Victor Hugo – Autograph Poem

Autograph poem. Slnd; 1 pages in-4°. Central fold Two short poems written on the same sheet.
Quatrain wrote as part of a public subscription in favor of Brigadier Dominique Millot, of the 8th Cuirassier Regiment, who had become blind: “Blind like Homer and like Bélisaire, Having only one child for guide and support The hand that will give bread to his misery, He will not see it, but God sees it for him" Victor Hugo here refers to Generalissimo Belisarius, last great defender of the Roman Empire in the 6th century, conqueror of the Vandals and the Ostrogoths, under the reign of Justinian. His end is equivocal, represented as a triumphant consul and general, duke of Mesopotamia, supreme leader of the imperial troops of the East. When others give him a sad end, like the philosopher Jean-François Marmontel imagining him blind, guided by an adolescent, begging in the streets of Constantinople, and Jacques-Louis David painting him asking for alms . Follows, below, a pretty couplet that the poet introduces with this sentence: “written on the fireplace of Madame de La Vallière’s room in St Germain”: “Here you loved each other, you sweet, he victorious, he king by his ancestors, you queen by heart »