Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/246

238 THE MOTHER OF VICTOR HUGO. public fetes, and seemed to have regained her youth. Indeed, her loyalty was so well known that the Count d'Artois sent the silver decoration of the Order of the Lily to the sons of so devoted an adherent, and very proud they were of their new dignity. Victor, wearing his lily at his button-hole, and attending a festival with the Foucher family and his own, while little Mademoiselle Adele leaned upon his arm, felt himself to be an important personage. One painful result came to this family from the accession of Louis XVIII. The political differences which had so long estranged General and Madame Hugo were so exaggerated by it that they agreed to live apart, the chil- dren remaining with their mother. From early childhood Victor had been accustomed to compose poetry, trying his hand at narrative poems, royalist odes, epigrams, songs, tragedies, translations from the Latin, and even a comic opera — the last dedi- cated, as were many of his best pieces, to his mother. She knew of his literary attempts and encouraged him to persevere in them, although no encouragement was neces- sary, since writing was to him a second nature. His military dramas had long been famous among his school- mates, by whom they were performed under his direction, with such costumes and accessories as could be made or found for the occasion. He always took the chief r61e for himself, as a matter of course, and performed it with an earnestness that appeared in the eyes of his comrades little less than the perfection of tragic art. But it was not until he was fifteen that his talent became known to a larger public than that afforded by the home circle and the school. In 1817 the subject proposed by the French Academy for the prize in poetry was The Happiness resulting from Study in all Situations of Life. It occurred to Victor to