The Reinvention of Love

rolled on top of me. Her dress rustled like autumnleaves. I could smell the dust in the carpet.
    “My treasure,” she said. “My little one. I have been so lonely.” She kissed me. I opened my eyes.

    Charles Sainte-Beuve

    It is at this point in the story that I should tell you my secret. It is a secret I have borne all my life with shame, and concealed from almost everyone. It is at this moment in the story, after all, that I would be forced to tell Adèle my secret.
    But, not yet. Oh, not yet.

    Instead, I will tell you something about Victor.
    Victor’s father was a general in Napoleon’s army. His mother, like mine, was the daughter of a sea captain. I thought these were romantic beginnings, but they weren’t noble enough for my vainglorious friend. He decided to make his own heraldry, designing a false family crest and having a signet ring made with his invented ancestral motto.
Ego Hugo
. No two words were more perfectly married than those two.
    Victor was insatiable in all things, in all ways. And while this worked for him, it was hard on everyone else.
    It was proving impossible for Adèle.
    So, when I did tell her my secret, that afternoon as we lay together on the floor in the room she shared with her youngest daughter, she was not shocked and surprised, as I thought she’d be.
    She welcomed it.

BUT I AM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF. I am following not chronology, but passion, rushing off to Adèle whenever I am able, forgetting that there are events in this love story that must be told.
    The beginning of it went like this:
    In my early days at the
Globe
, when I was only twenty-two, I was given a book of poetry to review,
Odes et ballades
by a Victor Hugo. There was much in it to admire, but also much that irked. The poet was heavy-handed, leaving nothing to subtlety. He revelled in the grotesque and then, strangely enough, put too much emphasis on the trivial. The balance was off. Sometimes he reverted to laziness, using ellipses instead of furthering a thought. But when he freed himself from his own tricks, the poetry soared. I was temperate in my review, but I did use the word “genius”. And I meant it.
    At this time I was living on the Rive Gauche at number 94 rue de Vaugirard. The day after the review was published, I came home to find a calling card with an invitation from Monsieur Hugo in my letterbox. Coincidentally, Victor Hugo turned out to live just two doors away from me, at 90 rue de Vaugirard.
    The next day I called on him in the evening. The Hugos resided in a small second-floor apartment above a joiner’s shop. There was the smell of sawdust in the stairwell. Also, the smell of dinner.
    “My wife and I are just sitting down,” said Victor, when he met me at the door. “Won’t you come in and dine with us?”
    I had already eaten, had called at the Hugos purposefully late so that I would be certain not to interrupt their meal. But it seemed rude to decline the invitation.
    “I’d be delighted,” I said, and allowed him to lead me upstairs.
    The apartment was crowded but cozy. A fire burned in the grate and there were pleasing paintings and tapestries on the walls. Victor had married his childhood sweetheart and this was their first real home together.
    Madame Hugo rose when I entered the apartment. She was dark and tall, almost Spanish looking. I must confess that, apart from bowing to her in greeting, I didn’t pay her much attention during the evening. This is partly because she didn’t say anything at all during the meal, or afterwards, when the dishes were cleared and the Hugos and I sat by the fire. During dinner her attention seemed entirely taken up with her own thoughts, and after dinner she worked at her sewing, her head bent over her task, ignoring the spirited conversation between her husband and me.
    But the larger truth is that it wasn’t Adèle’s silence that kept me from noticing her that first evening, it was my intoxication with the young poet. He was a few years older than I was but full of vitality and vigour, bounding up the stairs like a mountain goat, as I puffed up after him, my forehead damp with perspiration.
    His dedication to poetry was absolute, and his gratitude to me was touching.
    “Until your review,” he said, “I suffered such doubts.”
    “But there will always be doubts, will there not?” I do not know of any gifted writer who does not suffer from a constant lack of confidence.
    “Yes,” said Victor, reaching over and clasping