La Esmeralda (opera)
La Esmeralda is a grand opera in four acts composed by Louise Bertin. The libretto was written by Victor Hugo; the opera premiered at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris on 14 November 1836 with Cornélie Falcon in the title role. Despite the lavish production, the premiere was a failure, La Esmeralda proved to be the last opera composed by Bertin, although she lived for another 40 years. Paralyzed from birth, chair-bound, Louise Bertin had been somewhat of a child prodigy, she painted, wrote poetry, when she was only 19 composed her first opera, Guy Mannering for which she wrote the libretto based on Sir Walter Scott's novel, Guy Mannering or The Astrologer. Two of her operas were produced at the Opéra-Comique, Le loup-garou in 1827 and Fausto in 1831. Although many of Victor Hugo's plays and novels were adapted as operas, La Esmeralda was the first and only libretto which he wrote himself in direct collaboration with the composer. Shortly after he completed Notre-Dame de Paris in 1830, Hugo began sketching out an operatic adaptation.
The success of the novel had brought him many offers from composers anxious to turn it into an opera, including Meyerbeer and Berlioz. He had declined those proposals, but according to Hugo's wife, he changed his mind out of friendship for the Bertin family. In September 1832, while Hugo was staying with the Bertins, supported by her father Louis-François Bertin, asked him for permission to create an opera from the work, he commenced work on a libretto, completing it on his return to Paris, sending Louise the first draft manuscript on 30 October 1832. The process of preparing the final libretto was slow, rehearsals for the opera did not begin until over three years after Hugo wrote the first lines. Bertin's requests for lines of various lengths to fit the music contributed to this as well as the task of condensing a long novel into a four-hour opera. Many of the characters were eliminated including Jehan Frollo, the dissolute younger brother of the chief antagonist Claude Frollo, although some aspects of his character were incorporated into Claude's.
The main protagonist of the novel, has a much reduced role in the opera, which concentrates more on the love story between Esmeralda and Phoebus. At Bertin's request, the ending of the novel was changed with Esmeralda escaping execution. In 1834, Notre-Dame de Paris had been placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the list of works condemned by the Catholic Church; the opera libretto was submitted to the censors in January 1836 who required the title to be changed to La Esmeralda and all references to Claude Frollo as a priest to be removed. No expense was spared for the production; the four principal roles were assigned to the reigning stars of the Paris Opera: Cornélie Falcon, Adolphe Nourrit, Nicolas Levasseur and Jean-Étienne Massol. The well known interior and theatrical designers Humanité-René Philastre and Charles-Antoine Cambon designed the sets and costumes. Bertin's limited mobility made it difficult for her to participate in the rehearsals, her father commissioned Berlioz to conduct the rehearsals and direct the singers.
Berlioz found the experience dispiriting. The singers and orchestra were unenthusiastic, showed it during the rehearsals. There were backstage rumblings that the opera was only being produced because of the Bertin family's influence and a persistent rumor that Berlioz had written the best arias in the piece, a back-handed compliment which he denied, he wrote to Franz Liszt, "What an inferno that whole world is, an ice-cold inferno!" Hugo was travelling in Brittany and absent for all the rehearsals. According to Adèle Hugo, on his return he was not pleased with the set and costume designs, finding, in his opinion, "nothing rich nor picturesque." In particular, he found the use of new cloth to clothe the beggars and vagabonds inappropriate and blurred the distinction between the distinction between the social classes. When La Esmeralda premiered on 14 November 1836 at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris, it had a dismal reception from the critics and some segments of the audience, although on the opening night it was made up of friends and supporters of the Bertins.
