Victor Hugo And His Time

a kind of eul-de-sac, called the Impasse des Feuillantines, stood No. 12, the house to which reference has just been made. In his own writings Victor Hugo has several times referred to the place in terms that we shall presently quote; but he has also given the writer of the present biography a verbal description of some of the leading features of the dwelling where he passed a certain period of his early years. He can still picture the handsome grilled gateway that had to be passed before entering the courtyard leading to the front door. On the right hand of the door and on the same level was an apartment that served as a play-room in rainy weather. Immediately facing the door was a short staircase that led up to the salon, through which, on the left, there was access to Madame Hugo's own room, which, in its turn, opened into another room assigned to the children. By the side of these were two more apartments, one of them the dining-room, the other reserved as a spare bedroom. The salon was both spacious and lofty. At the farther end of it was a flight of steps leading down to the garden. Beneath the windows were beds of the flowers to which Madame Hugo was partial, and to the left of the flower-beds was a piece of waste land full of holes and excavations, in the middle of which was a " puisard," a kind of shallow basin, but not containing any water. Here young Victor daily set snares, each in its turnmore ingenious than the last, to catch a salamander, that ma...