Monday, 25 October 1880

On returning we found Kiki. Every visit is a source of terror to me.
I am reading Les Chatiments. It is true, Hugo is a genius. And I do not even know if I should say that some of his lyrical flights astonished me, not to say wearied me. No, I do not think so — it is beautiful, it is sublime, and despite the great arms and the shrouds and the belfries, etc., it is human, it is natural, it is beautiful. But I love him above all in his touching simplicity.
The last act of Hernani, when Dona Sol pleads with the old man. And the language of the grandmother in "L'enfant avait recu deux balles dans la tete."

Notes

Les Chatiments (1853), Hugo's collection of political poetry attacking Napoleon III.
"The child had received two bullets in the head" — a poem from Les Chatiments about the violent repression following the 1851 coup.