ters 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 Eugenie, after perusing _Les Chatiments_,
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.

Victor Hugo is very hospitable, and delights in having three or four
friends to dine with him, but his appetite, though healthful, is neither
very great nor very dainty: he prefers plain food and drinks only light
claret habitually. He is a very early riser, and on fine spring or
summer mornings he may often be met at six o'clock taking a stroll in
the Champs Elysees. Of his fondness for riding on the tops of omnibuses
I have already spoken. These long rides, when he traverses Paris from
one end to the other, are his periods of