The accusations that it had only been performed because of her brother's connection to the administration of the Paris Opera and the family's directorship of the influential newspaper, Journal des débats led to open disdain by those who opposed the newspaper's political stance. There were hisses and groans, after the one undeniably fine aria, Quasimodo's "Air des Cloches" in Act 4, several members of the audience, including Alexandre Dumas, shouted "It's by Berlioz!". The opera was withdrawn after six performances. For the last of these, 16 December 1836, it had been shortened to three acts and was followed by the ballet La Fille du Danube starring Marie Taglioni, it was at the final performance. The anti-Bertin faction began shouting "Down with Bertin!" "Down with the Journal des débats!" "Bring down the curtain!" They kept it up until Cor
Napoleon III
Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon I, was the first elected President of France from 1848 to 1852. When he could not constitutionally be re-elected, he seized power in 1851 and became the Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870, he founded the Second French Empire and was its only emperor until the defeat of the French army and his capture by Prussia and its allies in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He worked to modernize the French economy, rebuilt the center of Paris, expanded the overseas empire, engaged in the Crimean War and the war for Italian unification. After his defeat and downfall he went into exile and died in England in 1873. Napoleon III commissioned the grand reconstruction of Paris, carried out by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann, he launched similar public works projects in Marseille and other French cities. Napoleon III modernized the French banking system expanded and consolidated the French railway system and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world.
He promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made France an agricultural exporter. Napoleon III negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier free trade agreement with Britain and similar agreements with France's other European trading partners. Social reforms included giving French workers the right to organize; the first women students were admitted at the Sorbonne, women's education expanded as did the list of required subjects in public schools. In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence around the world, he was a supporter of popular sovereignty and of nationalism. In Europe, he defeated Russia in the Crimean War, his regime assisted Italian unification and in doing so annexed Savoy and the County of Nice to France—at the same time, his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy. Napoleon III doubled the area of the French overseas empire in Asia, the Pacific and Africa, however his army's intervention in Mexico, which aimed to create a Second Mexican Empire under French protection, ended in total failure.
From 1866, Napoleon had to face the mounting power of Prussia as its Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought German unification under Prussian leadership. In July 1870, Napoleon entered the Franco-Prussian War without allies and with inferior military forces; the French army was defeated and Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan. The Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris and Napoleon went into exile in England, where he died in 1873. Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte known as Louis Napoleon and Napoleon III, was born in Paris on the night of 20–21 April 1808, his presumed father was Louis Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, who made Louis the King of Holland from 1806 until 1810. His mother was Hortense de Beauharnais, the only daughter of Napoleon's wife Joséphine de Beauharnais by her first marriage to Alexandre de Beauharnais; as empress, Joséphine proposed the marriage as a way to produce an heir for the Emperor, who agreed, as Joséphine was by infertile. Louis married Hortense when he was twenty-four and she was nineteen.
They had a difficult relationship, only lived together for brief periods. Their first son died in 1807 and—though separated—they decided to have a third, they resumed their marriage for a brief time in Toulouse in July 1807, Louis was born prematurely, two weeks short of nine months. Louis-Napoleon's enemies, including Victor Hugo, spread the gossip that he was the child of a different man, but most historians agree today that he was the legitimate son of Louis Bonaparte. Charles-Louis was baptized at the Palace of Fontainebleau on 5 November 1810, with Emperor Napoleon serving as his godfather and Empress Marie-Louise as his godmother, his father stayed away. At the age of seven, Louis-Napoleon visited his uncle at the Tuileries Palace in Paris. Napoleon held him up to the window to see the soldiers parading in the courtyard of the Carousel below, he last saw his uncle with the family at the Château de Malmaison, shortly before Napoleon departed for Waterloo. All members of the Bonaparte dynasty were forced into exile after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and the Bourbon Restoration of monarchy in France.
Hortense and Louis-Napoleon moved from Aix to Berne to Baden, to a lakeside house at Arenenberg in the Swiss canton of Thurgau. He received some of his education in Germany at the gymnasium school at Bavaria; as a result, for the rest of his life his French had a noticeable German accent. His tutor at home was Philippe Le Bas, an ardent republican and the son of a revolutionary and close friend of Robespierre. Le Bas taught him radical politics; when Louis-Napoleon was fifteen, Hortense moved to Rome. He passed his time learning Italian, exploring the ancient ruins, learning the arts of seduction and romantic affairs, which he used in his life, he became friends with the French Ambassador, François-René Chateaubriand, the father of romanticism in French literature, with whom he remained in contact for many years. He was reunited with his older brother Napoléon Louis, together they became involved with the Carbonari, secret revolutionary societies fighting Austria's domination of northern Italy.
