In the last preface to his _Odes et Ballades_ Hugo, in his pompous manner, writes of his own career: "History goes into ecstasies over Michel Ney, who, born a cooper, became a marshal of France, and over Murat, who, born an ostler, became a king. The obscurity of their origin is considered to give them an additional claim to respect, and to add to the glory of the position to which they have attained. Of all the ladders which lead from darkness to light, the one which it is most difficult and most meritorious to mount by is undoubtedly that which leads from the position of loyal aristocrat to that of democrat. To rise from a hut to a palace is, no doubt, an uncommon and admirable achievement, but to rise from error to truth is more uncommon and more admirable. In the case of the first ascent, the man gains something, increases his comfort, his power, his wealth, with every upward step; in the case of the second, exactly the opposite happens ... he must pay for his spiritual growth with one sacrifice of temporal well-being after another ... and if it is true that Murat could with pride lay his postillion's whip beside his sceptre, saying: 'This is what I began with,' then certainly the poet may with more justifiable pride and greater inward satisfaction point to the royalist odes which he wrote as a child and youth, and lay them beside the democratic poems and works which he has written as a grown man. And the pride is perhaps especially justifiable in one who at the end of his ascent, on the topmost step of the ladder of light, has found banishment, in the man who can date this preface from exile."
Victor Hugo was the son of one of Napoleon's officers who had originally been a violent revolutionist, and as such had exchanged his Christian name, Joseph, for that of Brutus, which, however, he dropped again when the Revolution was at an end. Joseph Hugo was at Besançon, in command of a battalion, when his famous son was born. A few weeks later he was sent to Corsica. From Corsica he was transferred to Elba, thence to Genoa and the Italian army. He entered the service of Napoleon's brother Joseph when Joseph became King of Naples, and at Naples his wife and children joined him in October 1807. When in 1808 Joseph was made King of Spain, Colonel Hugo followed him to that country, sending his wife and three little sons to Paris, where they lived from 1808 till 1811. In the spring of 1811 they accompanied a strong detachment of troops to Madrid, but Hugo thought it prudent to send them back to Paris in the following year, while he himself, who had been promoted with extraordinary rapidity to be aide-de-camp to the King, major-domo of the palace, general, Count of Cisuentes, inspector-general of the Peninsular army, and governor of three provinces, took part in the war until the defeat of Vittoria, in June 1813, obliged Joseph to abdicate. Napoleon, who could not bear General Hugo, and always treated him badly, refused to confirm his appointment as general and his title as count (his other preferments he had lost), and ordered him to enter the French army again with the rank of major. In 1814 and 1815 Joseph Hugo distinguished himself by his able defence of the fortress of Thionville. His son writes of him as if he had been an ardent votary of Napoleon. This he most certainly was not, and when the Bourbons returned they at once gained his complete allegiance by restoring him to his rank of general, with promotion dating from 1809, the year in which he had received it from King Joseph. Thus it was not only Victor Hugo's mother, the daughter of a loyal shipowner of the Breton town of Nantes, who was a devoted royalist; his father, too, was strongly attached to the restored royal house. Causes entirely unconnected with politics produced a misunderstanding between the parents, and they separated. The sons, Abel, Eugène, and Victor, remained with their mother in Paris.