Juliette Drouet's profile was antique, and she had a profusion of beautiful hair. Pradier, the sculptor, has immortalised her in the statue of the city of Lille in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. When Hugo made her acquaintance he was thirty-one and she twenty-seven; and their connection lasted until her death, that is, for nearly fifty years. After 1833 she accompanied him on his travels, and both during and after his exile "Madame Juliette Drouet" lived in his house. His wife, between whom and Sainte-Beuve there was soon a liaison which the latter's literary indiscretions made unnecessarily public, seems as long as she lived to have borne patiently with Hugo's inconstancy; and Hugo's letters show that he, in his turn, showed both dignity and great delicacy of feeling in the way in which he received Sainte-Beuve's intimation of his passion for Madame Hugo. In his poetry, at least, Hugo remained united by the tenderest of ties to his home. It is in the _Chants du Crépuscule_ which were published in 1835, consequently long after he and Juliette Drouet had become closely connected, that (in the poem "Date lilia!") he writes of his wife as the being to whom he says: _Toujours!_ and who answers: _Partout!_ And it is in this same poem that we have the perfectly charming picture of the young mother followed by her four children, the youngest of whom still walks with tottering steps: "Oh! si vous rencontrez quelque part sous les cieux Une femme au front pur, au pas grave, aux doux yeux, Que suivent quatre enfants dont le dernier chancelle, Les surveillant bien tous, et, s'il passe auprès d'elle Quelque aveugle indigent que l'âge appesantit, Mettant une humble aumône aux mains du plus petit; Si, quand la diatribe autour d'un nom s'élance, Vous voyez une femme écouter en silence, Et douter, puis vous dire: Attendons pour juger. Quel est celui de nous qu'on ne pourrait charger? On est prompt à ternir les choses les plus belles. La louange est sans pieds et le blâme a des ailes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Si, loin des feux, des voix, des bruits et des splendeurs, Dans un repli perdu parmi les profondeurs, Sur quatre jeunes fronts groupés près du mur sombre, Vous voyez se pencher un regard voilé d'ombre Où se mêle, plus doux encor que solennel, Le rayon virginal au rayon maternel; Oh! qui que vous soyez, bénissez-la. C'est elle! La sœur, visible aux yeux, de mon âme immortelle! Mon orgueuil, mon espoir, mon abri, mon recours! Toit de mes jeunes ans qu'espèrent mes vieux jours!"