[Victor HUGO]. Juliette DROUET (1806–1883). Autograph letter signed “Juliette,” Sunday afternoon, August 12, [1838], 1:15 p.m., to Victor Hugo; 6 pages, in-4. A lovely letter about *Ruy Blas*. [Victor Hugo had finished writing *Ruy Blas* the day before and reserved the first reading for Juliette.] “It had been fifteen days, my beloved, since you’d come to lunch with me—and God knows how much I’d been longing for you. I would have swallowed you whole like a cherry if you hadn’t had a stem. That’s when little Toto’s caution proved wise: ‘I don’t know if there’s a stem, but I don’t want it cut that way.’ I realize I’ve turned my paper upside down. Luckily, my love is the right way up, and you’ll still be able to make sense of it. My handwriting is hideous. I’d rather write with a poppy head—I’d manage it better […] I’m going to write to Mrs. Krafft to ask if she can lend me an old hat—that’ll save us a little money and maybe bring us one more day of happiness? What a miracle your play is, my poor beloved, and how kind of you to let me be the first to admire it. I’ve never heard anything so magnificent. I don’t even exclude your other masterpieces from that. It’s a richness, a magnificence, a dazzling splendor that one cannot imagine until one has heard it. It’s miraculous. Unfortunately, my mind is even more clouded by it, just as when one’s eyes have stared at the sun for too long, black spots remain before one’s eyes [drawing of two black spots] like this. That’s what’s happening to me—I can see less than ever. I’m as dumb as a goose, and if it weren’t for my love, which serves as my candles and my light, I wouldn’t be able to see at all. Oh! My beautiful sun, you have blinded me for a long time. I see nothing but your rays burning me: inside and outside of me, everything that isn’t you is black"... Former “Femmes” collection by Claude de Flers (November 18–19, 2014, no. 517).