BOOKS.

QUATRE-V IN GT-TREIZE.*

So much has been written of late years on Victor Hugo, that it is superfluous to call attention to his past works before examining this new book. The three volumes now before us constitute the &at part of a great work, and bear the title, The Civil War. After an introductory chapter, in which a starving widow, Michelle Flechard, is found in a wood by the Bataillon du

Bonnet Rouge, and her three children adopted by it, the story -commences with the sailing of the English corvette ' Claymore,' manned by a French crew, at sunset on the 1st of June, 1793. Just before her departure, a mysterious old man, in the costume of a Breton peasant, comes on board. Gelambre, the secret agent of the Princes, carried his portmanteau, and an hour later wrote to -inform the Comte d'Artois that the corvette had left. Four days previously a despatch in the same handwriting had warned the representative of the Convention with the Republican Army along the coast of Cherbourg of the designs of the 'Claymore.'

The wind was favourable to the corvette, but the sea became heavy as the night wore on. The name of the stranger was known only to the captain, Comte Boisberthelot, and to his second officer. Before retiring to his cabin, he reminded them of the necessity of keeping the secret. "For my part," continued he, "were I in the face of death, I would not reveal it." All at once a fearful noise was heard. One of the carronades had got loose. Under the hands of Victor Hugo, this cannon seems to become an ani- mated monster, endowed with a sort of demoniacal power. The savages made by it, the consternation and helplessness of the crew, the grim form of the old passenger gazing on the devasta- tion, the heroism of the gunner, whose neglect was the cause of ell, and who ultimately secures the cannon, are described with matchless vividness. The vessel proved to be damaged beyond 'repair. The captain asked his passenger whether he does not think something due to the gunner. "I think there is," answers he, fastens the Cross of St. Louis on the jacket of the sailor, and then says, "Now let this man be shot no fault is reparable." The sentence was immediately carried out. "La Vendee has found a head," said Boisberthelot in a low voice to his lieutenant. When the morning dawned, the corvette found her- self placed between eight French vessels and a dangerous reef. -" It is our duty to die," said the captain to his passenger, "it is yours to live," and he asked if any one would volunteer to row the strange gentleman to land.

A sailor stepped forward and said, "I will." A boat was lowered, and soon disappeared. After a heroic struggle, the 4 Claymore' went down unconquered. When the boat reached safe water the passenger's danger began. The sailor was the gunner's brother, and told his companion he would kill him. -" As you please," answered the other ; "but you owe me a priest, for I gave one to your brother." This is the starting-point of a

speech which crushed by its eloquence the simple mind of the listener, and deserves to be quoted as one of the examples of that kind of oratorical power of which the speech of Mark Antony remains the unrivalled model. At the end of it the sailor —Halmalo is his name,.—convinced that if he killed the man before him he would ruin the cause of Vendee, France, • and God, and condemn his own soul to hell, throws away his pistol, and falling on his knees, exclaims, "You speak 'like the good God. Order ; I will obey." On the evening of the second day they landed. The stranger gave Halmalo messages to the chiefs of La Vendee, and ultimately told him to go to a castle called La Tourgue. The sailor knew it ; it was the family-seat of his lord ; and he remembered there was a -secret passage between the neighbouring forest and the tower. His companion told him that in this he was mistaken ; and as the :sailor goes away he is promised that, if he does well, he shall receive the Cross of St. Louis, if he fails, he shall be shot like his brother.

The mysterious stillness of the evening influences even the stern inan who gazes on it, and climbing a neighbouring hill, he pen- sively observes the scene. Here there is a wonderful descrip- tion of how he saw the tocsin rung without hearing it, and notices a proclamation announcing that a price had been set on the head of the Marquis de Lantenac, Vicomte de Fontenay, Prince Breton. The fast-falling darkness prevented his reading the name appended to this document. He instantly goes down the hill, and a beggar-man salutes him as the Marquis de Lantenac.

