I returned home in order to keep my entire freedom of action for the morrow. I meant to visit my mother first thing in the morning: I had not seen her for two days and feared she would be uneasy, especially if she had heard what was happening outside. My poor mother, at that time, was living in the rue de l'Ouest. I think I have previously stated that we chose this new home for her so that she could be nearer to the Villenave family, who had left the rue de Vaugirard, and were living next door to her. But, unluckily, just when my mother had needed neighbourly help the most, Madame Villenave and Madame Waldor and Élisa (my mother's most faithful companion, with her cat, Mysouf) had gone to la Vendée, where they owned a little country place called la Jarrie, three leagues from Clisson. I found my mother in the most perfect state of tranquillity of mind and body; no rumour of passing events had yet penetrated into that Thébaïd called the quartier du Luxembourg. I breakfasted with her, kissed her and left her in her sweet, undisturbed quiet. As I went away, I ran across Paul Foucher. He was returning from his brother-in-law, Victor Hugo's, who lived in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and to whom he had been to announce that he had to give a reading the following day, of what play or at what particular theatre, I know not. Paul Foucher was then the same short-sighted, absent-minded fellow that he still is, knocking indifferently into passers-by, posts and trees, on which he always seemed to be looking for the bills of the theatres where his pieces were being played; absorbed in the train of thought that preoccupied him at the moment you met him, and incapable of entering into yours, or of coming out of his own, into which he would lead you back again and again. His dominant thought when I met him that morning was the reading he was to give next day. Paul Foucher, young though he was, had made quite a sensational entry into the dramatic life. The year before, a piece of which he was said to be the author had been played at the Odéon, but its great beauty, a beauty of an eccentric character and ill adapted to the stage, had hastened its failure, and the failure, though great, was glorious, the kind of failure that brings to light a man's qualities, just as certain defeats reveal the character of a nation. Paul Foucher had had his Poitiers, his Agincourt and his Crécy, and could take his stand accordingly. The play was called _Amy Robsart_, and was taken from, or, rather, inspired by, Walter Scott's romance of _Kenilworth_. The day after its failure, Hugo proclaimed himself its author; but the honour of the only representation it had was none the less inseparably associated with Paul Foucher. The play was never printed. Hugo made me a present of the manuscript later; I daresay I have it still in my possession. I tried in vain to get any information out of Paul: he knew but one piece of news, and did not consider either the political or