Unfortunately, one of their visitors cast into their new life a
drop of corroding bitterness. This intruder was Charles Augustin
Sainte-Beuve, a man two years younger than Victor Hugo, and one
who blended learning, imagination, and a gift of critical
analysis. Sainte-Beuve is to-day best remembered as a critic, and
he was perhaps the greatest critic ever known in France. But in
1830 he was a slender, insinuating youth who cultivated a gift for
sensuous and somewhat morbid poetry.

He had won Victor Hugo's friendship by writing an enthusiastic
notice of Hugo's dramatic works. Hugo, in turn, styled Sainte-
Beuve "an eagle," "a blazing star," and paid him other compliments
no less gorgeous and Hugoesque. But in truth, if Sainte-Beuve
frequented the Hugo salon, it was less because of his admiration
for the poet than from his desire to win the love of the poet's
wife.

It is quite impossible to say how far he attracted the serious
attention of Adele Hugo. Sainte-Beuve represents a curious type,
which is far more common in France and Italy than in the countries
of the north. Human nature is not very different in cultivated
circles anywhere. Man loves, and seeks to win the object of his
love; or, as the old English proverb has it:

It's a man's part to try,
And a woman's to deny.

But only in the Latin countries do men who have tried make their
attempts public, and seek to produce an impression that they have
been successful, and that the woman has not denied. This sort of