and unnailed espaliers were niches for Madonnas and fragments of crucifixes; and vines hung there in ragged festoons to the ground. Through these dismantled cloisters and spacious abbey-chambers the imagination of the boys ran riot, and it cast a sort of poetic glamour over their young and solitary lives. To this secluded place came, at one period of Victor's childhood, General Lahorie, his godfather, hiding from the authorities, who had set a price upon his head; and here he was securely hidden by Madame Hugo for two years, as Victor Hugo afterwards pictured Jean Valjean as being concealed there by the old gardener. Lahorie was implicated in Moreau's plot against Napoleon, and was being diligently sought after by the police all the time he occupied the ruined chapel in the old convent-garden. His camp bed was under the shelter of the altar; in a corner were his pistols; and although the rain and snow came in through the dilapidated windows, he bivouacked here in winter as well as summer. The children never knew who he was; he was called simply "the General," and was much loved by the boys, to whom he talked much of their country and of liberty. After a time, under the promise of pardon if he came forward to receive it, he was betrayed into giving himself up; was arrested at once, cast into prison, and afterward shot,--one of the most infamous of the acts of Napoleon, noted throughout his whole career for treachery and insatiable bloodthirstiness. This devilish betrayal of his early friend did not fail to impress the mind of such a boy as Victor Hugo, and to add to his natural hatred of tyrants and their deeds. It was perhaps the most lasting and impressive lesson that he ever learned, and the world has seen its results in his life. Throughout all the varied years of a long and eventful career, it was ever at the shrine of liberty that he paid his devotions, ever her praises that he sung in his loftiest verse, ever for her that he struck the strongest blows of which his arm was capable.