He had the vein of emotional self-disclosure, the vein of romantic or sentimental confession.  This last was not a rich lode, and so he was at pains to charge it secretly with ore which he exhumed gloatingly, but which was really base metal.  The impulse that led him along this false route was partly ambition, partly sensuality.  Many a worse man would have been restrained by self-respect and good taste.  And no man with a sense of honor would have permitted The Book of Love to see the light—­a small collection of verses recording his passion for Mme. Hugo, and designed to implicate her.

He left two hundred and five printed copies of this book to be distributed after his death.  A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was not too expressive when he declared that its purpose was “to leave on the life of this woman the gleaming and slimy trace which the passage of a snail leaves on a rose.”  Abominable in either case, whether or not the implication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve’s numerous innuendoes in regard to Mme. Hugo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy not only cost him his most precious friendships, but crippled him in every high endeavor.

How monstrous was this violation of both friendship and love may be seen in the following quotation from his writings: 

In that inevitable hour, when the gloomy tempest and the jealous gulf shall roll over our heads, a sealed bottle, belched forth from the abyss, will render immortal our two names, their close alliance, and our double memory aspiring after union.

Whether or not Mme. Hugo’s relations with Sainte-Beuve justified the latter even in thinking such thoughts as these, one need not inquire too minutely.  Evidently, though, Victor Hugo could no longer be the friend of the man who almost openly boasted that he had dishonored him.  There exist some sharp letters which passed between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve.  Their intimacy was ended.

But there was something more serious than this.  Sainte-Beuve had in fact succeeded in leaving a taint upon the name of Victor Hugo’s wife.  That Hugo did not repudiate her makes it fairly plain that she was innocent; yet a high-spirited, sensitive soul like Hugo’s could never forget that in the world’s eye she was compromised.  The two still lived together as before; but now the poet felt himself released from the strict obligations of the marriage-bond.

It may perhaps be doubted whether he would in any case have remained faithful all his life.  He was, as Mr. H.W.  Wack well says, “a man of powerful sensations, physically as well as mentally.  Hugo pursued every opportunity for new work, new sensations, fresh emotion.  He desired to absorb as much on life’s eager forward way as his great nature craved.  His range in all things—­mental, physical, and spiritual—­was so far beyond the ordinary that the gage of average cannot be applied to him.  The cavil of the moralist did not disturb him.”