No More Learning

TRIBOULET (_taking the lifeless body in his arms and
hugging it to his breast_): I have killed my child!
I have killed my child!


FOOTNOTES:

[L] Victor Hugo was a man with a remarkable aptitude for
divining the real course of popular feeling and giving violent
expression to it. It was this that made him one of the leaders of the
modern republican movement in France. Precluded by his earlier works
from attacking the monarchy openly, he set about discrediting it by
a series of historical plays in which the French kings were depicted
in a sinister light. In "Marion de Lorme" he holds up the weakest of
the Bourbons to bitter contempt; in "The King Amuses Himself" ("Le roi
s'amuse"), produced in 1832, he satirises the most brilliant of the
Valois--Francois I. The portrait is a clever but one-sided piece of
work; it is based on facts; but not on all the facts. It is true that
Francois used to frequent low taverns and mix in disreputable company,
but he was also the most chivalrous king of his age, and a man of fine
tastes in art and letters. Nevertheless, the play is one of the best
of Victor Hugo's by reason of the strange and terrible character of
the king's jester, Triboulet. This ugly little hunchback is surely a
memorable figure in literature. The horror and pity which he excites
as he sits by the river in the storm and darkness, rejoicing in the
consummation of his scheme of revenge, have something of that awfulness
which is the note of veritable tragedy. The scene is a superb example
of dramatic irony.




The Legend of the Ages[M]


_Conscience_

Cain, flying from the presence of the Lord,
Came through the tempest to a mountain land;
And being worn and weary with the flight,
His wife and children cried to him, and said:
"Here let us rest upon the earth and sleep. "
And, folded in the skin of beasts, they slept.
But no sleep fell on Cain; he raised his head,
And saw, amid the shadows of the night,
An eye in heaven sternly fixed on him.
"I am too near," he said, with trembling voice.
Rousing his weary children and worn wife,
He fled again along the wilderness.
For thirty days and thirty nights he fled.
Silent and pale, and shuddering at a sound,
He walked with downcast eyes, and never turned
To look behind him. On the thirtieth day
He came unto the shore of a great sea.
"Here we will live," he said. "Here we are safe.
Here on the lonely frontier of the world! "
And, sitting down, he gazed across the sea,
And there, on the horizon, was the eye
Still fixed on him. He leaped up, wild with fear,
Crying, "Oh, hide me! Hide me! " to his sons.
And Jabal, the tent-maker, sheltered him
Within his tent, and fastened down with stones
The flapping skins. But Cain still saw the eye
Burning upon him through the leathern tent.
And Enoch said, "Come, let us build with stone,
A city with a wall and citadel,
And hide our father there, and close the gates. "
Then Tubalcain, the great artificer,
Quarried the granite, and with iron bands
Bound the huge blocks together, and he made
A city, with a rampart like a hill
Encircling it, and towers that threw a shade
Longer than any mountain's on the plain.