d of Guernsey.

But the curiosity of the abode is the study. From floor to ceiling it is
one mass of books, letters, newspapers and manuscripts: the chairs, the
mantelpiece, the table have disappeared beneath their burdens. A narrow
path, shaped in the midst of these accumulations, permits the poet to
pass from the door to the window, Victor Hugo's correspondence is
enormous, and is continually increasing. He receives letters from all
sorts of people on all sorts of subjects--letters of homage and letters
of abuse, requests for autographs and demands for money, verses sent by
youthful poets with prayers for his advice, and the wails of the
oppressed who look to him as their sworn champion. Very seldom does
Victor Hugo refuse to answer, though his responses are necessarily
brief. Among these accumulated papers must be cited the vast mass of
Victor Hugo's unpublished works. He never fails to devote a certain
portion of the day to literary work, his brain being as clear, his
imagination as fertile, his pen as ready, as they were twenty-five years
ago. "Nulla dies sine linea" is the motto of his daily life. Yet with
all his industry he has been heard to lament that he will not live long
enough to transfer to paper all the conceptions that crowd his busy
brain. In January, 1876, he remarked to a friend, "Were I to begin
giving to the world my unpublished and completed works, I could issue a
new volume monthly for a year." Among these treasures for posterity are
to be found the tragedies of _Torquemada_ and the _Twins_ (the Iron
Mask); the comedies of the _Grandmother_, _The Sword_, and perchance
_The Brother of Gavroche_; a fairy piece wherein the flowers and trees
play speaking parts; volumes of poems entitled _The Four Winds of the
Mind_, _All the Lyre_, _Just Indignation_, _The Sinister Years_ (a
connecting link between _Les Chatiments_ and a _Terrible Year_); and
even a scientific work on the effects of the sphere. He once said, "I
have more to do than I have yet done. It seems to me that as I advance
in years my horizon grows larger, so I shall depart and leave my work
unfinished. It would take several more lifetimes to write down all that
fills my brain. I shall never complete my task, but I am resigned: I see
in my future more than I behold in my past."

He was once speaking of the denouement of _Marion Delorme_, and remarked
that he had written two last scenes for that tragedy, the first sombre
and terrible, the sec