In the spring of 1831, when he was twenty-three, the Austrian and papal governments launched an offensive against the Carbonari, the two brothers, wanted by the police, were forced to flee. During their flight Napoleon-Louis contracted measles and, on 17 March 1831, died i
Hernani (drama)
Hernani is a drama by the French romantic author Victor Hugo. The title originates from Hernani, a Spanish town in the Southern Basque Country, where Hugo’s mother and her three children stopped on their way to General Hugo’s place of residence; the play was given its premiere on 25 February 1830 by the Comédie-Française in Paris. Today, it is more remembered for the demonstrations which accompanied the first performance and for being the inspiration for Verdi's opera Ernani than it is for its own merits. Hugo had enlisted the support of fellow Romanticists such as Hector Berlioz and Théophile Gautier to combat the opposition of Classicists who recognised the play as a direct attack on their values, it is used to describe the magnitude and elegance of Prince Prospero's masquerade in Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Masque of the Red Death". Gillenormand in Les Misérables criticizes Hernani. Giuseppe Verdi's opera Ernani, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, was based on the play, first performed in Venice in 1844.
Set in a fictitious version of the Spanish court of 1519, it is based on courtly romance and intrigues. Three men — two noblemen and a mysterious bandit — are in love with the same woman. What follows in the ensuing chaos of action prompted the biographer of Hugo, J. P. Houston, to write "... and a résumé will fail, as in the case of Notre-Dame de Paris, to suggest anything like the involution of its details". In the first scenes Hugo introduces Don Carlos, King of Spain sneaking into the bedchamber of Doña Sol, he forces her maid to help conceal him within the room. Shortly thereafter, Doña Sol enters to welcome her lover Hernani. Hernani and Sol discuss their situation − Doña Sol is about to be forced to marry her elderly uncle, Hernani is a bandit whose father was executed by the previous King. Hernani and Doña Sol plot to run away together, but Don Carlos emerges from the cabinet where he was hiding, disrupting them; the two men clash are interrupted by Sol's uncle and fiancé Don Ruy Gomez de Silva.
He demands to know. Don Carlos reveals his identity, asserts that he had come hoping to meet Ruy Gomez to discuss the recent death of Emperor Maximilian, claims that Hernani is a member of his entourage, thereby allowing everyone to leave peacefully. Don Carlos had overheard Sol and Hernani's plans to run away together, accompanied with some aristocratic friends he appears at the rendezvous point, hoping to seduce Sol in Hernani's place. Doña Sol rejects him. Infuriated, Don Carlos attempts to abduct her; as Don Carlos and Doña Sol struggle over a dagger, Hernani arrives with his own sixty men having overtaken the king's three friends. He explains his hatred for the king over the death of his own father, challenges Don Carlos to a duel; this time, the King is aware of Hernani's identity as a bandit, he refuses a duel, but challenges Hernani to murder him. Hernani's sense of honor prevents him from attacking a man; the King escapes, sends his men to arrest Hernani and his band of thieves. Hernani escapes after a farewell to Doña Sol.
Doña Sol and Ruy Gomez prepare for their wedding, hear news that Hernani's men have all been murdered. Hernani arrives at the house in disguise, Ruy Gomez takes him in as a guest. Hernani − suicidal − reveals his identity and tries to provoke the servants to arrest him, but Ruy Gomez still insists on protecting him. Hernani admonishes Doña Sol for agreeing to the marriage, but when she reveals that she plans to kill herself on the wedding night, he has a change of heart and encourages her to accept the match. Ruy Gomez is appalled to learn of Sol and Hernani's relationship, considering it a betrayal of his hospitality, but he still continues his protection; the King arrives to arrest Hernani, but Ruy Gomez refuses to surrender him, citing laws of hospitality, which, he asserts, protect his guests from the King. The King threatens Ruy Gomez, Doña Sol intercedes for him; the King abducts Doña Sol. Alone, Ruy Gomez releases Hernani intending to fight him to the death. Hernani secures his promise by giving Ruy Gomez a horn to blow to announce the moment when Hernani should die.