• Quatre-Thigt-Treire. Par Victor Hugo. Premier Welt, "La Guerra Olvile." Paris: Levy. 1874. This man's name is Tellmarch. He is a subordinate character in the work before us, but he is one of the moat correctly drawn figures in it, and is not unlikely to play a greater part in the future volumes of Victor Hugo. Lantenac was on his way to the farm of l'Herbe-en-Pail, Tellmarch told him the Republicans occupied it, and gave him shelter for the night in his under- ground abode. "I save you, Monseigneur," he says, "on condition that you do not come here to do harm." "1 come here to do good," answers the other. At day-break the Marquis left the beggar's lodging. The first object which met his eyes was the proclamation. It was signed "Gauvain." He went into a wood murmuring that name. Soon afterwards he saw a body of armed men entering it, and heard his name shouted. He gave himself up for lost, and offered his breast to their bullets, but they fell on their knees before him. They were Vendeans, who saluted their chief. They had burnt l'Herbe-en- Pail, and now asked Lantenac what they should do with their

prisoners. "Shoot them," he replied. "They are eighty." "Shoot them all." "There are two women." "Shoot them too." "There are three children." "Bring them along, we'll see what we will do with them." And then be rode off at the head of his armed peasantry. When Tellmarch went to what had been the homestead, he found the bodies of its owners, with those of the soldiers and the women, one of whom was the mother of the three children. She was not quite dead. A peasant told him that all this was the doing of Lantenac. Tellmarch growled between his teeth : '' Si j'avais au."

We are now taken to Paris, and a favourite of the people, Cimoardain, is introduced. He had been a parish priest in a village, and tutor in a noble family ; then he had inherited a little fortune, and so become free. As a priest he had chanced to keep his vows, but science had destroyed his faith. Forbidden to love, he had begun to hate; '89 found him ready. He had become a member of the reunion called De l'Eveche, which terrified the Convention, was more extreme than the Commune, and frightened Marat. He had in him the Absolute. He once sucked the abscess of a poor man in the Iletel-Dieu, declaring that he would not have done it for the King. He was an impeccable, who thought himself infallible. He was not allowed to found a family, so he adopted his country ; he was refused a wife, and he espoused humanity. But in the significant words of Victor Hugo himself, " Cette plenitude inorme, au fond eat le vide." Yet this stern Jacobin had one human weakness, he passionately loved his pupil.

Robespierre, Marat, and Denton meet in the Cafe of the Rue du Pam The endeavour to characterise them by their conversation is a failure. There is indeed in the language of Denton brutal violence, in that of Robespierre priggish cruelty, in that of Marat savage thirst for blood, but there is no serious attempt to analyse or even to indicate the subtler motives of these sinister men. They are occupied with La Vendee. Cimourdain, suddenly introduced among these historical figures, pronounces himself for the utter destruction of La Vendee. He starts when he hears that Lantenac is at the bead of the insurrection. He had known him well, having been his parish priest. Ile was then made Commis- sioner of the Committee of Public Safety to the Army in La Vendee, promising to show no mercy, and even to shoot or have guillotined the Republican commander, should he show any. After having thus committed himself, he is told that the name of this officer is Gauvain. He turns pale, but when asked by Marat whether he still accepts the office, he answers, "I have done so."

The Convention is described in the first part of the second volume. This Assembly is for Victor Hugo perhaps the culmi- nating point of history ; his description of it is, nevertheless, rather a series of anecdotes and sketches than a finished historical picture. The men of the Mountain, the Girondins, the Feuil-

lants, the Cordeliers, the Moderates, the Terrorists, the giants and the dwarfs of the Revolution, are exhibited like figures in a

magic-lantern. According to the author, this great catastrophe was brought about by fate. Events dictate, men subscribe. " The 14th of July is signed Camille Desmoulins, the 10th of August Danton, the 2nd of September Marat, the 21st of Sep- tember Gregoire, the 21st of January Robespierre." (Vol. ii, p. 58.) We agree with him when he says that whenever the name of the Con- vention is pronounced, historians and philosophers pause and reflect, "Impossible de ne pas etre attentif h co grand passage d'ombres." (Vol. ii., p. 61.) Marat appears in the lobby. It is the day after the

meeting of the Rue du Pam. Here, as there, men are talking of La Vendee. He confides to some friends Viet Cimourdain has been sent to watch Gauvain ; it is necessary to guard against treachery in the nobleman, treason in the priest. A ci-decant Marquis remarks

that were death called into the covenant, the result would be sure. "I have come here for that purpose," Marat replies, and the next day a proclamation was issued decreeing death to any one who should connive at the escape of Royalist prisoners.

