Amongst Hugo's papers of this date there is a quaint note from the painter Charlet, which expresses the feelings of these youths. "Four of my Janissaries offer me their strong arms. I send them to prostrate themselves at your feet, begging for four places for this evening, if it is not too late. I answer for my men; they are fellows who would gladly cut off heads for the sake of the wigs. I encourage them in this noble spirit, and do not let them go without my fatherly blessing. They kneel. I stretch out my hands and say: God protect you, young men! The cause is a good one; do your duty! They rise and I add: Now, my children, take good care of Victor Hugo. God is good, but He has so much to do that our friend must in the first instance rely upon us. Go, and do not put him you serve to shame.--Yours with life and soul, "CHARLET." Supported by such devoted enthusiasts as these in its struggle with fanatic opposition, romantic art stormed the enemy's first redoubt and won its first important victory. What these young men heard from the stage was the expression of their own defiance and thirst for independence, of their courage and devotion, their ideal and erotic longings, only pitched in a still higher key; and their hearts melted within them. The time was February 1830, five months before the Revolution of July. The dullest materialism made life colourless. France was as regularly ordered as the avenues of the gardens of Versailles; it was ruled by old men, who patronised only such young ones as had written Latin verse to perfection at school, and had since qualified themselves for office by absolute correctness of behaviour. There they sat, these correct, faultlessly-attired youths, with their neckcloths and stiff standing collars. Contrast with them the youths in the pit, one with locks reaching to his waist and a scarlet satin doublet, another with a Rubens hat and bare hands. These latter hated the powerful Philistine bourgeoisie as Hernani hated the tyranny of Charles V. They gloried in their position; they, too, were freebooters, poor, proud--one a cherisher of Republican dreams, most of them worshippers of art. There they stood, many of them geniuses--Balzac, Berlioz, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Petrus Borel, Préault--taking the measure of their opponents of the same generation. They felt that they themselves were at least not place-seekers, not tuft-hunters, beggars, and parasites like those others; they were the men who a few months later made the Revolution of July, and who in the course of a few years gave France a literature and art of the first rank.