Two months in June 1519, in Aachen, Don Carlos is awaiting the results of the imperial election while thwarting a conspiracy. The latter, appointed to assassinate the king, refuses to give way to Don Ruy Gomez, who asks him to break the pact. Don Carlos is elected emperor, he announces the marriage of Doña Sol to Hernani. Hernani reveals his true identity: he is John of Aragon, noble but born in exile. Sol and Hernani are married, but, as they enjoy their wedding feast, Hernani hears the call of the horn blown by Ruy Gomez; as Hernani is about to drink poison, Doña Sol enters the room and tries to convince him that he is hers and he does not have to listen to her uncle. She is unable to persuade him otherwise. Doña Sol, shocked by Hernani's decision to kill himself, drinks half of the poison. Hernani drinks the other half and they die in each other's arms. Ruy Gomez de Silva kills himself. Don Carlos is a fictionalized version of the real King Carlos I Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Don Ruy Gomez de Silva, Duke of Pastrana, gets his name from an actual duke by that name, though the fictional version is an old
Toute la Lyre
Toute la Lyre is a posthumous collection of poems by Victor Hugo. The collection includes unpublished poems during his lifetime including love poems to Léonie d’Aunet. While the title is Hugo's, had been announced, the selection was in fact made by Paul Meurice on the basis of the author's notes, appeared in two instalments, in 1888 and 1893, with a revised version in 1897; the collection gathered unpublished poems dating from between 1854 and 1875 along with a handful from the 1840s, into seven groups, each group called a "string" of the lyre. There is an appendix, a "bronze string". Like Les Quatre Vents de l'esprit, it was an attempt to display all the facets of Hugo's poetry by dipping into the immense reservoir of material available; some editions of Hugo's complete works have disregarded this collection as being too miscellaneous, preferring to return each poem to its chronological place
François Chifflart
François-Nicolas Chifflart was a French painter and engraver. His father was a locksmith, known for his skill as a carver and worked for Louis Fiolet, a notable manufacturer of earthenware tobacco pipes, he introduced his son to the art of metal engraving. François began studying at the municipal school of design at an early age. In 1844, he became a student of Léon Cogniet, he took third place in the competition for the Prix de Rome in 1850 for his painting "Zénobie sur les bords de l'Araxe" the following year, was awarded first place for "Périclès au lit de mort de son fils". Shortly after, he rebelled against the Academicism of the time, focusing more on designing and engraving, his illustrations for Faust were notable and were praised by Baudelaire. He made the acquaintance of Victor Hugo and began a new career as an illustrator in 1867, he helped design illustrations for Hugo's Toilers of the Sea and a new edition of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He lost most of his clientele when he began to harshly criticize Napoleon III during the Franco-Prussian War, sank into an oblivion from which he never recovered.
Despite this, a street in Saint-Omer has been named after him. Louis Noël, François Chifflart, Peintre et Graveur Français 1825-1901, Sa Vie - Son Œuvre Vandroth-Fauconnier, 1902. Pierre Georgel, François Nicolas Chifflart 1825-1901 Musée de l'hôtel Sandelin, 1972 Valérie Sueur, François Chifflart, graveur et illustrateur Musée d'Orsay, 1993 ISBN 2-7118-2920-0 Didier Rykner, Des dessins de Chifflart acquis parle Musée de l'hôtel de Sandelin, in La Tribune de l'Art 25 January 2013. Online. ArtNet: More works by Chifflart "François- Nicolas Chifflart, illustrateur de Victor Hugo « un oeil, tout grand ouvert dans les ténèbres »" @ Paris.fr
The Man Who Laughs
The Man Who Laughs is a novel by Victor Hugo published in April 1869 under the French title L'Homme qui rit. It was adapted into a popular 1928 film, directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin and Olga Baclanova, it was adapted for the 2012 French film L'Homme Qui Rit, directed by Jean-Pierre Améris and starring Gérard Depardieu, Marc-André Grondin and Christa Theret. In 2016, it was adapted as an English musical. Hugo wrote The Man Who Laughs, or the Laughing Man, over a period of fifteen months while he was living in the Channel Islands, having been exiled from his native France because of the controversial political content of his previous novels. Hugo's working title for this book was On the King's Command, but a friend suggested The Man Who Moans Loudly. In late 17th-century England, a homeless boy named Gwynplaine rescues an infant girl during a snowstorm, her mother having frozen to death whilst feeding her, they meet an itinerant carnival vendor who calls himself Ursus, his pet wolf, Homo.
