Written when the fame of its brilliant author was at its height, this book will be found eminently characteristic of him. Although a history composed with scrupulous fidelity to facts, it is as amusing as a romance. Wittily written, and abounding in life and colour, the long narrative takes the reader into the battlefield, the Court and the Hôtel de Ville with equal success. Dumas, who in his early days occupied a desk in the prince's bureaux, but who resigned it when the Duc d'Orleans became King of the French, relates much which it is curious to read at the present time. To his text, as originally published, are added as Appendices some papers from his pen relating to the history of the time, which are unknown in England. [Illustration: _Victor Hugo and Juliette Drouet_] JULIETTE DROUET'S LOVE-LETTERS TO VICTOR HUGO EDITED WITH A BIOGRAPHY OF JULIETTE DROUET BY LOUIS GUIMBAUD TRANSLATED BY LADY THEODORA DAVIDSON WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE AND 36 ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE LONDON STANLEY PAUL & CO 31 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C. _First published in 1915_ FOREWORD A poet, a great poet, loves a princess of the theatre. He is jealous. He forces her to abandon the stage and the green-room, to relinquish the hollow flattery of society and the town; he cloisters her with one servant, two or three of his portraits, and as many books, in an apartment a few yards square. When she complains of having nothing to do but wait for him, he replies: "Write to me. Write me everything that comes into your head, everything that causes your heart to beat." Such is the origin of the letters of Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo. They are not ordinary missives confided to the post and intended to assure a lover of the tender feelings of his mistress: they are notes, mere "scribbles," as Juliette herself calls them, thrown upon paper hour by hour, cast into a corner without being read over, and secured by the lover at each of his visits, as so many trophies of passion. When Juliette Drouet's executor, M. Louis Kock, died in Paris on May 26th, 1912, he had in his possession about twenty thousand. He had added to them the letters of James Pradier to our heroine, those of Juliette to her daughter, Claire Pradier, and the answers of Claire Pradier to her mother. This collection of documents passed into the hands of a Parisian publisher, Monsieur A. Blaizot, who has been so good as to allow us to examine them and compile from them a volume concerning Victor Hugo and his friend.