HUGO Victor Besançon, 1802 - Paris, 1885, poète... Lot n° 316

Autograph letter, signed "Victor Hugo", addressed to Eugène Pelletan. "Hauteville house April 2"; 2 pages in-8°. "You sent your book to me in my exile, I'm sending mine to you in your prison. These exchanges are all simple in our time between two men who wanted to stay standing. It's your fault as it is mine. Why did we want to be true to freedom, and to ourselves? All in all, I think it's good that way. ...in the Senate, Pelletan in jail. May my book give you back some of the happiness that yours has given me. To have put this mother of Marguerite in the birth of a city is a pathetic idea, you mix the old customs with the new ones, and you make the drama flow out of it. Marguerite [...] what figures! The emotion is deep and true. What cheerful and splendid pages in turn, and what irresistible melancholy in this calm of the end! Framing all this pain in the idea of progress is high thinking. You have named me twice in this beautiful work; dear poet, I do not thank you for it, I love you. [...] At the very moment when your work makes you glorious, persecution makes you popular. I send you from the bottom of my heart, my most fraternal handshake. Victor Hugo." We were looking for an excuse to go after Eugene Pelletan. It was provided on November 3, 1861, by a long article of six columns: Freedom as in Austria. Pelletan posed the paradox of the spectacle of Austria, the very symbol of absolutism in Europe, within which Emperor Franz Joseph introduced liberal reforms, and of France, the homeland of freedom, subject to the omnipotence of Napoleon III. Prosecuted for "inciting hatred and contempt of the government", he was sentenced to three months in prison and fined 2,000 francs. The sum was heavy, and Eugene Pelletan not very wealthy. He had to sell his library. Opposition to the regime, however, was beginning to spread, especially among students, for whom Eugène Pelletan was a master. So the volumes in his library were bought at a high price