The Reinvention of Love

in the public squares.
    The King, never a bright sort of man, in my opinion, chose to go boar hunting in the country at the point of greatest unrest in Paris. It was a hot July and the rich were leaving the crowded, unsanitary city if they could.
    There was still the taste of insurgence among Parisians. It was no great effort to organize, to fight, to bring down the monarchy in three short days. The shopkeepers closed their doors. The papers printed radical editorials. As their printing presses were being demolished by soldiers, the editors of one newspaper were throwing freshly inked copies from the windows of their offices to the waiting crowd below.
    There was the usual violence and destruction of property in the city, but thankfully no works of art were destroyed in the fracas, as had happened in the first revolution. In the end, Charles X abdicated and Louis-Philippe d’Orléans became our king. Restrictions were relaxed. Social reform was in the air. Peace returned.
    But let me go back to Victor’s terrible play, which opened five months before the revolution. I can still remember every detail of that evening.
    Until this year, no drama of romantic sensibility has ever been presented at the Comédie-Française, the Classicists noisily opposing the utterance of lines that deal with the flesh-and-blood nature of passion. Even the actors in Victor’s play aren’t happy with it. But all the controversy is selling out every house, and making Victor rich. When Adèle and I arrive at the Comédie-Française for the evening performance of
Hernani
, we have to fight our way into the lobby.
    Adèle has hooked her arm in mine and I clasp it tightly against me, for fear of losing her to the mob.
    “It’s like this every night,” she says to me, her lips close to my ear. “Victor has never had such publicity.”
    It is no different in the theatre hall. We have seats in the first balcony. I can look around and easily spot Victor’s new bohemian friends, with their long hair and dishevelled clothing. They are in strict contrast to the Classicists, the men, stiff andstarched, their top hats in their laps, the women, gowned and bejewelled. There is shouting and hooting. Many of the bohemians are standing in the aisles, trying to intimidate the patrons as they take their seats.
    “Why is there a smell of garlic and sausage?” I ask Adèle.
    “Some of our supporters have been here since the afternoon,” she says, “in order to secure the seats. They’ve had to bring their supper with them.” She shifts closer to me, so that the sides of our bodies are touching. “Charles,” she says, “despite the pandemonium, I love how this feels.”
    I know what she means. I had dressed slowly, dined hastily, come in a carriage to pick up Madame Hugo at her house. We rode to the theatre together, walked through the lobby like man and wife, have taken our seats as though it is the most familiar thing in the world, to be out together of an evening. It is, in fact, the first evening we have done so, and time shakes out its splendid robes before us.
    “Thank God for Victor’s verbosity,” I say. The play is five acts. What with the heckling, we could be here all night.
    When the gas lights are dimmed, just before the curtain goes up, Adèle leans over and kisses me on the cheek. Such a simple gesture, and yet the most profound pleasure in the world.
    What draws two people together? Is it recognition, shared sympathies? Is it merely an unguarded moment, when they are able to see each other without defences, without reserve? Can one fall into oneself through the attentions of a lover?
    Love makes more questions than it answers. But I know this – in those moments with Adèle, I could not imagine feeling more than I did, being other than I was. I could not imagine a world outside our love. What I failed to recognize, perhaps, was that the world we inhabited made no space for us. This night at the theatre, watching Victor’s play, would be the only evening we would ever spend entirely together.

    I already know, from many conversations with Victor, and from attending an early rehearsal of the play, what
Hernani
is about.
    The story takes place in sixteenth-century Spain. It has political overtones, but the drama is essentially a love triangle among the old, senile Don Ruy Gomez, the young nobleman, Hernani, and the woman they both desire, Doña Sol. Gomez is to marry Doña Sol and Hernani is determined to stop the union, even