Page:Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (tr. Shoberl, 1833).djvu/17

Rh the Virgins of Verdun. At Toulouse, the judges, like the French Academicians, would not believe that the writer was so young, and the president of the Academy made a formal complaint on the subject. The "Ode on the Statue of Henry IV." was finished in a single night. He was watching beside his sick mother, who lamented the circumstance as preventing him from being a candidate, since the next morning was the latest time for sending off poems destined to compete for the prize. Early on the following day the piece was finished, and, bedewed with his mother's tears, it arrived in time at Toulouse.

In 1820 Victor Hugo again obtained the prize for his poem of "Moses on the Nile," and was proclaimed maître es jeux floraux. These pursuits were not calculated to further his study of the law, which he had chosen for his profession, and which was besides obstructed by the cares arising from the necessity of supporting himself, by politics, which now began to engage his attention, and, above all, by love. His terrific romance of "Han d'Islande," which he commenced in 1820, but for which he could not find a publisher till three years afterwards, was written for no other purpose but to communicate his feelings to the object who had long possessed his youthful affections, and whom he was at length not permitted to see. At the same time he composed his royalist and religious "Odes," and, in conjunction with a few friends, published the Conservateur Littéraire, to which he contributed articles on Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Moore, and also political satires. The translations from Lucan and Virgil, which about this time appeared under the name of D'Auverney, and the Epistles from Aristides to Brutus on Thou and You, were from his pen.

In the Conservateur Littéraire he also wrote remarks on the first Méditations Poétiques, the author of which had not yet avowed himself. Every line of this article expresses astonishment, profound admiration of the new poet, and keen sarcasm on the first opinions that might be anticipated from the public on this poet—Lamartine. It was not till two years after the publication of this article that he became personally acquainted with Lamartine him-