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A phrase of Victor Hugo's that I have often seen quoted is: N'imiter rien, ni personne. Un lion qui copie un lion devient un singe. Most places where it is quoted simply give its source as "Tas de pierres". I wanted to find the phrase in its context.

I finally tracked down the fragment of paper on which he wrote it, presumably some time between 1871 and 1880. It seems to me that he wrote "deviens" and not "devient". Other words on the page that end in "t" all show a letter with a distinctive shape which is missing in the word "devien?"

Is this the way the third person singular of "devenir" was spelt in the 1870s, or is this a spelling mistake? And if it is a spelling mistake, did Victor Hugo make many? (It would be reassuring to young writers to know that they are not alone.)

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  • Welcome! The last fragment is le remords est un contrecoup and those t are not obvious at all to me. Nevertheless, very interesting documents!
    – 0-One-0
    Commented Aug 25 at 9:37
  • Handwriting is often difficult to decipher, and often the eye instinctively infer a missing or ill written letter. I read devient and not deviens. Lots of people don't cross their Ts (supposing that is the reason you see an S ) or misshape letters when writing quickly. I'm not a graphologist, all I can say is that if I compare other words ending with S on this manuscript and others, is that Hugo doesn't shape his Ss as he does the last character on the word you mention. I can also see other Ts that are not crossed.
    – None
    Commented Aug 25 at 10:02
  • I'm not sure it is relevant to know if Hugo made spelling mistakes, and how would we know it was a spelling mistake or a careless error. Hugo's language is supposed to be (one of) the richest in the French language, he's said to be a genius, that should be enough. Of more interest to the gist of your question could be these : Top 10 des grands écrivains qui faisaient aussi des fautes, cé rassuran, les fautes de français des grands écrivains.
    – None
    Commented Aug 25 at 10:05
  • Extract from Victor Hugo, l'écriture rituelle "Pour cette écriture sauvage, Hugo fait feu de tout bois : il se déplace couramment avec un carnet (il en gardait même un sur sa table de chevet, pour noter aussitôt les phrases qui lui venaient dans son sommeil) ; et, à défaut, il saisit littéralement le premier bout de papier qui lui tombe sous la mai", this way of writing doesn't generate an easily readable handwriting.
    – None
    Commented Aug 25 at 10:13
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    @Kamala-1FTW D'autre documents qui pourraient t'intéresser dans l'exposition virtuelles Brouillons d'écrivains.
    – None
    Commented Aug 25 at 10:17

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It's probably simply an uncrossed T. The paper fragment just above in the Gallica scan has the first T in the word "végétation" written very similary, very short, a mere appendix of the preceding "é", uncrossed. Same in the 3d fragment with the "nt" in "contrecoup", although the T is a bit taller.

French grammar was formalized early on, you can see in this dictionary from 1762 that 3d person "devenir" ends in T, it is a trait inherited from Latin that remained in most (all?) French verbs in present tense.

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