The scene was stormy, although Victor Hugo did not hesitate for a moment
before complying with an obligation that was also a satisfaction, since
it secured his possession of Juliette. Fussy and meticulous though he
was in the small circumstances of life, he knew how to be generous and
even lavish in the great--but Juliette's petty deceptions had infused
doubts in his mind; moreover, he was in love and therefore jealous.
Towards the end of 1833 and in the early part of 1834, suspicion, anger,
unjust recriminations and noisy quarrels became almost daily affairs. As
invariably happens in these cases, friends, male and female, interfered.
Juliette was slandered by Mademoiselle Ida Ferrier, her understudy in
the rôle of Jane at the Porte St. Martin--who would, if rumour may be
trusted, have gladly understudied her also in the heart of Victor
Hugo--also by Mademoiselle Georges, who was getting on in years[13] and
could not forgive the lovers for not acknowledging her sovereignty in
the green-room and drawing-room as they admitted it upon the stage. To
aspersions and reproaches Juliette opposed, not only indignation, but
angry words, violent retorts, and sometimes even insulting epithets; or
else she protested in innumerable letters and notes, rendered eloquent
by their sincerity. She complained that she was "attacked without the
means of defence, soiled without opportunity of cleansing herself,
wounded without chance of healing"; she affirmed her intention of
putting an end to the situation by suicide or final rupture. Generally
Victor Hugo arrived in time to calm her frenzy with a caress or a
soothing word, and then Juliette would try to resign herself and let
hope spring uppermost once more. But Victor Hugo, under the influence of
some new tittle-tattle, resumed his grand-inquisitorial manner, and the
tone, words, reproaches and even threats appertaining to the part. The
creditors continued to harry her without intermission; so in the end the
couple passed from words to actions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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