re suggestive or more
piquant than the inauguration dinner at the Elysee, at which VICTOR HUGO
was one of the guests, and the first and courteous relations between
the author of "Napoleon the Little" and the future Emperor who was to
inflict twenty years of exile upon him.

But now we come to the year which VICTOR HUGO has designated "The
Terrible Year," the war, and the siege of Paris. This part of the volume
is made up of extracts from note-books, private and personal notes,
dotted down from day to day. Which is to say that they do not constitute
an account of the oft-related episodes of the siege, but tell something
new, the little side of great events, the little incidents of everyday
life, the number of shells fired into the city and what they cost, the
degrees of cold, the price of provisions, what is being said, sung, and
eaten, and at the same time give the psychology of the great city, its
illusions, revolts, wrath, anguish, and also its gaiety; for during
these long months Paris never gave up hope and preserved an heroic
cheerfulness.

On the other hand a painful note runs through the diary kept during the
meeting of the Assembly at Bordeaux. France is not only vanquished, she
is mutilated. The conqueror demands a ransom of milliards--it is his
right, the right of the strongest; but he tears from her two provinces,
with their inhabitants devoted to France; it is a return towards
barbarism. VICTOR HUGO withdraws indignantly from the Assembly which
has agreed to endorse the Treaty of Frankfort. And three days after his
resignation he sees CHARLES HUGO, his eldest son, die a victim to the
privations of the siege. He is stricken at once in his love of country
and in his paternal love, and one can say that in these painful pages,
more than in any of the others, the book is history that has been lived.

PAUL MAURICE.

Paris, Sept. 15, 1899.

AT RHEIMS. 1823-1838.

It was at Rheims that I heard the name of Shakespeare for the first
time. It was pronounced by Charles Nodier. That was in 1825, during the
coronation of Charles X.

No one at that time spoke of Shakespeare quite seriously. Voltaire's
ridicule of him was law. Mme. de Stael had adopted Germany, the great
land of Kant, of Schiller, and of Beethoven. Ducis was at the height of
his triumph; he and Delille were seated side by side in academic glory,
which is not unlike theatrical glory. Ducis had succeeded in doing
something with Shakespeare; h