It was in 1863 that Victor Hugo's famous declaration from 1816 was first published: 'I want to be Chateaubriand or nothing'. After briefly retracing the relationship between the two contemporary writers (1802-1848), this article then considers Hugo's celebrated saying through the lens of his exile, which reinvigorated its meaning. Hugo had indeed become Chateaubriand, or thereabouts, in the first instance (and rapidly so) through his work and his career (almost becoming a minister), but then lost everything during exile, which for him was a mode of death. At this time, he rediscovered the old model that was literally never out of his sight, with Saint-Malo directly facing the Channel Islands. However, he reflected so much on Chateaubriand that this model ended up falling from sight: especially after 1848, one of Chateaubriand's characteristics in Hugo's oeuvre is to be yet more present in those spaces where we do not expect him to be named.