Similarly the lines of Victor Hugo which I had heard her quote were, it must be admitted, of a period earlier than that in which he became something more than a new man, in which he brought to light, in the order of evolution, a literary species till then unknown, endowed with more complex organs than any then in existence. In these first poems, Victor Hugo is still a thinker, instead of contenting himself, like Nature, with supplying food for thought. His “thoughts” he at that time expressed in the most direct form, almost in the sense in which the Duke employed the word when, feeling it to be out of date and a nuisance that the guests at his big parties at Guermantes should, in the visitors’ book, append to their signatures a philosophico-poetical reflection, he used to warn novices in an appealing tone: “Your name, my dear fellow, but no ‘thoughts,’ please!” Well, it was these “thoughts” of Victor Hugo (almost as entirely absent from the Légende des Siècles as “airs,” as “melodies” are from Wagner’s later manner) that Mme.