This paper focuses on a text written by the memorialist Pedro Rioux de Maillou at the end of the 19th century concerning a reading of Hernani by Victor Hugo in 1830: in this « memoir from another memory », the polygraph has chosen to fill a void in the testimony from the « 1830 generation », which indeed does often stay silent about these ultimate insider ceremonies despite their having becoming the stuff of myth. But even if the scene has all the hallmarks of a total fabrication, it does inform us, twice over, regarding the « oral resistance » characteristic of the whole of the 19th century : first because its abundance of detail reveals through contrast the fragmentary nature of the first-hand accounts which we do have and rely on to arrest the aura of these romantic readings ; and then because it enables us to better understand the process of sacralisation of which romantic discourse has been a posteriori the object.