Victor Hugo wrote a wonderful
account of this--an account such as only he could write. One fine day
doubt about this occurrence popped up unexpectedly. After waiting a long
time it was decided to get to the heart of the matter, and they finally
opened the coffins of the two great men. They were peacefully sleeping
their last sleep. The deed never took place; its history was a myth.
In this connection Victor Hugo's credulity may be mentioned, for it was
astonishing in a man of such colossal genius. He believed in the most
incredible things, as the "Man in the Iron Mask," the twin brother of
Louis XIV; in the octopus that has no mouth and feeds itself through its
arms; and in the reality of the Japanese sirens which the Japanese were
said to make out of an ape and a fish. He had some excuse for the sirens
as the Academie des Sciences believed in them for a short time.
If what is called history is so near mythology as, many times, to be
confounded with it, what about romance and the historical drama in which
events, entirely imaginative, must of necessity find a place? What about
the long-drawn-out conversations in books and on the stage that are
attributed to historical persons? What about the actions attributed to
them, which need not be true but only seem to be so? The supernatural
element is the only thing lacking to make such works mythological in
every way.
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