We are now carried back to La Vendee. The poet loves the classical ground of his epos. With all the exuberance of his fancy, astounding knowledge of technical detail, and peculiar correctness of expression, he describes the rocks, ravines, and thickets of the wild woods of western France, contrasts the spirit of La Vendee with that of the Convention, and in- sists that in order to understand the civil war, one must bear in mind the difference between those who raged against institutions that were waxing old, who dreamed of a golden age to come, and thought that they could reach it by one great spasmodic effort, and "the peculiar barbarian, with his light eyes and his long hair, who spoke a dead language, which means living with one's thoughts in the grave, who believed in the Blessed Virgin and in the White Lady," who was as reverent before the great mysterious stone on the heath as he was before the altar, and who loved his kings, his masters, and his priests. Victor Hugo carefully distinguishes between the war of the forest and the war of the hedge-row, the Little from the Great Vendee. The Little Vendee, he tells us, was naïve, the Great corrupt. Charette was made a marquis and lieutenant-general of the armies of the King. Jean Chouan remained Jean Chouan. Charette verged on the bandit, Jean Chouan on the paladin, and according to him, the whole civil war in the west may be resumed in the words, "home," "country." It was the quarrel of local ideas with general ideas ; "lea ides generales hales par lea ides partielles, c'est lit la lutte meme du progres." (Vol. ii., p. 116.) The pages which follow, on the chivalrous resistance of La Vendee, are amongst the best in the book, and, moreover, to a great extent historically true.

The first person whom the reader meets with is Cimourdain, on horseback, with the tricolor cockade in his hat, although in the enemy's country. He pulls up at an isolated wayside inn, the landlord of which informs him that a life-and-death struggle is going on not far off, at Dol, between a ci-devant and a ci-devant, a nephew and an uncle. He points to two notices on the door of his inn ; one contains the announcement, couched in the formal language of the French Court, that the Marquis de Lantenac in- tends to shoot hie nephew ; in the second, Gauvain signifies, in the laconic style of the Republic, that he means to do the like to his uncle. Cimourdain salutes the second proclamation, and asks his way through the country. The landlord warns him not to take the road which leads to Dol. Cimourdain thanks him, and takes it. When he arrived there he found that the Royalists, after a stubborn resistance, had fled panic-stricken. Lantenac him- self had been compelled to retreat. "These peasants won't stand," he had said, after having spiked his guns with his own hands, "we must have the English." Gauvain was standing before a wounded Vendetta when Cimourdain suddenly saw the man draw a pistol and aim it at the Republican chief with one hand, and prepare to strike at him with a sabre with the other. He flung himself between them, received a sabre cut across the face, and fell senseless to the ground. When he came to himself, Gauvain was kneeling beside him. "My master," he said, "it is the second time you have saved my life." " Your father," answered Cimour- dain. His happiness at meeting with his pupil was, however, short-lived. While lying in bed, dreaming of the future of his young hero, he overheard him pardon the intended murderer. A dark shadow passed over the distorted features of the Jacobin, and he murmured to himself, with sinister sorrow, " En effet, c'est un element !" (Vol. ii., p. 182.) Victor Hugo describes Gauvain as a young man of thirty, a philosopher and a thinker, with the stature of a Hercules, the serious eye of a prophet, and the smile of a child, who neither smoked, nor drank, nor swore, who had his dressing- case with him in the wars, who was an Alcibiades for those who looked at him, a Socrates for those who conversed with him, as one transfigured when he had his sword in hand. "II avait cet air effemine, qui dans Is bataille eat formidable." (Vol. ii., p. 141.) When be next appears he is blockading La Tourgue, the castle of his ancestors, in which Lantenac has taken refuge, having carried the three children with him. On the evening before the assault, Lantenac's lieutenant, l'Imanus (so called because, like an evil spirit believed in under under that name, he carried death and destruc- tion through the land) appeared on the tower, and offered, in the name of his chief, to give up the children and La Tourgue, if free egress were permitted. In case of a refusal, he threatened, when driven to extremities, to fire the place himself. His offer was re- fused, and he was told that if the garrison did not surrender at discretion within twenty-four hours, the castle would be stormed,

and a strange, harsh voice added, "Et alors pas de quartier." At these words, Lantenac lent over the battlements and said, "Tiens ! c'est toi pretre." The night fell, the last measures were adopted in the castle, the three sleeping children conveyed into the library ; l'Imanus got ready his train to set fire to the chateau at. the last moment, and at break of day 4,500 men stood prepared to storm La Tourgue, and nineteen to defend it to the last.

