ly too willing to
encourage him. At other times, so bizarre and out of all human
proportion are his fantasies, one receives an impression as if one of
the great granite effigies representing Liberty or Equality or the
Rights of Man, from the portico of some solemn Palais de Justice,
had suddenly yielded to the temptation of drink and was uttering the
most amazing levities. Victor Hugo in his lighter vein is really, we
must honestly confess, a somewhat disconcerting companion. One
has such respect for the sublime imaginations which one knows are
lurking behind "that cliff-like brow" that one struggles to find some
sort of congruity in these strange gestures. It is as though when
walking by the side of some revered prophet, one were suddenly
conscious that the man was skipping or putting out his tongue.
It is as though we caught Ajax masquerading as a mummer, or
Aeschylus dressed up in cap and bells.

There are persons who interest themselves still in Victor Hugo's
political attitudes, in his orations on the balcony of the Hotel de
Ville; in his theatrical visits to the barricades where "he could be
shot, but could not shoot"; in his diatribes against Napoleon the
Third; in his defence of the Commune from the safe remoteness of
Brussels. There are persons who suffer real disillusion when they
discover how much of a conservative and a courtier he was in his
youth. There are persons who are thrilled to recall how he carried his
solemn vengeance against his imperial enemy so far as to rebuke in
stern language Queen Victoria for her friendliness towards the
Empress.

I must confess I find it difficult to share these emotions. I seem to
smell the foot-lights of the opera in these heroic declamations, and
indeed poor Napoleon the Little was himself so much of an operatic
hero that to exalt him into a classic tyrant seems little short of
ridiculous.

We derive a much truer picture of Victor Hugo's antagonist from
Disraeli's "Endymion" than we do from the poet's torrential
invectives. I have a shrewd idea that the Emperor was a good deal
more amiable, if not more philosophical, than his eloquent judge.

Victor Hugo was an impassioned lover of children. Who can forget
those scenes in "Les Miserables" about little Cosette and the great
wonderful doll which Valjean gave her? He loved children and--for
all his lack of humour; sometimes I think because of it--he
thoroughly understood them. He loved children and he was a child
h