knew him. There came, for a time, a short break in
their relations; for, partly out of need, she returned to her Russian
nobleman, or at least admitted him to a menage a trois. Hugo underwent
for a second time a great disillusionment. Nevertheless, he was not too
proud to return to her and to beg her not to be unfaithful any more.
Touched by his tears, and perhaps foreseeing his future fame, she gave
her promise, and she kept it until her death, nearly half a century
later.

Perhaps because she had deceived him once, Hugo never completely lost
his prudence in his association with her. He was by no means lavish
with money, and he installed her in a rather simple apartment only a
short distance from his own home. He gave her an allowance that was
relatively small, though later he provided for her amply in his will.
But it was to her that he brought all his confidences, to her he
entrusted all his interests. She became to him, thenceforth, much more
than she appeared to the world at large; for she was his friend, and,
as he said, his inspiration.

The fact of their intimate connection became gradually known through
Paris. It was known even to Mme. Hugo; but she, remembering the affair
of Sainte-Beuve, or knowing how difficult it is to check the will of a
man like Hugo, made no sign, and even received Juliette Drouet in her
own house and visited her in turn. When the poet's sons grew up to
manhood, they, too, spent many hours with their father in the little
salon of the former actress. It was a strange and, to an Anglo-Saxon
mind, an almost impossible position; yet France forgives much to
genius, and in time no one thought of commenting on Hugo's manner of
life.

In 1851, when Napoleon III seized upon the government, and when Hugo
was in danger of arrest, she assisted him to escape in disguise, and
with a forged passport, across the Belgian frontier. During his long
exile in Guernsey she lived in the same close relationship to him and
to his family. Mme. Hugo died in 1868, having known for thirty-three
years that she was only second in her husband's thoughts. Was she doing
penance, or was she merely accepting the inevitable? In any case, her
position was most pathetic, though she uttered no complaint.

A very curious and poignant picture of her just before her death has
been given by the pen of a visitor in Guernsey. He had met Hugo and his
sons; he had seen the great novelist eating enormous slices of roast
beef and d