The reader opens the third volume in expectation of the climax,. and the title of the first chapter, "Le Massacre de St. Bar- thelemy," seems to indicate that he will find it there. But never has Victor Hugo so abused the privileges of an author. To eyes that expected to see the wild horrors of war, he exhibits the most lovely children's idyll that perhaps even he has ever composed. For the future, the names of the little peasant children, Rene-- Jean, Gros-Alain, and Georgette will be woven into his poet's crown, among the humblest, but also among the most faultless or his creations. Taken from nature, charming in expression, highly poetical in their easy simplicity, such passages continually recon- cile us to a genius often distorted by faults, and once more show that Victor Hugo's strength has left unimpaired the softer, we had. almost said the childlike, beauties of his muse. The absurd title of this chapter is given to it by a thick folio of the apocryphal. Gospel of Bartholomew, the leaves of which the little children throw to the winds.

At sunset a single cannon-shot is heard, the tired little ones go to sleep, and the assault begins. This terrible drama is pre- ceded by an episode of which Cimourdain is the hero. He stepped forward to the tower, and offered to deliver himself up to, and secure pardon for, the Royalists, if they would give up Lantenac. "Never !" was the answer of the Vendeans; and the combat began. It is impossible to follow the author in his description of it. The- castle falls through the ingenuity of Serjeant Radoub, a survivor of the Bataillon du Bonnet Rouge, who performs the impossible,. and only loses a bit of his ear in the fight, thinking, as the- reader does too, that that is not very much under the circum- stances. The Marquis, with five survivors, amongst them a priest,. is driven to his last refuge. They all feel that their hour has come,. and confess. Lantenac, although a sceptic, confesses with the rest. "Think on God," says the priest, " the world is over for you.' Suddenly a stone turns in the wall, and Halmalo appears. "You. see, Monseigneur," says he, "the stones do turn, and we can escape from here." Lantenac leaves the castle with his men. L'Imanns alone remains to cover the retreat, because it was found impos- sible to replace the stone. After a Homeric resistance, he is mor- tally wounded and dies, but not before he had fired the train which he had laid. When Gauvain enters, he finds written in pencil on the stone of the secret exit, "Au revoir, Monsieur le. Vicomte !"

When Lantenac emerged from the underground way, a fright- ful cry of despair met his ears. It came from Michelle Flechard. She had been cured by Tellmarch, had gone roaming through the- country in search of her children, and now saw them by the light, of the conflagration in a room which was surrounded by flames. There was no ladder to save them through the window ; a great. iron door, which communicated with the library from the tower,. could not be forced. Lantenac saw before him the mother on the verge of insanity, and could discern the cries of the soldiery. He felt in his pocket for the key of the iron door, and being satisfied that it was there, he turned back. A few minutes afterwards his grey head appeared in the stone frame of the secret exit. He walked proudly through the soldiery, opened the iron door, and disappeared into the library. Soon after he was at the window, and lowered out of it a ladder. Radoub seized it below, ex-- claiming, like Halmalo had done before him, " Vous &es le bon Dieu!" then climbing it, he received the children one after the other from Lantenac, who kissed the last on the fotehead before he gave it to the sergeant. The soldiers cheered, the mother fell senseless. All were saved, all except the Marquis, "but no one thought of him, perhaps not even he himself." At last he stepped over on to the ladder, and descended slowly and haughtily,. like the statue of the Commandeur returning to his grave. Every- one was struck dumb with admiration. When he reached the last rung, and had one foot upon the earth, a hand was laid upon his shoulder. "Je t'arrete," said Cimourdain. " Je Vapprouve," answered Lantenac.

