Nothing could be better said or more openly declared, and the interpreter of the part was thus informed of the intentions of the author. He adopts her, makes her his own, is ready to share his own glory with the youthful renown of Négroni. For her he will conceive marvellous parts; she will create them. Juliette understood him perfectly. With the ardour of a twenty-five-year-old imagination excited by love, she began to dream of her poet, of their two lives henceforward united in a common success. While Victor still wavered, still hesitated whether to seek this actress of whom thousands of alarming anecdotes were current, she made foolish projects, settled trivial details, savoured one by one those joys of the dawn of love which so many women prefer to the delights of possession. He came at last on February 27th, Shrove Sunday, towards the end of the afternoon. The weather had been beautiful, one of those soft spring days that enhance the beauty of Parisian women and make the men pensive. The streets were littered with booths, noisy with fireworks, discordant with raucous voices. The Boulevard du Temple exploited a fair where, on that particular day, masks and songs added variety and movement. Victor Hugo, who lived in the Place Royale and never drove in a cab, had to cross this scene on foot. His thoughts were still confused; he, who was ordinarily so determined in his plans, still debated whether he should mount the actress's stairs. After all, this child seemed fond of him--but whom was she not fond of? Who was there that did not figure on the list of her lovers? Yesterday, Alphonse Karr, loutish, a babbler, a writer of romances, fairly honest, but so ponderous in his pretentious and everlasting coat of black velvet! To-day a Russian Prince who was said to have offered Juliette a marvellous trousseau, copied from the wedding outfit of Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans. He was also credited with the intention of installing her in a sumptuous apartment in the Rue de l'Échiquier.... What should a poet, a great poet conscious of his mission, want with such a girl? Then a voice sang in the memory of Victor Hugo, a voice almost supernatural, like those with which he used to endow the good fairies in the days when he covered the margins of his lesson-books with fancies. "_Mon Dieu_," it wailed, "_qu'est-ce qui remplit tout le c[oe]ur?_" And at last the poet walked up to place the answer at the feet of his new friend.