Victor Hugo on the Future Life.

Manawatu Herald, 31 January 1905, Page 3

Victor Hugo on the Future Life.

During the later years of his life, Victor Hugo, with great enthusiasm, exclaimed :

“ I feel in myself the future life. lam like a forest once cut down ; the new shoots are stronger ami livelier than ever. I am rising, I know, toward the sky. The sunshine is on my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights me with the reflection of unknown worlds.

“ You say the §oul is nothing but the resultant of the bodily powers. Why, then, is my soul more luminous when my bodily powers begin to fail ? Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses as at twenty years. The nearer I approach the end the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me.

“It is marvellous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale, and it is history. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and in veise, history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song. I have tried all. But I feel I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me.

“ When I. go do down to the grave I can say, like many others, ‘ f have finished nrr day’s work ; ’ but I cannot say ‘ I have finished my life.’ My day’s work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight ; it opens with the dawn.”