Like all great hearts, Victor and Juliette fell head over ears in love, and thought of nothing else. The poet was no longer to be found in the Place Royale, or, if he was, he remained abstracted, a stranger at his own hearth. He, usually so precise, so punctual and methodical, now neglects his guests and is late for meals. When evening comes and his drawing-room is filled with voices, song, and discussion, and with women who smile upon him and men who render him homage, he forgets everything, even to be polite. His eye is on the clock, he longs for the blessed hour of the _rendezvous_ at 9, Rue St. Denis. Sometimes he snatches up a stray sheet of paper and scribbles feverishly. Verse or prose? More often it is verse, for it will be offered to Juliette, and nothing flatters her so much as these poetical surprises created in the midst of the din and diversions of a social circle. Neither did she give herself in niggardly fashion. From the very beginning she said to him: "I am good for nothing but to love you!" She threw herself thoroughly, magnificently, into the part. Thus quoth she--and wrote likewise, for she, also, wrote from everywhere: from her room, from a friend's house, from her box at the theatre, from a chance café. For her tender "scribbles," as she calls them, any scrap of paper will serve, even an envelope or the margin of a newspaper; and for instrument a pencil, a blackened pin, even a steel pen, that novel invention of which every one is talking, but which she hardly knows how to use. Of the form of her letters she takes little heed. No lexicon is needed to say that one loves. A woman in the throes of passion does not worry about grammar. Juliette is of that opinion, and that is why her early letters are so full of charm. They exhale the perfume of love, and also its timidity. Her letters were not merely a means of giving vent to her feelings: they seemed to her the only occupation fit for a sweetheart worthy of the name, when the lover is absent or delayed. On February 18th, 1833, Victor Hugo had left her early in the morning. She had rushed to the window to follow him with her eyes as long as he was in sight. At the corner of the Rue St. Denis, as he was about to turn into the Rue St. Martin, he looked back; they exchanged a volley of kisses. Then she found herself lonely indeed, oblivious of her surroundings, like a somnambulist who walks and speaks and acts in a dream. Around her was an immense void, in her heart one sole desire: to see the poet again, and never to part from him. It was to fill that void and beguile that desire that she took up the habit of writing to him. [Illustration: JULIETTE DROUET IN THE RÔLE OF LA PRINCESSE NÉGRONI.]