“We will leave it so,” said Victor Hugo; “liberty is dead, and we are in mourning for her.”

But the gloom of Hauteville House is only on the outside.  Within all is warm and homelike.  The furnishings are almost as the poet left them, and the marks of his individuality are on every side.

In the outer hall stands an elegant column of carved oak, its panels showing scenes from “The Hunchback.”  In the dining-room there is fantastic wainscoting with plaques and porcelain tiles inlaid here and there.  Many of these ornaments were presents, sent by unknown admirers in all parts of the world.

In “Les Miserables” there is a chance line revealing the author’s love for the beautiful as shown in the grain of woods.  The result was an influx of polished panels, slabs, chips, hewings, carvings, and in one instance a log sent “collect.”  Samples of redwood, ebony, calamander, hamamelis, suradanni, tamarind, satinwood, mahogany, walnut, maples of many kinds and oaks without limit—­all are there.  A mammoth ax-helve I noticed on the wall was labeled, “Shagbark-hickory from Missouri.”

These specimens of wood were sometimes made up into hatracks, chairs, canes, or panels for doors, and are seen in odd corners of these rambling rooms.  Charles Hugo once facetiously wrote to a friend:  “We have bought no kindling for three years.”  At another time he writes: 

“Father still is sure he can sketch and positive he can carve.  He has several jackknives, and whittles names, dates and emblems on sticks and furniture—­we tremble for the piano.”

In the dining-room, I noticed a huge oaken chair fastened to the wall with a chain.  On the mantel was a statuette of the Virgin; on the pedestal Victor Hugo had engraved lines speaking of her as “Freedom’s Goddess.”  This dining-room affords a sunny view out into the garden; on this floor are also a reception-room, library and a smoking-room.

On the next floor are various sleeping-apartments, and two cozy parlors, known respectively as the red room and the blue.  Both are rich in curious draperies, a little more pronounced in color than some folks admire.

The next floor contains the “Oak Gallery”:  a ballroom we should call it.  Five large windows furnish a flood of light.  In the center of this fine room is an enormous candelabrum with many branches, at the top a statue of wood, the whole carved by Victor Hugo’s own hands.

The Oak Gallery is a regular museum of curiosities of every sort—­books, paintings, carvings, busts, firearms, musical instruments.  A long glass case contains a large number of autograph-letters from the world’s celebrities, written to Hugo in exile.

At the top of the house and built on its flat roof is the most interesting apartment of Hauteville House—­the study and workroom of Victor Hugo.  Three of its sides and the roof are of glass.  The floor, too, is one immense slab of sea-green glass.  Sliding curtains worked by pulleys cut off the light as desired.  “More light, more light,” said the great man again and again.  He gloried and reveled in the sunshine.