Victor Hugo’s novel Ninety-Three (Quatrevingt-treize) was translated into Chinese in 1912 by Zeng Pu (1872-1935), in the immediate aftermath of the Chinese republican revolution. The translator, a renowned novelist, was a Chinese literati who had learned French on his own. In his preface to the 1913 re-edition of the Hugolian novel, Zeng Pu, calling it poetry, highlights Hugo’s humanity and emphasizes the “child’s heart” as the novel’s main theme. His translation into semi-classical Chinese reduces the length of Hugo’s philosophical narration, focusing instead on allegorical scenes and amplifying the descriptions of the characters’ feelings. However, this approach to fiction and morality by the translator is not without paradoxical choices, which deserve an in-depth study. The article examines the singularities of Zeng’s Chinese version in order to shed light on what can be seen as an attempt at subversive translation in a specific period of modern China.