were oddities among the humdrum tradesmen's sons. Victor, thoughtful and
taciturn, rhymed profusely in tragedies, "printing" in his books,
"Chateaubriand or nothing!" and engaging his more animated brother to
flourish the Cid's sword and roar the tyrant's speeches.

In 1814, both suffered a sympathetic anxiety as their father held out at
Thionville against the Allies, finally repulsing them by a sortie. This was
pure loyalty to the fallen Bonaparte, for Hugo had lost his all in Spain,
his very savings having been sunk in real estate, through King Joseph's
insistence on his adherents investing to prove they had "come to stay."

The Bourbons enthroned anew, General Hugo received, less for his neutrality
than thanks to his wife's piety and loyalty, confirmation of his title
and rank, and, moreover, a fieldmarshalship. Abel was accepted as a page,
too, but there was no money awarded the ex-Bonapartist--money being what
the Eaglet at Reichstadt most required for an attempt at his father's
throne--and the poor officer was left in seclusion to write consolingly
about his campaigns and "Defences of Fortified Towns."

Decidedly the pen had superseded the sword, for Victor and Eugene were
scribbling away in ephemeral political sheets as apprenticeship to
founding a periodical of their own.

Victor's poetry became remarkable in _La Muse Francaise_ and _Le
Conservateur Litteraire_, the odes being permeated with Legitimist and
anti-revolutionary sentiments delightful to the taste of Madam Hugo, member
as she was of the courtly Order of the Royal Lily.

In 1817, the French Academy honorably mentioned Victor's "Odes on the
Advantages of Study," with a misgiving that some elder hand was masked