[Footnote 1:  In corroboration of this view of the Vendean rising as democratic, see Mortimer-Ternaux, Hist. de la Terreur, vol. vi. bk. 30.]

And let us mark Victor Hugo’s signal distinction in his analysis of character.  It is not mere vigour of drawing, nor acuteness of perception, nor fire of imagination, though he has all these gifts in a singular degree, and truest of their kind.  But then Scott had them too, and yet we feel in Victor Hugo’s work a seriousness, a significance, a depth of tone, which never touches us in the work of his famous predecessor in romance, delightful as the best of that work is.  Balfour of Burley is one of Scott’s most commanding figures, and the stern Covenanter is nearly in the same plane of character as the stern heroic Jacobin.  Yet Cimourdain impresses us more profoundly.  He is as natural, as human, as readily conceivable, and yet he produces something of the subtle depth of effect which belongs to the actor in a play of Aeschylus.  Why is this?  Because Hugo makes us conscious of that tragedy of temperament, that sterner Necessity of character, that resistless compulsion of circumstance, which is the modern and positive expression for the old Destiny of the Greeks, and which in some expression or other is now an essential element in the highest presentation of human life.  Here is not the Unknown.  On the contrary, we are in the very heart of science; tragedy to the modern is not [Greek:  tuchae], but a thing of cause and effect, invariable antecedent and invariable consequent.  It is the presence of this tragic force underlying action that gives to all Hugo’s work its lofty quality, its breadth, and generality, and fills both it, and us who read, with pity and gravity and an understanding awe.

The action is this.  Cimourdain had the young Gauvain to train from his earliest childhood, and the pupil grew up with the same rigid sense of duty as the master, though temperament modified its form.  When the Revolution came, Gauvain, though a noble, took sides with the people, but he was not of the same spirit as his teacher.  “The Revolution,” says Victor Hugo, “by the side of youthful figures of giants, such as Danton, Saint-Just, and Robespierre, has young ideal figures, like Hoche and Marceau.  Gauvain was one of these figures” (ii. 34).  Cimourdain has himself named delegate from the Committee of Public Safety to the expeditionary column of which Gauvain is in command.  The warmth of affection between them was undiminished, but difference in temperament bred difference in their principles.  They represented, as the author says, with the candour of the poet, the two poles of the truth; the two sides of the inarticulate, subterranean, fatal contention of the year of the Terror.  Their arguments with one another make the situation more intelligible to the historic student, as they make the characters of the speakers more transparent for the purposes of the romance.

This is Cimourdain:—­