We had arranged the evening before to ascend the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with
Victor Hugo's noble romance for our guide.
Fogg and his party had time to pay a visit to Salt Lake City, connected with Ogden by a branch road; and they spent two hours in this strikingly American town, built on the pattern of other cities of the Union, like a checker-board, "with the sombre sadness of right-angles," as
Victor Hugo expresses it.
It has romantic window-slits that let in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carved apparently from the living rock; and what is more, they are written all over with thousands of names; some of them--like Byron's and
Victor Hugo's--of the first celebrity.
The "strange" shadow so dear to
Victor Hugo's pen bound them on all sides.
Corneille, Cherbuliez; Rousseau, Sismondi;
Victor Hugo, and Joubert; Mozart and Wagner--all who are interested in these men will find a value in what Amiel has to say of them.
Victor Hugo gives an account of them in `L'Homme qui Rit.'--But perhaps my meaning grows plain now.
Victor Hugo relates that in the Channel Islands Satan himself -- tempted more than elsewhere by the beauty of the women, doubtless -- sometimes plays at incubus , greatly to the inconvenience and alarm of the good dames who wish to be loyal to their marriage vows, generally speaking.
Victor Hugo - French poet and novelist and dramatist; leader of the romantic movement in France (1802-1885)