The poor girl was, in fact, overwhelmed with debt. When Victor Hugo, desirous of setting her free for ever, asked her to draw up a detailed statement of her affairs, she nearly broke down under the task, for there were not only ordinary bills, such as 12,000 fr. to Janisset the jeweller, 1,000 fr. to Poivin the glove-maker, 600 fr. to the laundress, 260 fr. to Georges the hair-dresser, 400 fr. to Villain the purveyor of rouge, 620 fr. to Madame Ladon, dressmaker, 2,500 fr. to Mesdames Lebreton and Gérard for dress materials, 1,700 fr. to Jourdain the upholsterer--but also fictitious and usurious debts intended to disguise money loans, and all the more numerous because they were for the most part invented under the direction of an attorney who answered to the name of Manière. She took good care not to reveal to Victor Hugo, whose own burdens, and practical, economical mind, she was well acquainted with, the amount of her expenditure and the magnitude of her liabilities. The moment came, however, when the creditors realised that they had to deal with a pretty woman inefficiently vouched for by a poet. They lost patience and threatened her, and it was then that Juliette had recourse to money-lenders. The remedy was worse than the evil. Stamped paper soon flooded her rooms. Her furniture was seized, and also her salaries from the Théâtre Français and the Porte St. Martin. She tried to save a few clothes, and was had up for illegally making away with the creditors' property. Her landlord threatened her with expulsion; she imagined herself homeless, and lost her head. Instead of confiding in Victor Hugo, her natural protector, she had recourse to former friends. There were many such, from Pradier, the sculptor, to Séchan, the scene-painter of the Opera and other theatres. Pradier replied with advice; he was not without just pretext for refusal, for, since her intrigue with Victor Hugo, Juliette no longer wrote to the father of her child except "_par accident et monosyllabes_" or else in a school-girl's handwriting, calculated to cover the pages in very few words. Séchan and a few others were less stingy; they sent small but quite insufficient contributions. She was therefore forced to take the big step of revealing the whole truth to the beloved.