Why Brothels In France Closed In Honor Of Author Victor Hugo's Death

Around the time Adèle Foucher (pictured above) enforced abstinence, Victor Hugo was busy working on a play titled "Hernani." His close friend, literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, spent time at his home and grew close to Foucher. As noted by Marva Barnett, Sainte-Beuve and Foucher exchanged love letters, but their affair wasn't consummated. However, Hugo was not oblivious to the closeness between them and in 1831, he sent a letter to Sainte-Beuve that read, "I am convinced that it might be that what has all my love might have ceased to love me, and that it may have had a little bit to do with you . . . I don't know where I stand with the two beings I love most in the world. You are one of the two." Hugo reportedly gave Foucher the choice to be with Sainte-Beuve, but she preferred to stay with her husband. In fact, Hugo and Foucher remained married until her death in 1868.

Hurt by the betrayal from his wife and friend, Hugo sought solace from a woman named Juliette Drouet, who was an actress in one of his plays. The two began an affair in 1833, and Drouet confessed her love for the author in thousands of letters, sometimes writing to him a few times in one day. In one of them, she wrote, "Let me go with you wherever my happiness is threatened, let me be the wife of your mind and heart, if I cannot be yours in law" (via The American Reader). Hugo and Drouet maintained their affair until her death in 1883, but he was far from faithful to his mistress.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunB9j3JrcW9mZMSpxYybqaismJq5tHnIp2SfqpGjsKZ5wqWmrJ2UYraveceopaiqXaSzbq3UrZ%2Boql2rtqTAzqtkoa2XpMBusMSaq6Fn