The Marquis is confined in the donjon of his castle, and Cimourdain undertz.kes all responsibility for his fate. But this does not satisfy Gauvain. For him a terrible internal combat has begun. On one side, was the old man of eighty winters offering his head to save three little children, on the other, the stern Jacobin ready to accept it,—the champion of night and slavery doing a heroic deed for the sake of humanity, and the children of light and freedom hardening their hearts for fratricide. The result of his musings was that he visited Lantenac in prison. Once before the Marquis had saved himself from death by his eloquence ; he resolved now that it should avenge his execution on Gauvain, and concludes a most powerful speech to his nephew by these sig- nificant sentences :—" Ah ! vous ne voulez plus avoir de nobles. Eh bien vous n'en aurez plus. Faites-en votre deuil. Bonsoir les gran- dears anciennes. Trouvez-moi un d'Assas it present. Vous subirez e,e viol, l'invasion. Si Alaric II. vient, ii ne trouvera plus en face de lui Clovis Vous n'aurez plus Agnadel, Rocroy, Lens, Staffarde, Nerwinde, Steinkerque, La Marsaille, Raucous, Lawfeld, Mahon ; vous n'aurez avec Marignan avec Francois I.; vous n'aurez plus Bouvines Philippe-Auguste. Vona aurez Agin- court, mais vous n'aurez plus, pour s'y faire tuer, enveloppe de son drapeau, le Sieur de Bacqueville, le grand porte-oriflamme ! Allez ! allez ! faites ! Soyez lea hommes nouveaux. Devenez petits !" And he adds, " Ah ! je vous dis vos verites ! Qu'est-ce-que cola me fait ? Je suis mort." (Vol. iii., p. 247.) "You are free," says Gauvain ; and throwing his hood and mantle over his uncle, he pushes him out of the prison-door. "Ma foi," says the Mar- quis, snapping his fingers ; and he goes his way.

Cimourdain convened the court-martial, after having sent word to Paris that Lantenac was taken, and would be forthwith exe- cuted. The Court sat opposite the door of the donjon. When the prisoner was called, it was Gauvain who appeared, and told the shuddering Cimourdain what he had done. The Court, being divided as to what the sentence should be, Cimourdain's was the casting-vote. He pronounced for death. During the night, the master and pupil once more interchange their ideas on the future of mankind, and at the break of day Gauvain is led to execution. He mounts the scaffold smiling at his master, who stands inexor- able, though writhing in mental agony. The beautiful young head of Gauvain falls into the basket. At that very instant Cimourdain fires a pistol into his own heart and falls dead, "and these two souls, tragic sisters, take flight together, the shade of the one mingled with the light of the other."

This iEl. the Epos,—Quatre-vingt-treize. Victor Hugo himself considers it the principal work of his life, his greatest claim to immortality. It is, therefore, permitted to test it by the highest standard of art. The sympathies of the author are not doubtful. They are with Cimourdain against Lantenac ; while he incor- porates the past in our individuality, two are assigned to represent the future. Theyu-st of these two is a man hardened by an un- flinching theory, the other illumined with the light of youth and enthusiasm. Gauvain and Cimourdain, the two poles of truth, according to Victor Hugo, are created for the same purpose ; they are the glorification of the Revolution. Gauvain is to it what Posa was to Philip, Cimourdain what Balfour was to the Cove- nant. Each of these men has his own system of morality, and by it he must be judged. We are told that Chnourdain was a priest. His fanaticism is indeed of that kind which arises either from misunderstanding or from renouncing religion. It is the passion which moulds an Arbues, and petrifies the heart of a Torquemada ; except this, there is no trace of his having ever been a minister of the Gospel. The landlord of the little wayside inn suspects him to be a priest when he says, on noticing Gauvain's proscription of Lantenac, " C'est plus que la guerre dans la patrie, c'est la guerre dans Is famille. II le faut, et c'est bien." (Vol. ii., p. 131.) Lantenac recognises him as such in the moment when, on Gauvain announcing the assault on La Tourgue, he hears him saying in his harsh voice, "Et alors, pas de quartier." (Vol. ii., p. 256.) "Cimourdain faisait horreur," says Victor Hugo himself, and he adds, "lea severes soot des infortunes." (Vol. ii, p. 258.) That is the question. The author calls him severe; the reader knows that he was cruel. It does not move us to be told that he stood in battle without using his weapons, because at the same moment we are informed that he was in Vendee what Marat was at Paris, what Chillier was at Lyons. Our sympathy is not won for him when, as he says, to avoid carnage, be offers his life in exchange for that of Lantenac, because we feel that the motive which prompts this offer is rather one of hatred than of pity. In the second volume there is a conversation between Gauvain and Cimourdain. Cimourdain asks for an account Of the situation, Gauvain explains it, and says that in a fortnight Lantenac will be taken and shot. "Encore de la clemence," cries Cimourdain, "II faut qu'il soit

