au Phare: it is not clear what lighthouse
is intended.
une Tarentaise, woman of Tarentum, in South
Italy.
Gaete, English Gaeta, a bay and town on the
west coast of Italy, north of Naples.
L. 47. The historical allusion here is not clear.
Prince Eugene of Savoy, Marlborough’s colleague,
and Cardinal Mazarin were not contemporaries.
Livourne, Leghorn. Spinola: the
reference may or may not be to the famous Imperialist
general in the Thirty Years War.
prames, big flat-bottomed boats, capable of
carrying cannon, and used for coast defence.
Notre-Dame de la Garde, a sanctuary at Marseilles.
Palma, a town in Majorca.
Victor Hugo’s father was an officer in the army
of the great Napoleon and fought in Spain as a general,
but nothing is known of this incident except what
is here told.
Caramba (Spanish), a colloquial interjection,
implying surprise and astonishment.
LE CRAPAUD.
To Hugo ugliness was as much a subject for pity as
degradation or misery. Compare the following
passage from Les Contemplations: Ce que dit
la Bouche d’Ombre:—
Pleurez sur les laideurs et les ignominies.
Pleurez sur l’araignee immonde,
sur le ver,
Sur la limace au dos mouille comme l’hiver,
Sur le vil puceron qu’on voit aux
feuilles pendre,
Sur le crabe hideux, sur l’affreux
scolopendre,
Sur l’effrayant crapaud, pauvre
monstre aux doux yeux,
Qui regarde toujours le ciel mysterieux.
For Hugo’s feeling for the brute creation, see
Dieu: L’Ange.
Augustules. The last Emperor of Rome,
Romulus, was given by the people the derisive nickname
of Augustulus, or ‘the little Augustus’.
The capture of Ravenna in his reign by Odoacer marks
the end of the Western Empire.
vermeils. See note on AYMERILLOT, 1. 35.
miroitait, glittered with light.
farouche, hard, cruel.
fauve, wild, shy. See note on EVIRADNUS,
1. 529.
1. 103. A difficult expression. Apparently
it refers to the harsh grating of the wheel against
the side of the rut.
connivence: the complicity of the burden
upon his back with his master in keeping the ass in
a straight course.
I. 134. i.e. the sad and melancholy, such as
the ass, are equal to the angels, if they feel pity.
musoir, the head of a pier or jetty.
vertes couleuvres. The serpent appealed to
Hugo’s poetic instinct, and he saw its shape
and its glitter in many natural objects. Compare
the following passages, for most of which I am indebted
to Edmond Huguet’s Metaphores et comparaisons
dans l’oeuvre de Victor Hugo:
