The first two, “Nox” and “L'Expiation,” were printed in 2,000 copies, “Joyeuse vie” in a few hundred, and “À l'obéissance passive” in only a handful of copies, these last two being unknown to Vicaire and Carteret.
These booklets were printed to be smuggled into France by mail, following the ban on Les Châtiments.
The Belgian printer Samuel also had several pieces from the collection printed separately, in a 32mo format: thin pamphlets that could be sent by post and easily escape police surveillance. On 13 December, Samuel informed Hugo that two extracts had already been printed, “one which you already have [Nox], the other which I am sending you here, L’Expiation […]. Now I am doing the pieces you indicated to me [Joyeuse vie and À l’obéissance passive]; I will send you a proof of them… I have printed four thousand extracts of the first two — two thousand of each piece.”
This contradicts Clouzot’s account, according to which the first two were “L’Expiation” and “Joyeuse vie,” “printed in 2,000 copies […], the last two [À l’obéissance passive and Nox] in a tiny number (10 or 12, perhaps?) for no clear reason. They remained unknown for a long time” (Clouzot, p. 147).
“Joyeuse vie” did indeed have a much smaller print run; as for “L’Obéissance passive,” it very nearly disappeared entirely: its “typesetting was complete, and Victor Hugo had corrected the proofs, when he changed his mind and ordered Samuel to break up the type. He had realized that this poem, read in isolation, risked being interpreted by his opponents as an insult to the French army.” It was in the end printed in only a handful of copies, unable to be distributed like the others, and is clearly the rarest of the four booklets.
The haste with which this last offprint was set is confirmed by the unfinished state of its title page: unlike the other three, it contains neither the general title Les Châtiments, nor the author’s name, still less the introductory preface. It is also the only one dated 1853; the other three are dated November and December 1852. Although the figure given by Clouzot may seem somewhat exaggerated, the rarity of this booklet remains a fact: no copy in the Zoummeroff collection, unknown to Carteret, and never seen by Vicaire, who knew only the first two at first hand.