guillotine." (Vol. ii., p. 204.) The conversation proceeds ; he reproaches Gauvain with having set nuns at liberty, with having refused to send aged priests to the scaffold, with having spared the wounded, with not having shot down three

1 hundred peasant prisoners ; and then justifies his own ruth- less view by saying, "Terrible duties exist. Do not accuse 1 what is not accusable. Since when has the disease become the. fault of the physician ? Yes ! That which characterises this tre- mendous year is that it is without mercy. Why ? Because it is the great revolutionary year. . . . The surgeon is like the butcher : he who cures resembles the executioner. The Revolution devotes

herself to her fatal work,--she mutilates, but she saves Hence this htemorrhage,—'93." (Vol. ii., p. 209.) This is the theory of Inquisitors, as well as the theory of Terrorists.

No wonder if Gauvain finds these sayings hard, and cannot bear them. From that very moment a gulf separates him from Cimourdain, and these two men in reality no longer understand each other. "Liberty, equality, and fraternity," says Gauvain, "are dogmas of peace and harmony. Why give them a repulsive aspect 'What use is there in intimidation ? Kindly ideas are ill served by unkindly men. For me, amnesty is the most beautiful word in the human language. I do not wish blood to flow without risking my own I am only a soldier. If one cannot pardon, it is not worth while to conquer." (Vol. ii., p. 211.) This heroic visionary, who stands absorbed in his fancies amidst the carnage at Dol and before the walls of La Tourgue, dreaming of a Utopian republic, and of the perfectibility of the human race while mounting the scaffold, dies by the judgment of Cimourdain, who worships his victim while he sacrifices him, and perishes himself, crushed by the weight of his own act. The pistol-shot by which the ci-devant priest ends his own life blows to pieces, at the same time, the whole of his moral structure. To this act his theories have irresistibly led him. For him suicide is the only escape from an unendurable situation, and his death fur- nishes the crowning proof that his view of life was wrong. He is not the martyr of his convictions, he is slain by them.

If Victor Hugo fails in winning our sympathy for this character, on which he has bestowed the greatest care, and in which he has striven to embody the terrible strength of the spirit of '93, he has not succeeded better with his other favourite, Gauvain, who represents the ideal side of the Revolution. He is an enthusiastic Republican, but his mental life is as far removed from the world of Cimourdain as from that of Lantenac. He would have set the Dauphin at liberty and pardoned La Vendee. He says he is not a politician. True, he is only a dreamer. In his dying hour, '93 appears to him as a scaffolding of barbarism, put up for the purpose of erecting the temple of civili- sation. " Oh ! mon maitre," he says to Cimourdain, " voici la, difference entre nos deux utopies ; vous voulez la caserne obligatoire, moi je veux l'ecole, vous revez l'homme soldat, je rove Phomme citoyen. Vous le voulez terrible, je le veux pensif ire fonderais une republique d'esprite." (Vol. iii., p. 287.) His last words, in reply to Cimourdain, who declares that it is idle to dream of a society that shall be greater than nature, are, " C'est Is but, autrement it quoi bon la societe Plus d'homme reptile ; je veux la transformation de Is larve en lepidoptere, je veux que le ver de terre se change en fleur vivante et s'envole, Jo veux . . . ." and this speech ends in a vision. (Vol. iii., p. 290.)

