Naturally, beside this passionate love stands a hate as passionate. The vindictive fury of the Bonapartists against Victor Hugo can easily be understood. No writer more than he has contributed to render a restoration of the Empire impossible. Hence insults of all kinds, from the calumny openly printed in an imperialist newspaper to the anonymous letter overflowing with menaces. One of these, received in September, 1877, threatened the poet in no doubtful terms. "Do not imagine, scoundrel, that we will let you escape us a second time:" so ran one of its paragraphs. Under the Second Empire all letters written to or by Victor Hugo were compelled to pass through the ordeal of the Black Cabinet. Many of his Parisian correspondents evaded this surveillance by sending their letters under cover to acquaintances in Germany or by confiding them to travellers who were going to England. But the letters of the poet to his friends in France were invariably opened and read, and many of them were confiscated. In a sarcastic mood Victor Hugo caused a quantity of envelopes to be prepared for his use, in one corner of which was printed an extract from the law forbidding any agent of the government to open or to tamper with any letter that passes through the post-office. On one occasion he wrote across the address of a letter, "Family matters--useless to open it." It is said that the empress Eugénie, after perusing _Les Châtiments_, threw the volume aside with this exclamation: "I do not see what harm we have ever done to this M. Hugo." This remark was afterward repeated to the poet. "Tell her that the harm was the second of December," was his reply. The bottle that contained the ink used in writing _Napoleon le Petit_ had a curious history. That splendid and fiery piece of invective, so amply justified by after events, was commenced on the 12th of June, 1852, and finished on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile. With the few drops of ink that remained in the bottle Victor Hugo wrote upon its label-- Out of this bottle Came _Napoleon the Little_, and affixed his signature. The bottle was given by Victor Hugo to Madame Drouet, who afterward presented it to a young physician who had attended her through a dangerous illness. This young physician, Dr. Yvan, owed to the intercession of Prince Jerome Napoleon permission to return to France to visit his dying father. Having invited the prince to dinner after his return, he showed him as a curiosity the famous bottle. No sooner had the prince read the inscription than he insisted upon taking possession of it, and in spite of the remonstrances of Dr. Yvan he carried it off in triumph.