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A STUDY OF VICTOR HUGO

priately Dantesque light of a furnace at midnight—not as better than others, but as an example of the magic by which the writer imbues and impregnates observation and recollection with feeling and with fancy—the most enchanting legend of enchantment ever written for children of all ages, sweet and strange enough to have grown up among the fairy tales of the past whose only known authors are the winds and suns of their various climates, lurks like a flower in a crevice of a crumbling fortress. The entrancing and haunting beauty of Régina's words as she watches the departing swallows—words which it may seem that any one might have said, but to which none other could have given the accent and the effect that Hugo has thrown into the simple sound of them—was as surely derived, we cannot but think, from some such milder and brighter vision of the remembered Rhineland solitudes, as were the sublime and all but Æschylean imprecations of Guanhumara from the impression of their darker and more savage memories or landscapes.

Otbert (lui montrant la fenêtre).

Voyez ce beau soleil!


Régina

Oui, le couchant's'enflamme.

Nous sommes en automne et nous sommes au soir.
Partout la feuille tombe et le bois devient noir.

Otbert

Les feuilles renaîtront.


Régina

Oui.

(Rêvant et regardant le ciel.)

Vite! à tire-d'ailes!—

—Oh! c'est triste de voir s'enfuir les hirondelles!-
Elles s'en vont là-bas, vers le midi doré.