Out of the hands of men like Gauvain the direction of events in this world falls into the hands of men like Lantenac. He is the only representative of the ancien re'gime in the book, but his figure is so grand that we hardly wish for another. From the moment he appears to the moment when Gauvain shoves him out of the prison-door back to life and action, he is almost always in danger ; he never once loses his presence of mind ; he never wavers in the pursuit of his end, he never gives way to illusions of any kind ; he is greater in defeat than in victory. Indefatigable and robust, he set an example to his younger companions. He commanded, helped, fraternised with his wild followers, but remained always a nobleman, haughty and condescending, stern and refined. He brooked no contradiction ; he says once to the nineteen men with whom he has to defend La Tourgue against a small army, "Si une moitie de vous se revoltait, je la ferais fusilier par l'autre, et je defendrais la place avec le reste." (Vol. ii., p. 275.) On the deck of the 'Claymore' he caused a sailor to be shot for neglect of duty, notwithstanding that the man performed a deed of heroism that might be considered to have redeemed his fault. But for Lantenac no such redemption exists. When he appears for the last time he consistently applies this theory to himself, and approves of the conduct of Cimourdain, who condemns him to death in the moment when his heroism has conquered the hearts of his enemies. Victor Hugo himself seems to have felt that the character of the Marquis had grown out of his hands, and had become so imposing that it became necessary to load him with crimes as enormous. as his actions were, according to Victor Hugo, splendid.. The two. great stains on the character of Lantenac are his intention to call. in the English and the murder of the women. As regards the first, it would now undoubtedly be considered high-treason. It should not, however, be for- gotten that in 1793 statesmen and philosophers both in Europe and America, and probably the majority of the French nation

too, considered the war against the Convention as a holy war. Is Victor Hugo, then, right in imputing as a great crime to a French nobleman of those days, that he acted on that view ? On the other hand, the execution of the two women is a piece of wanton cruelty. But as such, it is inconsistent with the char- acter of the man who orders it.. It is not even necessary for the plot of Victor Hugo's story. No doubt if women and children bad stood in the way of Lantenac, he would have sacrificed them

to his cause without-mercy and without hesitation. But the man who gives up his life, and with it what to him was more precious

than life, to save three little children, is not the-man to commit a useless murder. It is a. psychological error to make Lantenac .commit this crime, but this error has become an absolute neces- sity for the: purposes of Victor Hugo. Without it, the whole scaffolding of this first part of his book would have been con- structed to erect a monument to Lantenac. It is the inevitable fate of the terrorist-Cimourdain to slay and to destroy. "The Revolution," he says, "wants-the help of savage workmen. She disdains the hands that trembles ; she places faith only in those who are inexorable." (Vol. ii.,. p. 209.) For the sake of the Republic, he waa obliged to become an executioner ; there was no such hard necessity; fort Lantenac; Vendee only required a soldier.

Victor Hugo, in his desire, to conquer our allegiance for the .Revolution, has, in. the construction of his characters, overstepped the immovable limits of nature alp well, as of art. Involuntarily we are reminded, in reading him, of these words of the late Due de Broglie :—" The great, holy ideas of reason, liberty, progress, civil and social justice, made idols by the Revolution, became, like all idols, cruel, impure, stupid. The wise man almost regretted the errors of the past, and the good elan its abuses." (Discours h l'Academie Franc.aiserApril 3, 1856.) Long years ago, in June, 1830, Victor Hugo charmed France by these harmonious

" Apres avoir chante, Diet:nits) et je conteniple, A l'Emperenr tombd dressant dans l'ombre un temple, Aimant is libertd pour see fruits, pour ses flours, Le trona pour son droit, le Roi pour ses malhenrs ; Fidele enfin an sang qu'ont verse.dans mes veines, Mon pere, vienx soldat, ma mere venddenne."

The irony of nature has taken revenge on the poet, and what was intended to- be the apotheosis of 1793, has become almost the

glorification of old honour and loyalty. And thus he has, in spite of himself,, proved faithful to that promise of his youth, to remain true to the blood of his Vendean mother.

Every human, life is a mysterious mixture of light and shade. Whenever art successfully reproduces this funds.,

mental truth, its greatest problem is solved ; when it ignores it, failure is the inevitable result. "Greater than nature" is the impossible aspiration of the dying Gauvain. In reality, it is that of Victor Hugo himself, anclin.the wild attempt to improve her eternal laws lies the. condemnation of the poet as well as of bis hero.