Few men have ever enjoyed so wide-spread and enduring a popularity as does Victor Hugo among the people of Paris. When, during the dark days of 1870, he returned from his long exile, he was greeted at the railway-station by a vast crowd, which escorted his carriage to his first resting-place, the home of M. Paul Meurice, and he was twice compelled to address a few words to them in order to appease their eagerness to hear his voice. When he appears in public on great and solemn occasions, such as the funeral of M. Thiers, he is invariably made the object of a popular ovation of the most touching character. People climb up the sides of his carriage to touch his hand, mothers lift up their children to the windows imploring his blessing, and the cry of "Vive Victor Hugo!" goes up from the very hearts of the throng. On the day of the funeral of Madame Paul Meurice, as the cortége was going along the exterior boulevards, it passed near a menagerie. Just as the carriage of Victor Hugo came opposite the door the lions within set up a tremendous roar. "They know that the _other one_ is passing by," said an old workingman beside the carriage ("Ils sentent que l'autre passe"). The fondness of Victor Hugo for riding about Paris on the top of an omnibus is well known. It has sometimes happened that on tendering his fare the conductor has put the coin aside with the remark, "I shall keep that as a relic." One day, on returning from a session of the senate at Versailles, he arrived late at the station. It was a snowy day, the train was full, and he was obliged to climb into a fourth-class place, a seat on the top of the cars. The benches were covered with snow. A workingman who recognized the poet would not let him sit down till with his blouse he had wiped the seat clean and dry. Victor Hugo thanked him and offered him his hand, and with a naïve delight the good fellow cried, "Ah, monsieur, ah, citizen, how proud I am to have seen you and touched you!" More than once the cabman employed to take the poet to his house has refused to accept his fare, declaring that the honor of having driven Victor Hugo was recompense enough. On the day of the funeral of M. Thiers so dense a crowd surrounded the carriage of the poet that it remained for a long time motionless and imprisoned, and the shouts that greeted him were so wildly enthusiastic that the coachman who was driving his carriage fairly shed tears, remarking, however, in a shame-faced manner, "A crying coachman! what a silly sight!"