Gwynplaine's mouth has been mutilated into a perpetual grin. Fifteen years Gwynplaine has grown into a strong young man, attractive except for his distorted visage; the girl, now named Dea, is blind, has grown into a beautiful and innocent young woman. By touching his face, Dea concludes, they fall in love. Ursus and his surrogate children earn a meagre living in the fairs of southern England. Gwynplaine keeps the lower half of his face concealed. In each town, Gwynplaine gives a stage performance in which the crowds are provoked to laughter when Gwynplaine reveals his grotesque face; the spoiled and jaded Duchess Josiana, the illegitimate daughter of King James II, is bored by the dull routine of court. Her fiancé, David Dirry-Moir, to whom she has been engaged since infancy, tells the Duchess that the only cure for her boredom is Gwynplaine. Josiana attends one of Gwynplaine's performances, is aroused by the combination of his virile grace and his facial deformity. Gwynplaine is aroused by haughty demeanor.
An agent of the royal court, who wishes to humiliate and destroy Josiana by compelling her to marry the'clown' Gwynplaine, arrives at the caravan and compels Gwynplaine to follow him. Gwynplaine is ushered to a dungeon in London, where a physician named Hardquannone is being tortured to death. Hardquannone recognizes Gwynplaine, identifies him as the boy whose abduction and disfigurement Hardquannone arranged twenty-three years earlier. A flashback relates the doctor's story. During the reign of the despotic King James II, in 1685–1688, one of the King's enemies was Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone, who had fled to Switzerland. Upon the baron's death, the King arranged the abduction of his two-year-old son and legitimate heir, Fermain; the King sold Fermain to a band of wanderers called "Comprachicos": criminals who mutilate and disfigure children, who are forced to beg for alms or who are exhibited as carnival freaks. Confirming the story is a message in a bottle brought to Queen Anne.
The message is a final confession from the Comprachicos, written in the certainty that their ship was about to founder in a storm. The message explains how they renamed the boy "Gwynplaine", abandoned him in a snowstorm before setting to sea. David Dirry-Moir is the illegitimate son of Lord Linnaeus. Now that Fermain is known to be alive, the inheritance promised to David on the condition of his marriage to Josiana will instead go to Fermain. Dea is saddened by Gwynplaine's protracted absence. Barkilphedro lies to Ursus; the frail Dea becomes ill with grief. The authorities condemn them to exile for illegally using a wolf in their shows. Josiana has Gwynplaine secretly brought to her, she is interrupted by the delivery of a pronouncement from the Queen, informing Josiana that David has been disinherited, the Duchess is now commanded to marry Gwynplaine. Josiana rejects Gwynplaine as a lover, but dutifully agrees to marry him. Gwynplaine is instated as Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone, permitted to sit in the House of Lords.
When he addresses the peerage with a fiery speech against the gross inequality of the age, the other lords are provoked to laughter by Gwynplaine's clownish grin. David defends him and challenges a dozen Lords to duels, but he challenges Gwynplaine. Gwynplaine travels to find Ursus and Dea, he is nearly driven to suicide. Learning that they are to be deported, he locates their ship and reunites with them. Dea is ecstatic, but abruptly dies. Ursus faints. Gwynplaine, as though in a trance, walks across the deck while speaking to the dead Dea, throws himself overboard; when Ursus recovers, he finds Homo sitting at the ship's rail. See The Man Who Laughs for the full list of film adaptations. Clair de Lune, a stage play written by Blanche Oelrichs under her male pseudonym Michael Strange, which ran for 64 performances on Broadway from April to June 1921. Oelrichs/Strange made some arbitrary changes to the story, such as altering the protagonist's name to “Gwymplane”; the play features some contrived and stilted dialogue, would never have been produced if not for the fact that Oelrichs's husband at this time was the famed actor John Barrymore, who agreed to play Gwymplane and persuaded his sister Ethel Barrymore to portray Queen Anne.
