The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-07-26
CURRENT TOPICS IN PARIS Piere Roster Visits the House of Victor Hugo Which is
 sE Now Set Apart as Museum, Stored With Relics. S
BY PIERRE RoslER.

in which the poet died, is In what used to be his bedroom on the second floor In the house now called after him.
 It is a pity some of the manuscripts of Victor Hugo are not in the room ar ranged as a library. The bookcase Is meagrely furnished, except with the nu- merous editions of his works. victor Hugo could not be spoken of as reader. He read some books of the Bible. translation of Ilad, Scott's novels Frois- sart some chapters of Macaulay's His tory, of Michelets History of France" of some volumes of historical memoirs Balzacs works. Eugene Sues "Wander- ing Jew" and "The Mysteries of Paris which, as he read, raised and Hugotized into Les Miserables." His own thoughts kept him too busy to care for the thoughts of other men. His supreme en- foyment was the exercise of his own brain in interpreting the big allegory of the worlds life and in calling up visions.
 have sometimes imagined that the Prophet Jonah must have been vaucin- ating Victor Hugo of his time and that his denuneiations of Nineveh had some thing in them of Les Chatlments." The whale, probably, was a Hugoesque vis- ion. I should regard Gustave Dore as the artist most bitten by the Hugoesque taste for the gloomy my-grandlose and mid
  zac's "Contes Drolatiques" are more suitable to "Notre Dame de Paris" Gustave Dores grotesqueness is never mirthful; nor is Victor Hugo's.
 The English writer who in imagina- tiveness comes nearest to Victor Hugo is Bunyan. They are almost in touch In the Valley of the Shadow of Death and in Doubling Castle. There Is, however. this great difference. Bunyan had stinted vocabulary and Victor Hugo the most copious of any modern writer. Bun 1 van had extraordinary fancies which he l expressed in ordinary language. The language of Victor Hugo had this pecu- | liarity: that every word seems to live 1 and has in itself magical power. He | found more in no matter what word than any other poet could. He could be | close observer, and his letters to Mile. | Bertin, about the Basque country are | gems of descriptive writing. But to
 have observed much would have cleared
 his visions. The theologians who tried l Joan of Arc might as well have required
 her to give up her saints and voices
 A police passport. giving a description l of Victor Hugo at the age of twenty | nine tells us that his hair was bright | auburn, thick long and wavy his eyes l light hazel and his complexion ruddy.
 He then shaved like priest or Roman
 orator, and went on doing so until the | Coup d'Etat. when he let his beard grow | the better to disguise himself. Mime. 1 Drouet, on joining him in Guernsey. | made him again use his razor, but he
 caught a bad cold which brought on
 ouinsy, and he let the beard again grow l to protect his throat from the damp cli-
 mate.
 The Due de Conegiiano's Erand-daugh-
 ter. nee De Bondy. is at law with her | ex-husband the Marquis de La Roche
 thulon. to deprive him of an annuity of
 2500O francs a year allowed him under a
 virtual deed of separation signed some | .-onz.u nnn The Ia urver who drew 1t LID