb as much on life's eager forward way as his great nature craved.
His range in all things--mental, physical, and spiritual--was so far
beyond the ordinary that the gage of average cannot be applied to him.
The cavil of the moralist did not disturb him."

Hence, it is not improbable that Victor Hugo might have broken through
the bonds of marital fidelity, even had Sainte-Beuve never written his
abnormal poems; but certainly these poems hastened a result which may
or may not have been otherwise inevitable. Hugo no longer turned wholly
to the dark-haired, dark-eyed Adele as summing up for him the whole of
womanhood. A veil was drawn, as it were, from before his eyes, and he
looked on other women and found them beautiful.

It was in 1833, soon after Hugo's play "Lucrece Borgia" had been
accepted for production, that a lady called one morning at Hugo's house
in the Place Royale. She was then betw