The ill-starred
Victor Hugo
Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet and dramatist of the Romantic movement. Hugo is considered to be one of the best-known French writers. Outside France, his most famous works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1831. In France, Hugo is known for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles. Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani. Many of his works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the musicals Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables, he produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment. Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed, he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, he is buried in the Panthéon in Paris. His legacy has been honoured in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French currency.
Victor Hugo was the third son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Sophie Trébuchet. He was born in 1802 in Besançon in the eastern region of Franche-Comté. On 19 November 1821, Léopold Hugo wrote to his son that he had been conceived on one of the highest peaks in the Vosges Mountains, on a journey from Lunéville to Besançon. " This elevated origin, he went on, seems to have had effects on you so that your muse is now continually sublime." Léopold Hugo was a freethinking republican. Hugo's childhood was a period of national political turmoil. Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor of the French two years after Hugo's birth, the Bourbon Monarchy was restored before his 13th birthday; the opposing political and religious views of Hugo's parents reflected the forces that would battle for supremacy in France throughout his life: Hugo's father was a high-ranking officer in Napoleon's army until he failed in Spain. Since Hugo's father was an officer, the family moved and Hugo learned much from these travels. On a childhood family trip to Naples, Hugo saw the vast Alpine passes and the snowy peaks, the magnificently blue Mediterranean, Rome during its festivities.
Though he was only five years old at the time, he remembered the six-month-long trip vividly. They stayed in Naples for a few months and headed back to Paris. At the beginning of her marriage, Hugo's mother Sophie followed her husband to posts in Italy and Spain. Weary of the constant moving required by military life and at odds with her husband's lack of Catholic beliefs, Sophie separated temporarily from Léopold in 1803 and settled in Paris with her children. Thereafter she dominated Hugo's upbringing; as a result, Hugo's early work in poetry and fiction reflect her passionate devotion to both King and Faith. It was only during the events leading up to France's 1848 Revolution, that he would begin to rebel against his Catholic Royalist education and instead champion Republicanism and Freethought. Young Victor fell in love with and became secretly engaged to his childhood friend Adèle Foucher, against his mother's wishes; because of his close relationship with his mother, Hugo waited until after her death to marry Adèle in 1822.
Adèle and Victor Hugo had their first child, Léopold, in 1823. On 28 August 1824, the couple's second child, Léopoldine was born, followed by Charles on 4 November 1826, François-Victor on 28 October 1828, Adèle on 28 July 1830. Hugo's eldest and favourite daughter, Léopoldine, died aged 19 in 1843, shortly after her marriage to Charles Vacquerie. On 4 September, she drowned in the Seine at Villequier, pulled down by her heavy skirts when a boat overturned, her young husband died trying to save her. The death left, he describes his shock and grief in his famous poem À Villequier: He wrote many poems afterwards about his daughter's life and death, at least one biographer claims he never recovered from it. His most famous poem is Demain, dès l'aube, in which he describes visiting her grave. Hugo decided to live in exile after Napoleon III's coup d'état at the end of 1851. After leaving France, Hugo lived in Brussels in 1851, before moving to the Channel Islands, first to Jersey and to the smaller island of Guernsey in 1855, where he stayed until Napoleon III's fall from power in 1870.
Although Napoleon III proclaimed a general amnesty in 1859, under which Hugo could have safely returned to France, the author stayed in exile, only returning when Napoleon III was forced from power as a result of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. After the Siege of Paris from 1870 to 1871, Hugo lived again in Guernsey from 1872 to 1873, before returning to France for the remainder of his life. Hugo published his first novel the year following his marriage, his secon
