Here, in the Winter, with no warmth but the sun’s rays, his eyes shaded by his felt hat, he wrote, always standing at a shelf fixed in the wall.  On this shelf were written all “The Toilers,” “The Man Who Laughs,” “Shakespeare” and much of “Les Miserables.”  The leaves of manuscript were numbered and fell on the floor, to remain perhaps for days before being gathered up.

When Victor Hugo went to Guernsey he went to liberty, not to banishment.  He arrived at Hauteville House poor in purse and broken in health.  Here the fire of his youth came back, and his pen retrieved the fortune that royalty had confiscated.  The forenoons were given to earnest work.  The daughter composed music; the sons translated Shakespeare and acted as their father’s faithful helpers; Madame Hugo collected the notes of her husband’s life and cheerfully looked after her household affairs.

Several hours of each afternoon were given to romp and play; the evenings were sacred to music, reading and conversation.

Horace Greeley was once a prisoner in Paris.  From his cell he wrote, “The Saint Peter who holds the keys of this place has kindly locked the world out; and for once, thank Heaven, I am free from intrusion.”

Lovers of truth must thank exile for some of our richest and ripest literature.  Exile is not all exile.  Imagination can not be imprisoned.  Amid the winding bastions of the brain, thought roams free and untrammeled.

Liberty is only a comparative term, and Victor Hugo at Guernsey enjoyed a thousand times more freedom than ever ruling monarch knew.

Standing at the shelf-desk where this “Gentleman of France” stood for so many happy hours, I inscribed my name in the “visitors’ book.”

I thanked the good woman who had shown me the place, and told me so much of interest—­thanked her in words that seemed but a feeble echo of all that my heart would say.

I went down the stairs—­out at the great carved doorway—­and descended the well-worn steps.

Perched on a crag waiting for me was little Gavroche, his rags fluttering in the breeze.  He offered to show me the great stone chair where Gilliatt sat when the tide came up and carried him away.  And did I want to buy a bull calf?  Gavroche knew where there was a fine one that could be bought cheap.  Gavroche would show me both the calf and the stone chair for threepence.

I accepted the offer, and we went down the stony street toward the sea, hand in hand.

* * * * *

On the Twenty-eighth day of June, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, I took my place in the long line and passed slowly through the Pantheon at Paris and viewed the body of President Carnot.

The same look of proud dignity that I had seen in life was there—­calm, composed, serene.  The inanimate clay was clothed in the simple black of a citizen of the Republic; the only mark of office being the red silken sash that covered the spot in the breast where the stiletto-stroke of hate had gone home.