composition. He sits plunged in
a profound reverie, with vague eyes gazing unseeing into space. So well
are his moods understood by the conductors and habitual travellers on
those lines that he is always left undisturbed. Sometimes the greater
part of the day will be passed in these excursions, nor does any
severity of the weather ever daunt the aged poet. Yet with all the quiet
simplicity of his habits his daily life has not escaped the shafts of
calumny. The Bonapartist press declared that he was a drunkard who used
often to be picked up insensible from the floor of his own dining-room.
He has been called an assassin because of his sympathy with the
proscribed Communists, a madman because of his enthusiastic and
impassioned utterances, and he has been said to be a hunchback whose
deformity was dissimulated by the skill of his tailor.

Any sketch of the poet's home-life would be incomplete did I not touch
on his passionate fondness for his grand-children, the two little beings
whose prattle and caresses lend a charm of peculiar sweetness to the
waning hours of that illustrious career. For them the world-renowned
genius is but the most loving and tender of grandfathers. Their games,
their studies, their baby caprices, sway the actions of that grand
personality as the zephyrs ruffle the surface of the summer ocean. The
creator of _Marion Delorme_ excels in manoeuvring a puppet-show and in
getting up plays on a dolls' theatre. The author of _Les Miserables_
often lulls these little ones to sleep with improvised tales of
wonderful fascination. For their sakes he becomes a sculptor and moulds
in bread-crumb most marvellous pigs with four matches for legs. They it
is who know best the almost feminine tenderness, the wellnigh maternal
love, of which that powerful nature is capable.

I write in the present tense, yet as I write these things exist no
longer. The red drawing-room is closed, the dwelling on the Rue de
Clichy is deserted. Victor Hugo is in Guernsey, and from that far
retreat come sinister rumors respecting his failing health. These are
denied by his friends, but are stoutly supported by his enemies. Which
of them speak the truth? That is hard to tell. It may be that this grand
career, long and lustrous as a summer day, has reached its evening hour
at last. Perchance we shall see no more the massive head framed in its
snow-white locks and beard, the piercing eyes, the stalwart frame that
bore so lightly the burde